Open Gate Meditation

Open gate is a direct, experiential method for opening the gates of the body, energy, and mind. It combines meditation with a simple, standing asana and prepares you for entering into any practice in a direct realization way. Once you learn and experience the standing, external open gate posture, you can just “drop into” an inner open gate orientation while in any position, wherever you are. You will just know how to do it instantly.

Transcript

Hi everybody,

This is Shambhavi.

I'm going to teach you a practice called open gate posture.

Open gate means opening the senses.

It means opening the gates of your body,

Your energy,

And your mind.

In direct realization practice,

We practice with the gates of perception,

The gates of our body,

Energy,

And mind open.

Open gate posture is both a physical posture that we can assume,

And it's also an inner attitude.

When you learn how to do open gate posture as a physical posture,

It helps you to learn how to spontaneously and instantaneously adopt open gate posture as an inner attitude.

Ultimately,

We would want to be able to be in open gate posture even when we are not standing in the formal physical posture.

We would want to be able to have the inner attitude of open gate posture when we do meditation and other seated practices.

And we would like to be in open gate posture even as we're going about our everyday lives,

Going to the grocery store,

Going to work,

And so on.

So the purpose of learning open gate posture as a physical posture,

Or asana,

Is so that we can cultivate instantaneously being able to drop into open gate posture as an inner attitude in all aspects of our lives.

Stand on the floor or on your yoga mat.

Your feet should be a comfortable distance apart,

Maybe 8 to 10 inches apart.

Your arms are hanging at your sides with your palms facing inward.

Just breathe for a few moments in a natural,

Relaxed way without doing anything to change your breath.

Your eyes should be open throughout this practice.

You may also want to let your lips be slightly apart so that your jaw is relaxed.

Let your head drift up as if there were buoyant air between the vertebra of your neck and your joint in the middle of your head,

The occiput joint.

Let your head drift up naturally until a moment arrives when your chin slightly tips down.

Feel your head drifting upward until a moment when your chin naturally dips down.

And now feel that same buoyant air separating all the bones of your shoulders so that your shoulders are drifting outward away from each other.

This feeling should open up your chest and the upper back.

Your head is rising up until your chin tips naturally down,

And your shoulders are moving away from each other,

Creating a gentle feeling of spaciousness in your upper chest and your upper back.

Now feel that buoyant air is between all the vertebra of your spine.

Feel your different spinal bones separating and your entire spinal cord moving upward through to the center of your head.

Have a feeling of lightness in your spine.

Now bring your awareness to your belly,

To the area behind your belly button.

Have an experience as if you were lying on a beach on a warm summer day.

The sand is warm.

The sun is warm.

And there's a feeling of warmth and lubrication all throughout your middle torso.

Even though you're standing still,

You have a feeling that you could move in any direction because you are warm and lubricated.

Now feel warmth coming from within you.

Let your awareness rest inside your abdomen,

Behind your belly button,

And make contact with a real feeling of warmth radiating out from your center,

Warming up your whole torso.

Feel your spine gently moving upward,

Your head gently moving upward,

Your chin tipping forward,

Your shoulders moving gently apart,

And spaciousness in your upper chest and your upper back.

And now feel your sacrum spreading downward and outward,

As if you were resting in a pool of water and your big hip bones were half under the water and half above the water being supported by it.

Feel your sacrum and your big hip bones spreading downward and outward as your spine and your torso and your head are moving up.

Have a feeling of relaxation downward and a spreading feeling in your hips.

This should create openness in the front of your lower abdomen and in your sacrum.

Try to feel the area below your belly button opening up as your hips spread downward and out.

And now rotate your thigh muscles inward and outward until you find a point of relaxed balance.

Let your knees be slightly off-lock.

Feel your whole spine moving up,

Your upper abdomen and upper chest opening,

Your shoulders moving away from each other,

And a deep feeling of relaxation in your hips as there's balance in your legs.

Now lift all ten toes off the floor and spread them apart,

And begin to place them back down on the floor,

Starting with your pinky toes and moving inward one at a time to your big toe.

Feel the whole bottoms of your feet,

And begin to circle or rotate slowly and gently on the outside edges of your feet in one direction.

Feel that the very center of your arch is a point that you're rotating around.

And as you're rotating,

Slowly come to rest in a state of balance around the center point in the center of your arch.

Feel a sense of balance,

Lightness,

And spaciousness throughout your body.

Feel that your chest and your back are open,

Your abdomen front and back is open.

And now we'll assume open gate posture with our eyes.

Without moving your face muscles,

Let your eyes raise naturally to the ceiling.

And then let them drift down until they come to rest,

Gazing out at a point in middle space,

Loosely straight ahead of you.

Be gazing into a midpoint in the space of the room that you're in.

Now experience your eyes as a theater or a window.

You're seeing everything in front of you through the whole window of your eyes.

You're no longer focusing on any particular point,

Yet your vision is clear.

You're allowing everything in front of you to enter your eyes and your vision is going out to meet everything quietly and gladly.

There's no part of your vision that's being excluded.

There's no particular focus,

Although your vision is clear.

It's as if you're looking at the stage of a theater all at once and enjoying all the colors and textures and shapes.

Let a little smile come to your lips.

Feel all the sensations on your skin.

Hear all the sounds in the room.

Let your senses be relaxed and open.

And now we're going to adopt the inner posture of open gait posture.

Bring your awareness to the center of you everywhere all at once.

Bring your awareness to the center of the bottom of your foot,

The center of your lower legs inside,

The center of your knees,

The center of your thighs,

Up through the center of your hips,

Through the center of your torso,

The center of your neck,

The center of your head,

The center of your shoulders and arms,

Going through to the center of your middle finger.

Feel the center of the inside of you all at once everywhere.

And then as if you were moving out from the center everywhere all at once,

Have the experience of moving out from the center to meet everything that's coming toward you with a sense of gladness,

Curiosity and wonder.

Have the feeling that everything from inside the deepest part of you is open and reaching out with curiosity,

Gladness and wonder to meet everything that is coming toward it.

Have a feeling,

Have a real experience of open expectancy.

This is the real open-gate posture,

This attitude of open,

Glad,

Wonder,

Living in the expectancy that whatever comes to meet you will be interesting and you will meet it with all of your intelligence and openness.

This attitude of open-gate posture which really comes from the inside and moves out with all of your senses and all of your intelligence to meet whatever is coming toward it,

As if you were meeting a friend that you unexpectedly ran into as you turned a corner on a street and you felt that surge of gladness and surprise as you met that friend.

Open-gate posture helps us to meet all of life with that attitude.

When we're doing spiritual practice,

We want to have the inner attitude that we are going to meet whatever arises in our practice with that same sense of curiosity and with the attitude of an explorer,

Without defensiveness and with all of our senses open.

You can practice open-gate posture as a standing asana,

But you should also try to be in open-gate posture when you sit down to do your seated practice,

Whatever that might be.

Open-gate posture can also be adopted as an internal attitude when you're out and about,

And you can see how that changes the ways in which you respond to life's flow of phenomena,

Relationships,

And experiences.

Reviews

Life changing… thank you 🌬❤️!

Lovely thank you 🙏

This guide to the Open Gate Posture is an introduction to a truly excellent practice that will be of mighty assistance to any sadhana, yoga meditation or just living in a state of sukha peaceful happiness.
ॐ तत् सत् 🙏🏼 Recommend 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🙏🏼

I loved this and can see it being transformative over time! I’m excited to keep practicing so it becomes second nature.