Meditation for Gathering Energy

I want to introduce to you a beautiful, tantric practice for gathering your energy and really the way that we meditate in this tradition is to work with being in the flow of life force and actively connecting to this life force and working with it to move this energy to certain parts of our body for specific purposes. So when we can contain our energy, we can then begin to consciously move it in the direction of our choice. So this meditation will teach you how to gather the prana, the Sunskrit name is prana dharana, in other words, to collect, or gather life force so as to be able to use it in whatever way we choose. So, my teacher tells me if you want to achieve anything in life, then you need to learn how to gather and garner as much love and life force as possible. So in my own personal practice this has been just really the daily fare, it is the beginning of every single practice that I do, so I'm really excited to share it with you and I think you'll, with regular use, see that it can add a lot of energy to your spiritual practice and your life's worldly pursuits.

So go ahead and we'll close our eyes together, and as you close your eyes what you do is you turn your awareness that is normally moving into the outside world, you turn that apparatus of sensing and seeing and feeling to the inside world. So feel your awareness turning inside. How do I know if I'm connecting to my own prana, my own life force? If you're new to this type of practice, it may be a little while before you sense, feel, and see prana. But with practice, you will.

So if you have the intention and the focus, energy, this presence of light and pulse of this intelligent electricity that lights up the world, will become revealed to you. So, a technique for entering into this intimacy and this relationship is to connect to breath, because breath is one of the most vital gateways into prana. So what I'd like for you to do is bring your focus, and therefore, your prana will follow, just about three inches or so below your right nostril. Relax, relax, relax, but keep the spine lengthening. As you inhale, feel light presence move up through the right nostril and it kind of tickles the middle of the brain and exhale, move your attention out the left nostril.

A little below the nostril, and then inhale, breathe your awareness in through the left, it meets at the mid-brain, and breathe it out through the right. So what we're doing is this imaginary arc of right in, exhale out the left, inhale in the left, exhale out the right, we're creating this arc of focus. Keep going, in one, out the other. In one, out the other. Keep going, knowing that the cardinal rule of hatha yoga is that prana follows loving focus.

Continue to feel and create, through the power of your loving attention, this arc of light in the left, out the right. In the right, and out the left. Continue eight to ten more times. If the mind wanders into the realm of thought, as it will do, yoga is not about not thinking, it's about drawing back when you've gone astray. So come back to the arc of prana, the arc of focus, and what I hope you're beginning to feel is that there's not just breath there, there is something else.

There's like, a wet electricity that proceeds my breath, and ends my breath, it's like a parenthesis of intelligence and life that, holds me. And what you will begin to sense, keep going, in the left, out the right, in the right, and out the left. What you will begin to sense, is that this practice opens a doorway into light. Some of you are very visual and you will see light. Some of you are more kinesthetic and you'll feel it as a presence or a pulse.

But with time, you will begin to enter into the prana itself. When you feel prana, when you sense or see light, pulse or a presence in the mid-brain, drop the practice of alternate nostril, drop that. And rest, in this beautiful entryway into the pranamaya kosha, the prana body. So if you feel that pulse or light, just meditate, merge into it, if you don't, that's perfectly fine, stay with the practice of alternate nostril. If you feel the light, see the light, I want you to stay really connected to it.

Remember, we're collecting prana, we're gathering it, feel this ball of energy and presence beginning to collect, collect, collect. The nature of prana is that it wants to expand, so as you hold this ball's pranic intelligence, if it wants to grow bigger and grow maybe into the throat, and pulse into the heart, let that light grow as big as it likes. But stay very connected to gathering prana through this basic, such a simple technique, built upon this tantric principle that prana follows loving focus. Finally this pulse, this light maybe expands to encompass the space of the heart, you can go ahead and bring the hands to the heart and feel, last minute of practice that light, that I'm gathering now, moves into the space of the heart, the most powerful gateway. Feel that you have collected and gathered enough potential energy to use to sit and meditate now as long as you like.

I encourage you to do that. You can also use this energy to work on your business, or take care of your children, or start a new project, or make love. Now you have gathered this life force, use it wisely. Again, feel free to stay in this light, in this pulse, but when you're ready, you can gently start to make your way back, remembering the room you're in, opening the eyes. You begin to move out in the world, but a part of you stays inside and connected to this light, and this intelligence.

Thank you, namaste.