• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • ABOUT
    • MEET JOSH AND TERRY
    • GRATITUDE
    • OUR FAVORITE THINGS
  • CONTACT
  • WRITING
    • BOOKS
    • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • My Courses
  • Log In
  • Cart
Josh & Terry Summers

Josh & Terry Summers

Creative and functional approach to the spiritual path, weaving insights and practices from Yin Yoga, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and ancient wisdom traditions

  • PRACTICE ONLINE
  • ON-DEMAND EDUCATION
    • Short workshops (2-3hrs)
    • In-depth courses (7-10hrs)
    • Teacher Training Modules (25-50hrs)
    • Summers School of Yin Yoga
  • LIVE/ONLINE EVENTS
  • 1:1

Sipping The Bliss

October 8, 2012 Leave a Comment

I received a lot of positive feedback from last week’s post. Readers expressed enthusiasm about exploring the pleasant side of practice.

This week, I wanted to introduce some practical ideas for how one might incline one’s practice towards the pleasant and, ultimately, towards the euphoric states of rapture.

But, before I mention these practice tips, I just want to reiterate that it’s important not to seek rapture out for it’s own sake. The ecstatic experience will arise on its own when the factors of mindfulness, energy and investigation are brought into collaborative harmony with one another. The following tips will strengthen these very factors…

Points for meditation or Yin Yoga practice:

  1. Surrender completely. At the beginning of a meditation, and periodically throughout the session, make it a point to LET GO completely into the immediacy of NOW. Make a point of experiencing this surrender through the entirety of the body, through every layer, from skin to muscle, from nerve to bone. Feel it on a cellular level. This committed intention to a whole-hearted embrace of the NOW enables the mind the become firmly established in the present moment experience.
  2. Sip the breath. As you attend to the breath, become what yoga teacher, Richard Freeman, calls a ‘connoisseur of the breath’. Imagine you’re at a ‘breath sipping’ party and freely explore an aesthetic appreciation of all the various qualities and textures of the breathing process. In particular, recognize and enjoy the pleasant qualities of the breath. What conditions lead to the presence of those pleasant qualities? Investigate this!
  3. Focus on the ‘pleasantness’ of the pleasant. Meditation teacher,Leigh Brasington, suggests that once the mind is settled on the breathing for some time, a meditator should switch the attention to focus on the “‘pleasantness’ of pleasant physical sensation” somewhere in the body. Often, this pleasant sensation can be found in the palms or around the mouth. There might be a pleasant tingling sensation in the hands or lips. Brasington says to simply focus the attention on that sensation. Gradually, with patience, that pleasant sensation will grow on its own and envelop the whole body.

Ok, that’s it for this week… more points for practice to come next week.

 

Originally published on August 12, 2011

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Yin Yoga Essentials
  • Qi Harmonization and Yin Yoga
  • Traditional Chinese Medicine
  • Yin Meditation
  • Qi Gong
  • Dharma

Recommended Posts

How Yin Yoga Harmonizes Qi: A Holistic Model – Part 1

The Way of Yin – Receptivity and Creativity on the Path

The Biochemistry of Qi

The Four Principles of Yin Yoga

Footer

Find us around the web

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Instagram

Loading...

Join us!

Walk the path with us and receive our regular updates and reflections, along with a free copy of Josh’s ebook, “The What, Why and How of Yin Yoga” and a FREE 2-week trial to our online Sangha.

Copyright © 2023 · Josh & Terry Summers. Design by Great Oak Circle. Privacy Policy

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

Josh & Terry Summers
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.