Guided Meditation 3: Yin Breathing

This is a guided Yin Breathing practice, led by Dr. Reggie Ray. In this practice, we explore the "source of all life" through opening to the primordial space of the lower belly. This practice will leave you feeling rejuvinated, energised and with a clear and calm mind. This practice builds on the 10 points and Earth Breathing practices that Reggie has offered in his series of guided meditations on Insight Timer.

Transcript

This is a guided Yin breathing practice led by Dr.

Reginald Ray,

Spiritual Director of the Dharma Ocean Foundation.

In this practice,

We explore the vastness of awareness within our body through the open,

Receptive Yin space of the lower belly.

It builds on the Ten Points and Earth Descent practices that Regi offered in previous guided meditations in this series for Insight Timer.

We're going to work with the lower belly now,

And in particular the,

What's called the Hara,

The lower Dantian.

And as we've been discussing,

The lower belly is our point of access to the origin of all things.

That's true in a historical sense,

That as we know now from quantum physics and astrophysics,

We know that the universe emerged out of what we could call chaos,

Meaning the beginning,

Beginning,

Beginning of all things.

And it's also true of our moment-to-moment life,

That everything that we are emerges out of the lower belly and out of the full depth of the lower belly.

The full depth of the lower belly is the same reality that underlies everything.

Everything in the universe is alive,

And everything has its own style of awareness.

And all of that emerges out of the,

You could call quantum beginningless beginning,

Which is this seething energy that gives birth to all life.

So when we work with the lower belly,

We are working with the source of all life,

And we're working with the source of all things.

We are working with what is the most fundamental thing in the universe,

Not just in us.

And we are seeking to be easy with it.

So we're going to lie down.

I'll tell you the plan,

And then we'll do it.

We're going to work on the yin breathing,

And I will explain it to you.

It's breathing into the lower dantian,

And then we're going to do the practice of breathing from the earth up into the lower dantian.

We're attending to the chaos,

The hun tun,

The source in our lower belly,

And we are awakening it and calling it forth.

So let's begin by lying down.

So as always,

Just take a moment and let your body relax toward the earth.

And then we're going to start breathing into the lower dantian,

Into this space,

Maybe two,

Two and a half inches below the navel and in the center of the body.

And as I mentioned,

It can be egg-shaped.

It could be quite small.

It could largely fill that part of the lower belly.

And you have to see yourself.

You have to see yourself on this occasion right now.

What is it presenting?

What is it?

You know,

We're looking to see.

How is it right now?

So breathing in and picking what we think might be the center of the lower dantian and breathing right into that place right there.

And again,

We're not bringing the breath from the nose and down the trachea,

Then,

You know,

Visualizing that.

We're simply visualizing.

We are in the center of the lower belly and we are bringing the breath directly into that point.

Almost as if the point in the lower belly is like nostrils.

It's that literal.

So just keep doing this.

And what we're looking for,

We're going to do this for a few minutes.

And what we're looking for initially is to be very concentrated on that point and keep breathing.

Let everything else go and see if you begin to feel the space there opening up.

You can help it along by having a little bit of a feeling of opening up,

Deliberately opening up the space there.

Imagine the lower dantian is like a balloon that fills on the in-breath and collapses on the out-breath.

Okay.

And if your eyes are open,

You might try closing them,

See if that helps you be more interior.

For more info please visit www.

加恩教會.

Gov 95504-4368 Thank you for watching,

In the next clip.

As you're breathing into the lower dantian and as you're opening the space up,

Look into the space and see what it's like.

Is it empty?

Does it feel peaceful?

Does the space seem to have some kind of energetic quality?

Does the space seem alive?

Just keep breathing,

Opening and looking,

And seeing how it is.

As the space opens up for you,

Dissolve everything into it on the in-breath.

Whatever is going on with you,

Thinking,

Feeling,

Physical sensations,

Feeling sick,

Feeling hungry,

Whatever it may be,

Everything on the in-breath dissolves into the space.

The whole body relaxes into the space on the in-breath.

__________ 好 죄entre旨anç抽ructed When is it?

And keep going.

Try to stick with it.

And if the space suddenly seems big,

That's fine.

If you suddenly lose yourself in it,

That's fine.

Let it go wherever it wants to.

Try to bring the breath right into the center.

Right into the point.

If you focus your breath enough,

That point becomes bright.

It's like a single star in a vast,

Endless heaven.

Right into the point.

Right into the point.

And keep breathing until there's nothing but the space of Lord Dantien.

And you're right in the center of it.

Right into the point.

Right into the point.

Right into the point.

Right into the point.

Okay,

So we're going to take just another two or three minutes,

And then I'll tell you in just a minute or two,

But just keep doing this for this last bit,

And then we're going to sit up.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay,

So when you feel ready,

You can sit back up and we'll continue.

Okay.

Okay.

So take the posture.

And then come to the lower belly and once again,

Begin to breathe into Lord Dantien.

And then again,

Breath and slightly contracting on the breath.

Let the space be big.

And look into the space.

Come into it.

And then we need to peel away the veils covering the space.

Even when we're in the space of the lower belly,

There are veils hiding the ultimate nature of the space from us.

So in each in breath,

Have the feeling of peeling away another veil and opening more deeply and nakedly into the lower belly.

Opening peeling away the veils revealing a more primordial space.

At a certain point you lose all reference points of the body,

And that's fine.

There's just a space.

You can't say it's inside the body and you can't say it's outside.

It's just itself and it goes on forever.

Be right at the center of that.

And let it fill your mind.

Peeling away,

Peeling away,

Clearing away the debris over the space,

Hiding it.

Opening more and more nakedly the space in the lower belly.

Being in the space,

Notice,

Softens the posture.

So it becomes very living,

Very organic,

Very natural,

As opposed to being rigid.

And the posture becomes,

In a way,

How we hold that space,

Simply and beautifully in the lower belly.

Okay.

Opening,

Letting go in the lower belly.

And then opening from the very center out,

Opening a space into absolute nothing.

See if you can do that.

It's called the space of all spaces,

Or the space beyond space,

Absolute nothing.

It's an experience.

It's unknown,

But it's filled with energy and slightly dangerous.

See if you can open into that absolute nothing.

Pull apart the veils.

It's really hard to stay there,

But you can come back.

Pull apart all the knownness.

So it's the absolute unknown.

It's dark.

It's nothing,

Absolute nothing.

See if you can dissolve into it on the in-breath.

Okay,

That's great.

Let's take a break.

So when you're working with the lower belly,

This is what's going on.

It's not simply a matter of breathing into the lower belly to anchor your wandering mind,

Although that is where you begin.

But as time goes on,

You want to open,

Open and explore that space in the lower belly.

Those of you who have done meditating with the body,

Of course,

You know,

We do this with the three-fold breathing.

So some of you have done this before,

But whether you have or whether you haven't,

This attitude of exploration and opening up a vast inner space in the lower belly is bringing us close to the origin.

And when I said dissolve into the absolute nothing,

In Daoism that's known as the return.

And return where?

The return home.

It's said in Daoism that the people who know how to let go of everything,

Let go of their thoughts,

Truly let go of everything they think,

Let go of all they've accomplished as part of the cycle of life,

And know how to become what they say,

Absolutely worthless.

We have to know how to be completely worthless and have no responsibility toward anything.

Because until we do that,

We actually don't know the nature of life and the cycle of life.

As long as we hang on to being somebody and having accomplished something and being responsible to the universe,

We're hanging on to our ego.

We need to know how to return.

We need to know how to fly in the space of the phenomenal world and be somebody and accomplish things and be creative and love and hate.

But we also have to know how to fly into the source and dissolve and become worthless and become nothing.

And Daoism says the people who do that are called the immortals.

That's what immortality is.

It's not resisting death.

It's giving into it completely.

To give into death is to know life in its most intense form.

Life is what we call life,

But even more,

Life is what we call death.

Death is the portal to even a more abundant and vast life.

When we talk about chikantaza as being the gate to how to be in our lives,

This is what we mean.

That sometimes our lives offer us the invitation to fly in the space of phenomenal reality.

And sometimes our life offers the invitation to return to the source,

To die,

To lose it,

To fall apart,

To collapse,

To disappear into nothing,

Into the void.

And every moment of our life is an invitation in some manner or other to life,

To what we call life and to what we call death,

But it's always an invitation to life.

So if we understand that,

You know the Zen thing about chop wood,

Carry water?

You've heard that,

I'm sure.

What that means is that anything that you do in your life,

Whether you live or you die,

Is all about life.

And we are as abundantly alive in the last breath when we exit into death as we are when we're born.

So it's an affirmation of the universal sacredness of all that is,

And an invitation to all of us to relax into it,

And truly to enjoy it and to rejoice in it.

Because truly anything other than rejoicing in the way things are means we don't get it.

We don't understand.

Please continue this practice as long as you like.

Reviews

Excellent guidance

Home

Phenomenal guidance into the primordial space, pure awareness

This was a new practice for me. Powerful and in perfect time.

I love Reggie Ray's deeply somatic, deeply embodied, meditations! It is a true gift to have them ✨

Really felt I could access peace with this meditation

Lovely, Kevin James Karas

Dan tien? Breathing .. I must return to that vast cavernous spaces Nd try unveil but more. Am fascinated by Reggies guidance. TU

loved this mediation and especially the belly breathing.

Would you consider doing a course for Insight Timer? Thank you for sharing your teachings with us. Hope to come to a retreat some day.

Absolutely wonderful. The teaching at the end was particularly moving. I hope to be able to make it to a retreat someday.

Love this meditation! It is powerful yet gentle. Easy to maintain focus throughout. Thank you 🙏😊

This meditation takes us all the way. Thank you so much, Reggie!!!

A very beautiful practice. I will definitely be looking into it more deeply, thank you.

Time for lunch🍴

Reggie's somatic practice helps us explore the body like few do. He shows us the window into each of our individual body universes. It is hard to see what a practice means without practicing it. Each instantiation of practice leads to deepening in our experience of life.

Amazing.

Possibly the most sacred space I have been able to cultivate for my soul through meditation. Thank you. 🙏 Namaste

This was fantastic. Knowing Hara as an energy center used in martial arts and also breathing through that area of the body the dissolving into nothingness was new to me. I had the feeling to be Hara, having or being that open space as nothing felt like a timeless journey!
I am very grateful for this great experience as I am working on my Svadhisthana chakra due to life situation and will definitely return to this meditation.
Thank you very much!
Rapha ☯️🙏🏼

Nice exploration, 🙏🙏👍

Wow!! Tremendously centering and reconnecting to self and the limitless Universe/Divine. Thank you for this!