Today,
We're going to do more of a yogic practice in our meditation,
Where we'll be working with prana,
Which is the Sanskrit word for essentially life force.
The understanding is that through yoga,
We are increasing,
Expanding,
Refining prana within us,
And that has a whole host of benefits,
Everything from longevity to spiritual awakening.
But what we're going to be interested in here in this meditation is the upward movement of prana,
Which is called uddhana vayu,
Where we're essentially directing the flow of prana from the lower to the higher planes of consciousness.
But in terms of the heart,
Really it's another way for us to bring attention to the potency of this center,
At the very least from an energetic perspective,
But more and more from more subtle dimensions as well,
But exploring it in a little bit of a different way.
I find this practice very powerful,
Very potent,
So if at any point you start to get a little bit spacey or it just all feels a bit strong,
Then you can always drop the practice and just rest in the heart for some moments.
So never any sense of energetic discomfort should be there,
Or at least we don't want to try to amplify energetic discomfort.
Of course,
As we meditate,
Many,
Many,
Many things will come up,
Difficult thoughts,
Difficult feelings,
Difficult sensations.
That's what happens,
And we are learning to sit with whatever it is that arises,
And yet we're also not trying to stir anything up more than is necessary.
So let's come into our comfortable meditation position,
And checking in that the body feels nicely grounded into the earth,
But at the same time that elongation is there,
The spine is lengthening,
And so there's a lightness,
There's a sense of lifting.
So we're grounded,
Yet we're lifted,
And we are relaxed as well,
And there's an openness in the chest area,
Taking a few deep breaths,
Deep,
Slow,
Smooth breaths here.
Doing so consciously,
Fully,
And letting the breath return to its natural rhythm eventually,
Letting it be soft and light and gentle.
Feeling the breath in the chest area as we guide our attention down out from the head,
And down into the heart center in the middle of the .
.
.
Let there be here a feeling of coming back home to the heart,
Coming back to yourself,
Allowing our awareness to fully stabilize in the heart center,
So that it starts to naturally be drawn back to the heart again and again,
Like the heart is a magnet for our attention.
And so we'll now start to move into our technique,
And the technique is called Prana Ujjara,
And we will simply inhale,
Feeling that the inhale is the heart,
And the heart is the activating the heart,
And then with the exhale,
We feel the energy drawing upwards through the crown of our head,
And arriving either at the level of the crown of the head,
Or a little bit higher.
You could draw the attention about 12 centimeters or so above the crown of the head,
But that's up to you.
So again,
The inhale draws the attention back down into the heart,
A feeling of energizing,
Activating the heart,
And then the exhale sends the energy up and through the crown of the head.
And so this is the practice,
Inhaling into the heart,
Exhaling,
Ascending up through the crown of the head.
So for our practice today,
We're going to continue exactly like this.
Whenever we get lost,
We find ourselves not doing the practice,
We don't judge,
We don't feel bad,
We know this is what the mind does,
It takes us elsewhere.
We gently guide our attention back to the practice,
This inhaling,
Energizing the heart,
Exhaling,
Ascending upwards to the crown of the head.
One more minute,
And we can just rest the awareness in the heart now.
Finishing with a few deep breaths,
Bringing ourselves back into the physical body,
Feeling the presence of the heart,
And we'll conclude the meditation here.
