The Tibetan Yoga of Breath: Breathing Practices for Healing the Body and Cultivating Wisdom by Anyen Rinpoche & Allison Choying Zangmo

Author:Anyen Rinpoche & Allison Choying Zangmo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2013-12-09T14:00:00+00:00

Yoga of the Body

Yoga of the body, the physical movement and posture aspects of wind energy training and meditation practice, is very important. The Wish-Fulfilling Treasury, a famous text by the great Yantra Yoga master Longchen Rabjam (1308–64), describes the yoga of body in depth. This text tells us that engaging in physical yoga postures, or asanas, right before doing any wind energy training, is beneficial. Practicing asanas opens the energetic channels in the body. In the Tibetan tradition, there is a specific set of twenty asanas that are done before practicing wind energy training. When Tibetan yogis and yoginis go into caves or isolated mountain hermitages after making a serious commitment to stay in solitary retreat, they train seriously in these twenty asanas. The reasoning is that when the body’s disposition is natural and relaxed, the energetic channels in the body are also natural and relaxed. In turn, this relaxes the wind energy and the wind-mind.

We recommend practicing yoga asanas for fifteen to twenty minutes before sitting down to work with the wind energy. Here in the West, instruction in many different styles of physical yoga is readily available. All of these styles incorporate an aspect of working with the breath, and will serve the purpose of opening and softening the channels. It is perfectly fine to choose any physical yoga tradition that one finds appealing. Practicing a set sequence of asanas would be impractical, since each person has different physical abilities. Basic wind energy training is a practice that any person can work with. For that reason, we have not specified particular asanas to work with, though we do recommend a period of physical yoga practice preceding wind energy practice.

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