Isn’t it incredible how time flies. We are already entering our third week of Spring again with the weather forecast for the coming week sayin it will be 20 degrees Celsius; almost hard to imagine after the intense cold of the past few month.
Now before we slide into the spring in summer season, it might be good to do some emotional spring cleaning; renewal, the celebration of new life; new chances. Time to get old hurts, long expired grudges and other negative energies that you can do without; out of your system
Releasing negative energy is mighty important to move forward. When kept aboard, it settles itself in the energy body and shows up in facial expression, body language, the way we behave towards others and – most importantly – the way we regard our Selves.
Bad vibes go sour when they remain inside. Unfortunately somewhere along the line of human evolution into the civilized world, we were taught to ‘get a grip’ and keep inside much more nastiness than is healthy for us.
So how to release negativity then? How to transform negative energy into positive?
A simple technique is Tonglen Breathing, originally a Tibetan healing technique that helps release toxins from the physical body and bad vibrations from the energy body that supports and surrounds it.
The good thing about Tonglen is that it is pretty inconspicuous; meaning you can do it in any crowded public place, without attracting any attention.
To practice Tonglen at home, it goes like this:
- Sit yourself down comfortably; bring your awareness to yourself and your rounds of breath, leaving the outside world to take care of itself for a while.
- Then visualize the emotion you want to let go off as a cloud in front of your minds eye.
- On your next inhalation imagine you tag along a little bit of that negative emotion and imagine it being filtered by your compassion for yourself.
- On your next exhalation; imagine releasing that negative emotion, filtered and cleansed as it is, leaving your system.
The beauty of this exercise is that you can totally adjust it to your personal requirements.
When you want to tread carefully you inhale small portions of cloud. When you want to initiate some thorough transformation; you make your cycles of breath deep and full, absorbing and transforming bigger portions of cloud. And really, nobody but you is aware you are doing this. There’s nothing to prove, judge or feel obliged about. Nothing but simply a matter of letting go
4 minute 46 second Tonglen breathing meditation presented by Pema Chödrön
48 minute guide into Tonglen breathing presented by Pema Chödrön
I wish you a happy spring cleaning.
Ingrid Schippers, 03-04-2018
Click on the card to learn more about its background
The spoken version of this blog, features as end note on ‘Dutchbuzz’, the radio hour for Internationals every Tuesday from 10 to 11 pm on ‘Den Haag FM and can be found in the Programme Archive of the Dutchbuzz podcasts, dated April 4th , 2018.
