The Incredible Benefits of Tibetan Pranayama and How To Do It by Chad Foreman

Beloved People

Now that we are apt in Breathing I was guided to share the benefits of Pranayama and how to do it with you too. The best teacher I know when it comes to making meditation and breathing exercises understood and easy is Chad Foreman. We have met him already with the Inner Fire Breathing exercise on Day 7 of the 21 Days Transformation.

Over to Chad

Love in All Ways
Dehon Tau

thepeopleontheway@gmail.com

by Chad Foreman / Saturday, 14 November 2015 / Published in Benefits of Meditation, Healing, Pranayama

I’ve been wanting to share this technique for a while now, it’s something I have once again incorporated into my own daily meditation practice and the results are awesome. This technique is called 9 round breathing it is great to do before you practise any other meditation technique, it really does calm the nerves, helps with mindfulness , clears the mind and awakens a vibrant awareness.

Benefits of Tibetan Pranayama

Tibetan Pranayama is a powerful technique to help calm the mind because it controls the breath. The ancient meditation traditions knew that the breath and the mind are very closely linked. You can help self moderate your moods and mental states by controlling your breath,  improve your concentration and overcome mental illness; as Tibetan Meditation Master Lama Yeshe says:

“If you are aware, you will notice that people who are emotionally or mentally disturbed—for example, those who are depressed—breathe differently from normal people. This shows that the way the breath energy moves through the nervous system is very closely connected with the mind. You know from your own experience that when you are angry you don’t breathe normally. Sometimes anger can even make you physically sick. ”

The Tibetan Yogis say that when one nostril is blocked it relates to the impaired functioning of that side of the brain, after doing 9 round of Tibetan Pranayama you can unblock the nostrils and re-balance the two hemispheres of the brain restoring full functioning. It also can  improve your over-all physical health, help recover from nervous disorders and prolong your life; Lama Yeshe goes on to say:

“You can measure scientifically how many times a day you breathe in and out. Buddhism has also calculated this. If you train yourself in the breathing meditation and practice breathing in and out slowly every day, you can prolong your life. If air enters your nervous system in a disturbed way it can disturb your mind. You should breathe slowly, steadily, naturally and completely, like a reliable old clock ticking away.”

While physical and mental health are important effects from this training they are not the main focus of Buddhist Yogis. In the context of Mahayana Buddhism once your mind is calm and focussed you can penetrate deeply into the nature of yourself and uncover and fully connect with your enlightened nature to free yourself from all mental and emotional dysfunction and fully realise great love and intuitive wisdom to be of supreme benefit to yourself and all other beings.
Pranayama is more commonly associated with the Hindu Yogic traditions and because of its remarkable ability to heal and focus the mind it is widely used by Yoga teachers around the world. I can testify that this little known Tibetan technique has worked for me. I first learned it about ten years ago while studying full time the Tibetan Buddhist system and I have usually only used it when my mind was heavily disturbed as a forceful way to relax and focus, but because of its health benefits and ability to focus the mind I am now using it regularly before ever session which I have noticed has improved my calm mind and sense of well being. I also noticed that when I introduced it to my meditation group, everyone had great experiences and could follow and go deeply into what meditation techniques I lead them into next.
Another reason for the incredible benefits of this practice is it draws in prana or chi or life force energy. This is a universal energy that is available to all of us and it has healing qualities and also brings vitality and strength literally the force that animates all things. This energy is a subtle energy that flows through all things and is or very life force that can become depleted when we are sick or suffering mentally or emotionally. Many times you can feel drained of this energy or low in vitality, this is a perfect time to practise 9 round breathing to re-invigorate yourself.
I have not written about Tibetan Pranayama yet because I was not sure how easy it would be to describe and teach in writing but I assure you it is an easy technique once you remember it so please be patient, read below carefully several times and above all put it into practise, attempting it as you read it. This practice uses similar visualisations of the subtle energy channels and very nicely leads into another breathing exercise called Tummo or Inner Fire meditation which if you enjoy this exercise I would highly recommend Tummo: you can read more about here.  As my Tibetan Buddhist teacher Geshe Tashi Tsering would always say, Buddhist teachings are like medicine and just like medicine they don’t do you any good if they are just left on the shelf and not used, you must give them a go.

How to Practice Tibetan Pranayama (9 Round Breathing)

1)Firstly adopt a good meditation posture  its important to sit up very straight with this meditation as the subtle energy channels running either side of the spine are an essential feature of this practice. Briefly a good posture is aligned and straight but also comfortable and relaxed, which actually reflects the state of mind you are trying to achieve: relaxed and focussed. 
2) Take a few long slow breaths: when you breath in straighten up, like you were being pulled up by the crown and on the out breath subtly relax the shoulders, face and hands but keeping good alignment.
3)  Visualise yourself as hollow, like a balloon. Your skin is glowing and brilliant and on the inside there is only empty space. Take a few moments to strongly establish this visualisation.
4) Visualise a ‘central channel’ about a 1cm thick from your perineum at the base to the crown of your head and two ‘side channels’ going in through the nostrils up to the third eye or eyebrow level and then going down either side of the central channel merging at just below the navel. All the ‘channels’ are hollow like plumbing pipes. Take a moment to establish this visualisation, it does get easier and even instantaneous with practice. See image.
5) Now gently raise your hand to your face and press on the outside of your LEFT NOSTRIL blocking it.  Breathe in a long deep, smooth breath IN through the RIGHT NOSTRIL imagining drawing in universal white healing light down the RIGHT channel right down to the belly. See image
6) Hold the breath momentarily in the central channel just below the navel (see image) and then BLOCK THE RIGHT NOSTRIL and release the air up through the left channel and OUT the LEFT NOSTRIL. Imagine black smoke representing all negativity, illness and blockages releasing out through the left nostril.
7) Repeat this 2 more times
8) Now do the opposite by breathing IN THROUGH THE LEFT and OUT THROUGH THE RIGHT nostril with the same visualisations. Do this 3 times.
9) For the last round of breathing you do not block any nostrils instead just take a a long slow breath through both the nostrils imagining white light filling the channels right down to the navel  and then release the breath through both nostrils expelling dark smoke representing negativity.
PLEASE NOTE: That’s a complete 9 round cycle and is actually an advanced version very rarely taught to beginners. I wanted to include it here to give everyone the chance to experiment with it.
An easier beginners practice is to simply do the breathing without the visualisation.
*In brief the beginners practice is: Breathing IN through the RIGHT NOSTRIL and OUT through the LEFT NOSTRIL – doing that 3 times. And then IN through the LEFT NOSTRIL and out through the RIGHT NOSTRIL – doing that 3 times. And then in through BOTH NOSTRILS and out through BOTH NOSTRILS – doing that 3 times. In total that is 9 rounds of breathing and that is the practice of Tibetan Pranayama 9 round breathing.
Tip1: When you focus all your concentration on the breath try and get the sense your attention or mind is literally riding on top of the breath. Like you are floating on the breath staying with it the entire way, so your breath and your attention become one.
Tip2: Your breath should be visualised as white light, this is to realise the prana aspect of the practice, your breath is not just air or oxygen it is the vital life force of yourself and of all things.
As always please experiment, modify it and follow your own intuitive wisdom. After doing this meditation I recommend to sit quietly and to feel and sense your body completely for at least a few minutes and try and feel the difference and vitality in your body. I usually do two full rounds of this before I meditate with my usual daily routine of watching my breath and just being, see here for full instructions on how I meditate.
Best of Luck, please feel free to ask questions, share experiences or comment below.

Written by Chad Foreman

For a FREE Guided Relaxation Meditation with Chad  CLICK HERE

RELATED ARTICLES:
Revealing the Secrets of Tibetan Inner Fire Meditation
Unlocking the Secrets of the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Four Buddhist Meditation Techniques and How to Do Them

Understanding Energy Centres.

Beloved Transformers

I think Joseph is so clear in his explaining, let's hear more from him on our energy centres.

Love in All Ways
Dehon Tau

thepeopleontheway@gmail.com

Originally Posted HERE

Understanding Chakras The term "Chakra" is very trendy these days.  But most people have only a pop-culture understanding of them - which is a euphemistic way of saying no understanding at all.  The chakras are not really the "thing" - the key to health, happiness, growth, self-improvement and realizing your full potential comes from understanding energy flows; not chakras.  What you really want to understand is how to open up the sushumna nadi so that kundalini energy will flow from your perineum to the top of your head.   The Sushumna Nadi Okay, so what's the sushumna nadi?  Funny you should ask. The sushumna nadi is an energy channel that runs through your body from the bottom of your crotch up through the top of your head.  In the picture above, it is represented by the skinny white vertical pole running through the middle of all of those circles.  "Nadi" just means energy channel.  It is the same in concept to a vein or an artery, but is easier to visualize as equivalent to a "meridian"; one of the channels that the acupuncturist utilizes.  A surgeon can cut you open and look all day long; he will not find a nadi or a chakra.  Neither will he find love, goodness, peace, anger, fear frustration, kindness . . . Are they in there?    Kundalini Energy falls up.  All energy is the same; mass = energy, and energy = energy, but the energy that can run upwards through this nadi is called kundalini.  We are designed so as to freely promote the flow of this kundalini up the sushumna nadi.  Some of the chakras are represented by the circles in the picture above.  You can't really draw a picture of a nadi or a chakra, because they are not physical things - just like you cannot draw a picture of peace.  But you can draw of picture of how nice things are as a result of their proper functioning. If you go to yoga class, the teacher may speak of moving kundalini energy up your spine.  That is technically incorrect, but it's a good way to think of it. On the following picture you can see the medical symbol (called "caduceus") is made in the image and likeness of the sushumna nadi - and the snakes' seven crossing points are chakras.  Both of these things are analogous to the spine, and they run along the spine, but they are not the spine.  In fact, most technically, kundalini does not rise up through the sushumna, because there are other nadis sleeved inside of it.  In the interest of time, space and simplicity, we are leaving out some of that stuff here.  If you want to know more, read my book! There are a few other things to mention.  We have hundreds of chakras - chakrettes and chakritas and so on - but only six of them are along the sushumna, with a seventh just above.  There are two other nadis - called the ida and the pingala that wrap around the sushumna.  You can see them on the right, but they are easier to see on the caduceus - they are the snakes.  We have upwards of 72,000 nadis in us. Have you ever been in a chemistry lab and seen the distillation process?   This is a good way to think of kundalini (or kundalini sakti).  Kundalini is made to steam up the sushumna and and condense its way back down again, over and over is a process of continuous refinement, purification and evolution.  But kundalini does not flow up most peoples' sushumna nadis at all, because its flow is crimped off by these things called chakras.    It is noteworthy that most peoples' so-called "kundalini risings" are actually various forms of nervous breakdowns, quirks, needs-for-attention, fabrications, hysteria episodes and so on. Tantra Kundalini yoga is tantra yoga.  So if you are in to chakras, you are practicing tantra.  Tantra is not what you think it is at all - it is not about sexual positions and things like that.  In fact, the Tantra Swamis are celibate - virgins!  But they do understand their sexual energy.  In fact, they understand it as something completely devoid of libido.  We'll discuss all of this in a couple of pages. Yoga, by the way, is not an exercise class.  Only the uninformed see it that way.  If you want buns of steel and six pack abs, find a nice Pilates class or practice aerobics.  Most yoga taught in the West is not yoga at all - it's more like "yogacise" or "yogaerobics".  If your yoga class is giving you six pack abs and buns of steel, it isn't yoga. Tantra is mystical, magical and powerful - it is the basis of Vedantic mysticism.  The word "tantra" means "to weave". The word yoga means "union".  Tantra is all about weaving together diverse energies.  As is the case with any high-voltage wiring, if you are not properly grounded, you can electrocute yourself. Chakras   To get energy to flow up the sushumna, we must unclog the crimps.  Now we are to the point where we can briefly describe chakras.  First some advice - get your mind off of your third eye chakra.  The only chakra you need to know anything about is your root chakra.  We will devote the entire next page to the root chakra.  See this fellow on the right?  The seven main chakras are represented by the full-color circles.  Think of the springy things that come from them as "energy in / energy out" portals.  The sushumna is the vertical line through the chakras.  Kundalini energy flows upwards.  Each of those chakras constitutes a crimp in the energy hose.  We must unclog the hose from the bottom up.    Think of the sushumna as a water hose.  The spigot is at the root chakra (the red circle) in the perineum.  The object is to get water spraying out the top of the head.  So even if chakras 2 through 7 are wide open, if the first one is closed, you get zero flow.  Don't focus on anything else until your root chakra is open.  How can you tell?  If you can't tell, it's not open.     What follows is a very brief and extremely oversimplified description of the seven main chakras. Root Chakra (Muladhara) - The root chakra is unlimited power.  When the root chakra is open, you can do anything!  Why are you so disempowered then?  Because the root chakra is also the chakra of anger, fear, frustration, hatred, jealousy, envy, and all of the "gritted teeth" emotions.  The root chakra is not about the tribe, identification, your sweetheart, world peace, or anything else.  It is about you and life. The root chakra maps to the physical body, and is the only chakra you really need to know about.  See the next page. Sacral Chakra (Svadhistana) - The second chakra is all about healthy relationships with healthy, available people; friends, soul-mates and life partners.  If you cannot maintain close friendships, you need to look at your second chakra. The second chakra is not the so-called sex chakra, as many will tell you, but if you have good relationships, then one of those wonderful relationships will be with a romantic partner. The second chakra maps to the emotional body, and has to do with tactile feelings. Solar Plexus Chakra (Manuipura) - The third chakra is the refinery.  The first two chakras are the power, and it is the third chakra that forges that power into usable energy. The third chakra is the "live and let live" chakra.  When your third chakra is healthy, you are neither controlling nor manipulable.    Predators and victims are both people with dysfunctional solar plexus chakras. The solar plexus chakra maps to the mental body. Heart Chakra (Anahata) - The fourth chakra is the "root chakra to the spirit".  In all of the power and control of the first three chakras, there is no real compassion, sweetness, kindness.  The heart is where the softer side of us manifests.  Whereas the second chakra is the ability to connect to a few close friends, the heart chakra is the chakra of compassion towards humanity. The dysfunctional heart chakra is the land of depression, sadness, low-self-esteem and other deflating emotions. The heart chakra maps the the astral body. Throat Chakra (Vishuddha) - The fifth chakra is the chakra of expression and discretion.  The fifth chakra is the ability to speak the truth always, but always lovingly and with care for the feelings of others.  When the throat chakra doesn't function, you find yourself gullible, and unable to express yourself clearly. The fifth chakra is the chakra of the ethereal body.  You don't need to know what this means.  Go back and focus on your root chakra. Third Eye Chakra (Ajna) -  The sixth chakra is the chakra of clarity, focus, concentration and intelligence.  If you go through the proper channels, by the time the third eye is open, you may begin to be able to see the unseen, hear the unheard and know the unknown. Most people who talk about opening their third eye define themselves as being full of malarkey.  The people who are opening it are not talking about it. The sixth chakra is the chakra of the celestial body.  You don't need to know what this means.  Go back and focus on your root chakra.    Crown Chakra (Sahasrara) - The crown chakra is the chakra of universal consciousness.  People who have opened their crown chakra don't say anything about it, so for the rest of the population, everything is speculative.  It is the chakra of the ketheric body.  You don't need to know what that means.     Chakras - Health and Healing There is a common misconception that chakras map to our bodies in some geographical way; that all chest pains are heart chakra problems, headaches are third eye problems, and so on.  This is not the case.  In fact, the root chakra is the chakra of the physical body, and therefore ALL physical ailments -  from sprained toes to migraine headaches - are root chakra problems by definition. Emotional problems have a second chakra component (and a root chakra component).  Mental problems have a solar plexus chakra component (and a root chakra component).  By the time we reach the heart chakra, our issues become more of compassion, spirituality and transcendence, and beyond the scope of "not being sick anymore". The whole world of kundalini and nadis and chakras defies the analytical western-mindset cause-and-affect approach to things.  That level of analysis leads us to isolate, classify and categorize, while understanding the chakras is all about unifying and smooshing things together.  Again (and again and again) if you are working on being free of some sort of sickness or physical/emotional/spiritual impediment or limitation, think in terms of energy flow, and not of isolating.  Leave the world of, "Is this an emotional problem or a physical one?" and unify. The root chakra is the chakra you need to understand.  To learn just a little about it, click the button below.

Page 7 - The Root Chakra

Beloved Transformers

We are ready!

Let's take a moment to get to know the root of it all better. The 1st Energy Centre is where we shall spend time for the next three days and, well for the whole duration of the 21 Days Transformation because each time we add an energy centre we do the Breath from the 1st one up.

Joseph is an expert and I love his sense of humour so I shall pass you over to him for the explanation.

Love in All Ways
Dehon Tau

 thepeopleontheway@gmail.com

Originally posted at Pure White Light by Joseph who you may email here:  If you are interested in this subject matter, you can get the full story by reading my book, Energy Contact.  If you have questions that won't wait for the book, drop me a line at joseph@purewhitelight.com

The Root of it All Imagine that you are in the natural food market.  You notice an attractive, upper-middle-class soccer mom get out of her Lexus SUV.  She is dressed in her designer yoga  unitard.  Just as you notice her, she sees a friend, and calls to her, "Oh Judy!  Guess what I'm doing tonight?  I'm going to a seminar.  We're going to learn how to open our Third Eye Chakras!"  You think to yourself, "Go ahead, lady - open away!  It's an empty box." Everybody is so fascinated with the concept of opening their third eye, and they don't even know what it is that they are fascinated about.  Like an om-pendant, it's just trendy, it's in style - and so everyone in "Newageyville" says it.   We all love our faces, too.  We look at them for hours - we comb our hair, primp and fuss - on we go.  And the third eye chakra is right there on our face, so we're told.  So let's put some makeup on IT, too. We've seen that our energy falls upwards in us.  Energy only flows in us when it flows through the root chakra, and most peoples' root chakras are tightly shut down.  Furthermore, the root chakra is the chakra of the physical body, so all shut-down root chakras are physically pathological.  And even further-furthermore, the root chakra is located at our crotch.  Does this scare you?  Hmm.  The root chakra is also the chakra of fear.  Does it make you angry?  Frustrated?  Guess what - these are root chakra dysfunctions, too.     Everything you want, but don't have, is at the root The root chakra is location of life and survival - food, air water, shelter - the basics of life.   It is your core; it defines the core of you.  In Sanskrit, the name is Muladhara, which literally means root.  The reason that yogis traditionally sit in the familiar cross-legged position is so that the root chakra touches the earth as they meditate - not figuratively or symbolically, but actually physically touching the ground.  All of the pillows and accoutrements that people use today are all 20th Century embellishments. The root chakra is located at the perineum, and kundalini energy, if it is to circulate in us at all - starts right there.  In 99.9999% of us, it ends there too!  It sits there on standby - latent but lame - and does nothing while we pretend we're spiritual by talking about our third eye.  We prefer to think about our third eye because the root chakra has to do with genitalia and the anus; with pee and poo and things we don't like to consider or talk about. But the root is the place where the power is.  The place from where kundalini rises - yet kundalini does not rise at all in most people.  What most people who talk about their "kundalini rising" have experienced is some sort of neurosis, anxiety attack, psychosis, hysteria, nervous breakdown - or it's a complete fabrication of their imagination - or some other sort of pathological, delusional or drug-related episode.    It's new age machismo - ego fodder - something to brag about.   "My kundalini is better that your kundalini!"  "I have more truth than you, that has set me freer than you".  See how we are? But rising kundalini does keep us in mind of a very important fact.  We want to move kundalini energy up the sushumna nadi.  Opening the chakras is not the goal, but rather the means.  Opening the root chakra is what must happen first.  Period. The Root of Life The root chakra is about you and life.  It is not about mommy, honey, the tribe, identification, the tsunami victims, starving-people-in-third-world-countries - none of that.  It is only you and survival.  People who have open root chakras love their lives - love their physical incarnation in their present bodies.  People who pine away for heaven, future happiness, moksha; people who wish they were somewhere else (be it physically or in some allegorical way) define themselves as root chakra impaired.  So do people who are angry, fearful, cynical, distrustful, frustrated, envious, jealous, stingy - the list goes on. The root chakra is all about food, air, water, shelter, power and physical health.  The ultimate root chakra failure is suicide - the ultimate root chakra success is empowerment and love of life. The Root of Physical Health We saw on the previous page that every chakra maps to a different body.  The muladhara chakra is the chakra of the physical body.  This means that ALL physical conditions have a root chakra component - and 99.9999% of the time, a very strong one. So many people, when they have an illness, say, "Oh!  I've tried thousands of things, and nothing has worked".  Fact is, they haven't.  They've tried one thing, thousands of times.  And the only thing they need to do is the one thing they would never dream of - start by examining (literally and figuratively) their root chakras. The chakras do not geographically map to body parts and body ailments, but chakras DO map to our different bodies - so the root chakra maps to our entire physical body; toe to head.  All things physical are root chakra by definition, but not all things root chakra are physical. The root chakra is the chakra of empowerment.  So why are so many people so disempowered?  Because the root chakra is also the chakra of anger, fear, hatred, envy, jealousy, frustration - all of the "hard" emotions - the ones that make you grit your teeth. The root chakra is the chakra of health and empowerment.  Every other chakra is downstream of it and only receives the energy that the root chakra can pass through to it.  Mystics are at peace with their pelvises and their sexual energy.  If they weren't, they couldn't be mystics.  The path to health and mystical power goes right through the gender organs.  To understand your root chakra, you must come to a place of peace with your sexual energy.  This probably doesn't mean what you think it does.  To find out what it does mean, click the button below.

Page 8 - Sexual Energy