Joy of Being Compendium

Companion to
Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche's
The Joy of Being

Advanced Kum Nye Practices for
Relaxation, Integration and Concentration
Based on retreats
and teachings
by Arnaud Maitland
Foreword
Work on this Companion began during an international Kum Nye retreat at Woodbrooke Centre
in Birmingham, England, in 2011. Arnaud Maitland presented Rinpoche’s The Joy of Being
practices in a way that opened the door to richer exploration, making possible a deeper, creative
and more consistent communication with Kum Nye.
Until then, many of us had found The Joy of Being challenging as a practice text due to how lean
and occasionally ambiguous the directions could be. Therefore, it seemed important to make
Arnaud’s direction and guidance available for those devoted to Kum Nye around the world.
Over the years, our time in the international Kum Nye retreats has been so rich and beneficial
that we wanted to be able to refer back to what had been given, and to carry on from there.
As a labor of love, a number of retreatants from the Netherlands, Germany, and England, as well
as stalwart Kum Nye practitioners from Ratna Ling (and I in Berkeley) spent many hours listen-
ing to and transcribing audio files. At my request, during the next year’s summer 2012 interna-
tional retreat at de Zwanehof in the Netherlands, Arnaud led us through the handful of exercises
we hadn’t yet done and elaborated on important points. Caroline van Tuyll and I edited the
exercises, and I went through each one again with the audio files. The wonderful designer Joyce
Barbagallo has produced this design. Penny Green implemented our changes and shepherded
the text through production. You would not have this guidebook at all without Caroline’s persis-
tence and guidance.
It is very important that this e-book—which is offered without charge—not be taken as finished,
or as doctrine from on high. There is no “final” form, and we expect it may well be changed or
evolve over time. You may think of how you can contribute to it, and let us know your thoughts.
This Companion volume is a springboard for Kum Nye practitioners, a provisional resource for
enriching and deepening our practices. May it lead to conversations and sharing no matter how
far we live from each other.
We are grateful that Arnaud agreed to have this central element of the retreat sessions made
freely available for the benefit of all. We are fortunate to have him as a lineage holder of Kum Nye
who continues to share what he learns from his ongoing conversations with and teachings from
Tarthang Tulku.
In the introduction to The Joy of Being, Rinpoche writes that he hopes it will allow Kum Nye to
“touch [the] hearts directly” of experienced practitioners (& p.xxi). With this guidebook
we want to honor our teacher Tarthang Tulku and his hope for us. It is our wish, too, to let our
hearts be touched, softened and opened for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Thank you, Rinpoche, for all you have given us and continue to give.
Abbe Blum
November 1, 2015
Table of Contents
Working with The Joy of Being
Some Ways to Begin 4
Suggested Steps for Becoming Aware 5
Eyes Open 6
Working with Dense, Blocked Areas and with Feelings 7
Working with Breath and Mind 8
Expanding and Creating Inner Space 9
Space: A Universe of Information 10
Some Ways to Study 11
Group One
Integrating Body & Mind 12
Group Two
Embracing Space 28
Group Three
Stimulating Inner Energy 41
Group Four
Expanding Wholeness 57
Group Five
Harmonizing 70
Group Six
Opening Presence 86
Companion to The Joy of Being

Establishing Your Practice 97
Basic Practices for Speech and Mind Kum Nye 101
Taking Practices Further 103
Working with Feeling 108
Awareness and Attention 110
Calming and Releasing 112
Working with The Joy of Being
Some Ways to Begin
You can start anywhere with Kum Nye; it is not developmental. Kum Nye begins by
becoming aware of the inner environment; the senses turn inward. As you can, go along:
remain in contact with your inner landscape. Every time you might start with throat,
shoulders, breath.
A Kum Nye retreat can have a theme the teacher wants to learn and share. You yourself
can take a theme you want to study; if you are connected to the source, you find your
way in. When you study with the idea you are sharing, it becomes vertical study on your
own, and horizontal with others: two birds with one crumb.
In Kum Nye the internal is the foundation. First you must get a sense of what is going on
inside—it is the energy body, not organs though they are affected by it. The theory is that
something that was holding releases and begins to melt; as a result we are feeling things.
That part of you that was holding begins to wake up. If so, much more is waking up as
well: the senses, the heart, different parts of mind.
We need to learn how to do the physical movement. First we have to get into the body,
which we do by physically pushing ourselves, but not for long since it is about the expe-
rience within. The danger is that we keep on instructing physically, although we actually
do it for the internal experience. You move in a way that connects your movement to
your inner experience and so that inner experience is benefitting from the movement.
You move your leg for instance to facilitate the expanding of the inner experience, mov-
ing only to open up, relax, move. Once the body knows the movement, you do it right,
of course, but while staying connected to the internal experience. Now you can go much
deeper.
4
Kum Nye is work: not doing anything is the kiss of death. You might do a lot of Kum
Nye, even for twenty years, but you might always be covering the same areas. We may
not have been aware that we have to go to other areas. You must give yourself to Kum
Nye as it if each time is the last time. Our enemy is laziness which is really a blockage in
the body, not a personal flaw.
We do the physical movement to create space internally. We make space inside so what
is holding in the dark areas has a place to go. We go to the held places so that they start
to loosen up. Then there can be a major step of floating in space. This experience is one
Kum Nyers should have with the first Kum Nye book, and it is cultivated in The Joy of
Being [ & p.46].
Suggested Steps for Becoming Aware

When doing these steps for becoming aware, a Kum Nyer must have interest and curiosity.
Also the mind needs to be kind when it is interested. Energy flows because you have a
kind mind, and there is a kind mind because energy flows. Feelings thrive on kindness.
1) Scan the inner landscape. Though you are doing a physical movement stay connected
to your inner environment and notice the difference. That is where you go.
2) Be with any location in the body: if there is any change, tension is melting
3) Stay with that area with attention. If you have thoughts now it might indicate there is
a change in landscape
4) Bring the energy of breath to the location. Do not skip this crucial step that lets the
Kum Nye energy last and grow. When you start to move, can you first connect with
the wave of the breath? Then feel the breath moving, and the arm [or what is moving]
goes with it, as if the movement is doing itself. You want to connect with the wave.
Another way to be with it: you bring the energy of the breath there as if it is a path you
are walking; feeling is a path and you go to end of feeling.
5) Stillness
Stillness is a big part of Kum Nye because Kum is still. By being still, the border between
inner and outer vanishes. For those who find it hard to sit still, the restlessness is like
karma, an automatic reaction. If you sit through it the restlessness becomes a nourishing
feeling. You can you fall in love with the experience you get when you are still. Stillness
has a feeling to it and it gives creativity. If you are still, the borderline between inner and
outer begins to vanish and you are in one space.
5
When you are doing these steps, inquire how you feel, not with thoughts but with the
body. Though thoughts can lead you there, it is a body thing, and the more you are in
the body, the easier to be there. After a while of bringing the energy of the breath to the
location, the breath begins to go in, and something is flowing. Lead the flowing to the
location, and it will circulate and sustain. The breath wasn’t reaching this region before,
and it begins to wake up when it does. The energy of the breath will circulate, the breath
brings in new energy, and the experience becomes self sustaining. This is the beginning
of Nye: it will massage you within. Ideally we are constantly recycling, not stagnating.
Then when someone says something to you that, in the past, might have gotten lodged
within you, it now goes into your stream and is recycled. If this does not happen, con-
striction happens, a smaller space.
When you first explore your state of mind it is often on hold, with an attitude of “so,
and now?” That is because the energy in the body is on hold, and only the frequently
used areas like the head, thoughts, and eyes are moving. So with Kum Nye we create
space so the energy that is whole begins to loosen everything up. You then cannot hold
because this process gives too much space. Internally we create more space so what is
happening starts to loosen up, stimulating the flow of feeling; however, this is not yet
Nye. Once the energy begins to move, that is Nye because it begins to massage you
internally. Kum is embodiment, your presence, your sense of it. Nye is that which
supports that presence.
Eyes Open
Your eyes are open doing Kum Nye unless there is a direction to close them. In the first
Kum Nye book having the eyes soft and downward stimulates internal experience.
Then there is no separation between inner and outer. In some exercises, if you look in
the direction of your fingertips your eyes will also open the Kum in that direction. Eyes
are contributing something that arms and ears cannot.
Part of your Kum is the ability to see. If you keep your eyes closed you are not using one
of the main five or six components of the Kum. If you can see, although you are not
moving physically, you establish your Kum. This is also the case with hearing: sounds
are very far away and Kum goes that far. Theoretically there is no limit to your Kum:
if you look up and look to the heart of the blue sky, it means in one aspect your Kum
is that big.
6
Working with Dense, Blocked Areas
and with Feelings
As soon as you bring your awareness to places where you don’t feel anything, the area
starts to talk. Rinpoche calls it our dark side in the first Kum Nye book [see pages 7-8],
and it pertains to the second level of relaxation. This dark side has a grasping quality
and it keeps us small and limited. It doesn’t matter why it is there; there’s no one
original cause. You go to that area and just by touching it, it begins to come to life.
If you do not do this consciously, you can fall into nodding. When you nod it means you
are hitting an area where there are no sensations or feelings, and the mind goes blank.
That is, the dense area works against you. If we go into it or touch it and breathe, this
area will begin to move a little bit. Like an iceberg with a hole, sooner or later it will start
to loosen up.
Because the dense area is not acknowledged or appealed upon it works against us.
Turning there works because the density has energy in it, and when this energy is added
to our system there is insight added to our knowledge. Where insight is moving freely,
nothing else needs to be obtained.
There are two paths: one of feeling and one of intelligence. They are not automatically
accessed or worked with. Kum Nyers tend to like to stay floating in space, an experience
from the first book. The Joy of Being, though, says that what we are is spinning lights
floating in space. That refers to clear, mental parts, spinning, and quickly turning.
When you have a feeling, welcome them because that flowing is also knowing: the
ability to know that is before knowledge. Once Kum Nye is happening (and eventually
it is more and more Nye) that whole business going on in your body has an intelligent
part to it. You can ask yourself a question and out of that ability to know more than
before, the answer comes. It is a deeper answer. In plain English, if you do Kum Nye,
you should become more creative. We focus on energy, joy, and wholeness, but we are
also more creative. That is the intelligent part. Ask yourself a question.
7
As we expand the feelings more and more, spaces open up. That means the breath will
shift from outer to inner because it has the space to go to. Physical breath becomes
internal, internal becomes subtle. Body and mind go together, and feelings go to all
places. With subtle breath, it feels almost a not breathing.
Here is a measure: is the breath already reaching your lower body? In a few days of a
retreat it should go all the way down. When you inhale is your belly going out? That is
a good sign. Eventually you feel the subtle breath in the lowest part of the trunk. You are
not breathing in the head anymore.
In general the blockages are our potential. There is a promise in a blockage, so you don’t
want to get rid of it. The fastest way is to generate the potential to question. Can you
formulate your question, not to others but to yourself. Something big happened. Can
you ask a question that is true for you about it? Such as “I am afraid.”
When you have a blockage you can go several ways. One, the familiar mode of talking
about the problem. The other is the promising one, going where precisely we have not
been and you could go back to when you were 6 years old except had to hide and was
covered. The obstacle is so familiar as is sharing the problem in the other case there is
nothing to say about it yet because it is a feeling in hiding. Ideally you stay with it, with
interest and with kindness because there is a lot of potential there. It might be one of
your best qualities that you find there. So much belongs to you that you try to express.
Something wasn’t welcome because you were perhaps from a different tribe. Sometimes
there was someone there for you: a teacher, uncle, aunt, grandmothers (these last are
often very important in this feeling world).
Working with Breath and Mind

The Joy of Being is a very different take from the first Kum Nye book. In that first one, it
is body, breath, joy. Regarding The Joy of Being: joy is connected to bliss in body; bliss is
connected to mind. Breath, mind result in bliss: joy of being. The knowledge that is
obtained through working with breath and mind is the focus in The Joy of Being.
8
At the start of Part One, Tarthang Tulku writes, “It is because of the knowledge pre-
served within Kum Nye that the Buddha is a symbol of universal peace and the Dharma
is a symbol of healing and transformation.” The Buddha embodied this knowledge
already, and you can find it in The Joy of Being and in Kum Nye. Why did
the Buddha smile? There was some knowledge that he had, and the combination of
relaxation and awakening can help us in all circumstances so that we are not thrown
off by them. Kum Nye is essential in daily situations.
Expanding and Creating Inner Space

When we shift to The Joy of Being we are focused on the steps of locating feelings (the
steps that stimulate nye and feeling in the body). We are not now staying focused on the
internal experience. Now we do space around us, via the senses.
The Joy of Being works with the senses, for example via seeing awareness, so the mind
can open up and interact with what has opened up: star struck space. You want to know
the three main exercises by heart.
In The Joy of Being, and unlike the first Kum Nye book, spaces are not described as
to explore how separate mind can interact with what has opened up. See the discus-
sion, “Connecting Inner and Outer” on page 46 (which is also the climax of Part Two:
Breath) would be climax of theme of breath. You open up awareness through opening
the senses, eye, ear, nose, etc:, and the senses are very important in traditional teachings.
You need to teach yourself and explore space. When you enter space you may tend to
stay there, creating a nest in space ( as when you had difficulty as a child you had a
space to go to, to daydream etc). Now when you explore spac, you can use as a measure
your tendency to go into the nest or to resist doing the Kum Nye. You want to go IN
space. As you go in you discover that every speck of space is its own entire universe.
Wherever you go is another new reality.
When you enter space don’t just go straight ahead. Go to the left, go down, farther,
everywhere. Everywhere you go you are establishing your Kum; you make it your own,
you too. If you have a big garden, don’t just go to the geraniums. Every space you go
through is different. With different feeling is different intelligence.
9
Space: A Universe of Informatiom
Although the Kum Nyer knows there is no separation between internal and external,
our external space does seem to end somewhere. Now we are going to open up: we are
going to clear the space that makes up our Kum, just as we do or did with “inside the
body” the internal landscape. This “outside” is part of our Kum.
When doing Kum Nye in The Joy of Being you can go out a couple of inches to make
the border soft. Then we go at least as far as the arms that are moving in the gesture
“go”. Go through space and through the ends of the fingers and feel those points.
Each speck of space is a whole universe in itself. It has a feeling, it contains information.
That is why we meditate in four directions; each one is different. Each space is differ-
ent from one next to it. Go through it and you awaken space just as you awaken internal
space. When we open the space, whatever qualities space has (seeing, hearing, smelling,
etc.) are available. It means if I open the space, I can see better because seeing is part of
space.
Stay in the tips of your fingers. Almost magically feelings arise. There is no difference
between inside/outside. With this space you do not “see” anything because there is no
preconception there; it is open, not yet affected by our pattern. It is fresh and has lots
of information.
You can do this in more than one place at the same time: with your right and your left
hand for instance. Isn’t it true that you can think of two projects, two children at the
same time? So our seeing has more clear space to go through. You can do Kum Nye
different ways as long as the structure is clear as you do it. Stop with looking in.
10
Some Ways to Study
The topic of massaging the mind comes half way through The Joy of Being. The book is
split into Kum Nye for mind and speech Kum Nye so that they feed each other. You
have to do them together and as you go from p. 119 onward, it becomes overwhelming.
It's important to talk about and study that section.
To study you can use the structure of a retreat (such as Woodbrooke) and the topics of
Kum Nye for mind and speech Kum Nye. Take that section, and read in the book. You
need to study by using the book, and it is richer if you read together with others. Go
slow and discuss a sentence, choosing ones hat excite you. If you feel it is starting to
weigh you down, stop and take a sentence you like.
“Language a Mixed Blessing”( & pp.120-124): Exercise Supports the Study.

The heart of speech Kum Nye is expressed in this topic within The Joy of Being’s “Get-
ting the Juice of Experience.” Once you are in the text don’t go back to breath, eye, ear
nose: just be in that big swamp of information and ideas. You use chapter headlines to
be with what connects for you. Share that. Do an exercise from the rest of the book.
Though the connection of the text with the exercise may not be clear, the exercise starts
to support what you are studying.
When you work with the first Kum Nye book, you think of body doing Kum Nye. With
the second book it is the mind doing Kum Nye. With speech Kum Nye, every time you
hear language, it is speech: it all belongs to speech.
You can say that speech Kum is the bridge that gets you to the mind. In the Vajrayana
teachings suffering is because of labeling (assigning meanings to experience in Vajrayana
terms). To not do that you do Kum Nye. The goal isn’t to “not do that” but to open up
the sensory capacities of the mind. Otherwise it is just labeling and our experience is the
tiny world of the “I.”
11
Group One
Integrating Body & Mind
1 Half-Lotus Sitting Posture

(& p. 194)
KEY WORDS
• Ground connection
• Structures, stability
• Inviting feeling
• Animate earth
• Rebuilding inner architecture
• Mind is in body, body is in mind
INTENTION
Connecting to the ground and to structure. Through the posture, mind is in body, body in mind.
Awareness everywhere in the body.
Do you know how to establish a connection to the earth?

Humans have only had access to the depth of the earth to about 4 kilometers, in diamond mines,
and 12 kilometers through drilling. No one knows what goes on in the center of the Earth: What might
happen there?
Sitting here, make a connection to the earth, create some kind of contact; there is a lot of energy in the
earth. At Ratna Ling, when we build a structure, we consecrate the earth, we set out with a ceremony:
we intend to be here for a while, so we chant and perform rituals to prepare the earth.
When entering the space of the earth you say, “Here I am.” And you are also open to what is there.
The earth is not a vacuum, nor is it an inanimate mass. There is a lot of energy in the center of earth.
Sit here as if you will remain in this position for a while. Even when you are just in a meeting, make a
connection to the ground. It helps with the physical structure; the body and any other structure in your
life benefit from a connection to the earth, just like depth of mind benefits from a connection to the sky.
If you have difficulties with your physical structure, connecting to the earth will help, especially with
the lower body.
12
Group One Integrating Body & Mind
THE EXERCISE
Start by making a connection to the ground. This gives a sense of stability.
Seven Gestures
1st gesture
Legs are crossed. If you are sitting on a chair, both feet are on the ground.
2nd gesture
The palms are on the knees. Even this posture has a lineage. Many people before us who became great
teachers or writers have taken on this posture.
Learn to keep all the gestures in mind—you are aware of the crossed legs and both hands; you can have
awareness in both hands. This posture is to get the mind into the body, to make mind body and body mind.
Mind can be everywhere in the body.
3rd gesture
The spine is straight, the mind is all the way down the spine. Physically going down and back up helps,
but that is not all. Your mind or your attention goes up and down the spine.
Crossed legs, hands on the knees, straight spine—but not rigid—think of bamboo. By now you have
gestures 1, 2 and 3 simultaneously in mind.
4th gesture
The chin is slightly tucked in and the back of the neck is one line with the spine. When the chin is down,
we are inclined to be more open. If the chin is pushing forward, it is a very different mindset. So with the
chin slightly in we are more open, more available, and as the text says “more humble.”
Learn to perform all these gestures at the same time. In the beginning that is work, but eventually it will go
quickly since the gestures are all connected in the field of awareness.
5th gesture
The mouth is slightly open and the breath comes in and goes out through nose and mouth.
6th gesture
The tip of the tongue touches the upper palate. If you are new to this kind of breathing, you may have
to swallow a lot, but that will change.
13
7th gesture
Soft, open eyes.
On the first day of a retreat when doing the Seven Gestures and you want to go ‘in’, you may need to close
your eyes, since you have been so outwardly oriented. Initially when we are focusing on the inner experience,
closing the eyes helps. However, over time, keeping your eyes closed is not healthy because it will make you
isolated when you eventually open your eyes. It is as if there are two different worlds and it is hard to
integrate them. Most people who do Kum Nye with their eyes closed become a little numb over time.
The eyes themselves become less sharp, almost sleepy.
Suggested reading: & pp. 92-3

See also: Awareness in Eight Places ( &p. 97)
2 Releasing Energy
(& p. 195)
KEY WORDS
• Lower body energy
• How you are doing Kum Nye
• Wholeness of the body during exercise
INTENTION
Circulation and optimal functioning of lower body energy. Noticing the wholeness of the body while
doing the exercise. Inviting instead of controlling.
The majority of our energy is in the lower body. Sometimes described as ‘dynamite,’ it is not just about
food and sex; if this energy is blocked, it can turn into anger. Think of a teenager who is sent to his room,
and then forgotten about. When he comes down the stairs, he’s ready to explode.
THE EXERCISE
Start with sitting in the Seven Gestures.
If you are physically sound, try this on the floor. The back is straight: that is the key. For an older body this
may be an awkward position sodo what you can and please be careful.
With the back straight, place the soles of the feet against one another, hands on your knees.
Push the knees down a little bit.
Then release the pressure and sit in the Seven Gestures.
14
2nd time
Push down lightly just a hair, with the purpose of inviting the energy to come forward. Your state of
mind is kind, loving, and most of all inviting. What happens? How we do Kum Nye is as important as
what we do, or even more so.
How are you pushing the knees down? Do you push as if you are the boss, or as an invitation? You want
to invite; the posture invites energy to come forward. At first it is about relaxing tension, but next you
are looking for deeper energy. You give it space—yes. Show yourself gradually.
Release. Sit in the Seven Gestures.
3rd time
Push down. Then bring the legs back into the Seven Gestures and just feel. When we say ‘feel’ it means
let your sensitivity experience it. No need to talk with yourself about it, no need to report.
Is there a sensation anywhere in the lower body that would like to do more? Sometimes the energy responds
and invites you to do it again. The thoughts present different ideas, but the energy itself, once it starts
flowing, has an inviting quality. When your energy flows, your nature becomes inviting— inviting others,
inviting other parts of you. It is the byproduct of flowing.
4th time
Place the soles of the feet against one another; the last time. Push down. Try to let go of this controlling
idea. Let the posture invite you to go deeper.
Most of us experience tension. So relax in that tension as if you could sit in it, penetrating deeper layers of
tension until you touch a clear, calm, abiding feeling that massages within.
Coming back to the Seven Gestures, and sitting.
Suggested reading: & p. 287
15
3 Freeing Energy
(& p. 196)
KEY WORDS
• Lower body
• Subtle
• The difference of a millimeter
• Tuning into the exercise
INTENTION
Let the belly catch up. Open into all parts the title, ‘Freeing and energy.’ Tune into subtle shifts.
THE EXERCISE
At the start of something new, breathe in deeply, but especially emphasize the exhale. Repeat three times.
Sit on a cushion with your back straight and your chin tucked in. Place your feet flat on the floor about a
foot apart, and draw up the knees together, but not touching. You are supported and sitting on the right
and left sit bones equally.
Place the hands on the knees, spread the knees slightly while the feet remain on the ground. Push the
knees down, at the same time opening them as wide as you can.
Bring the knees together. Notice the exhale.
Since the energy in the head goes faster then in the belly area, emphasizing the exhale lets the belly catch up.
2nd, 3rd and Final time

On this repetition push the knees apart a little further, freeing energy, relaxing in the posture.
In these exercises a millimeter can make a big difference.
Feel sensations and feelings when the knees are brought together.
The final time gently let the knees go apart; be aware of little stoppages and perhaps tension along
the way. Go a little further and tune into what happens to the breath when the knees are held apart.
Make the breath easy and balanced. Bring the knees up.
Suggested reading: & pp. 92-3 ‘Feeling-Body’
16
4 Inviting Feeling
(& p. 198)
KEY WORDS
• Continuity
• No gaps
• Eyes like beams of light
INTENTION
Stimulate the flow of feeling. Restore the continuity of experience. Everything continues. Invite feelings.
THE EXERCISE
Make it a habit to breathe in the belly before starting something new. At the inhale the belly expands, but in
this context it is the exhale that really matters. If this exercise follows after another, remain in contact with
your experience in the body and allow “Inviting Feeling” to be a continuation of what came before.
Standing, place the hands on the hips. From the hips on down the body stays in place and the upper
body twists to the right. The question is: should the eyes look all the way behind you or to the side?
Try both—experiment. Look all the way behind you while the left shoulder is moving forward, the
right shoulder pointing backward, the eyes looking all the way back or to the side.
As you come back toward the center and notice that the eyes are also following a path—there are no gaps
in seeing. It is one continuous seeing, horizontally.
The upper body turns to the left. The body moves, and seeing moves with it, without gaps in seeing, all
the way to the left. Somehow you twist the upper body so the right upper chest moves forward, and the
left upper chest backward, inviting feeling. Coming back to the center.
Silently repeat the title of the exercise: ‘Inviting Feeling.’ The exercise titles are guidelines for a mindset.
Say it, think it, keep it in your mind. Let it echo through the spaces in the body.
Turn to the other side, come back to the center. Don’t skip anything coming back: the eyes move
through space and in space, as you turn once more to the right.
Invitation needs to have feeling to it; it is not a job (“Now I have to invite feelings.”) Invite the feelings
wholeheartedly.
Last time. Move slowly so your eyes can easily cover every millimeter through space.
There is no need to look at something; the eyes are like beams, like flashlights.
Turn to the other side, coming back to the center, and release the hands from the hips.
17
5 Body and Mind Balance

(& p. 199)
KEY WORDS
• Going to the ‘dark side’ (Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, p. 14)
• Touch, stay with, comes to life
• Where you flow you grow
• Stay, pray there
• Line of demarcation
• Space in-between
INTENTION
After the first round of any exercise you might notice a ‘less alive’ area in the body that is separate
from places of activity. Tune into this place, encouraging integration and joining. The goal is a
flowing-through of life that becomes light and space.
THE EXERCISE
Stand comfortably with arms relaxed at your sides and the head tilted slightly back, your eyes gazing
upward. Pay attention to the energy flowing through your neck, back, and feet. The feet parallel, the
body stable and well-balanced, shift the weight to the right leg. Begin pulling up the left knee, embracing
it with interlaced fingers.
Let your body rebalance naturally in this position. Notice the energy flow in the legs and the back. Point
your toes toward your head. Remain in this position with open vision, shoulders down. Then release.
While dissolving the posture remain aware: stay with hands and arms and leg as they work together in space.
Shift balance to the left leg as soon as the toes touch the floor; feel the ‘ahh’ as the sole of the foot covers
the ground.
2nd time
Lift the opposite leg and repeat the posture, your hands and arms full of life.
Notice which part of the body is least active, with less light or space. Something might be tense, or stuck in
the way a door sticks. Focus on this area where nothing seems to be happening. Now do Kum Nye. Go in.
The area wants to be included; it is doing the exercise.
Coming up, the hands bring all the energy from the lower body up as the shoulders are down. The
vision is open. Bring the breath in (this is subtle breath), and let it touch this area of the lower body.
Then release. The hands are important.
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3rd time
During the third and final round, different areas of the body need to come together. Be with the illusory
border, and focus on the two ‘not flowing, not integrated’ parts touching in the middle.
With the weight shifting onto one leg, you are now in the border area. Bringing up the other leg, with
shoulders down, settle in that space, staying with it, sinking into that area. Attention is there, breath is
there, and everything flows right through the middle.
During the final release, the arms open out and are lowered and both left and right areas open up.
Recommended reading: & 'Pressures of Polarity', p. 144

See: Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, page 14: Going to the ‘dark side’
6 Connecting Feeling
(& pp. 200-1)
KEY WORDS
• Space, awareness
• Blind spots
• No gaps
• Widening vision
INTENTION
Filling in gaps in awareness. Touching and covering areas in space through movement and vision;
all space is within our awareness. Connecting through feeling, we skip nothing and leave no gaps.
THE EXERCISE
Standing with the feet apart and knees straight but not locked, the upper body twists to the right, arms at
shoulder height, palms down. The head moves along, until approximately 90°, as the right arm continues
its journey backward. Open up the arms…open them up!
The vision is right ‘with’ the movement. While standing, your vision is probably more then 180°.
All that space is within your vision.
After turning to the opposite side, come back to the center and let the arms go down. Rest and feel the
energy in the body.
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2nd time
As the hands move up and then sideways, stay with both hands. Pay attention to the space between the
hands; awareness is like a small flashlight on each hand.
When turning backward your vision is open, all the way to the left and to the right. The whole structure
of the body moves to the opposite side. The head can only reach 90°, but the left arm goes further
backward. The arms cover 360° so the left arm is all the way back.
When we turn the other way, the eyes touch that same area horizontally in space; all 360° space is within
our awareness, vertically too—a spherical vision.
Coming back to the center. Make the scope of your vision larger.
3rd time
Make yourself tall. As you turn to the other side, contact the places in space where your eyes did not
make contact yet. Your vision is open all the way from the fingertips of the right hand to the left hand.
Coming back to the center. Any space you skip will become a blind spot, a gap in awareness.
7 Opening the Flow

(& pp. 202-3)
KEY WORDS
• Opening
• Closing gaps in awareness
• Continuity
INTENTION
Movement usually seems to happen from A to B, from one point to another, but in Kum Nye there is no
beginning or end. Opening flow, opening vision, closing gaps in awareness.
THE EXERCISE
The feet are hip distance apart, the knees unlocked and straight. Raise the arms in front to shoulder
height and arch the upper body slightly backward, pulling in the navel. The head tilts back about three
quarters of the way (not thrown back), and the eyes glance about two hands above the fingertips.
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The whole upper body comes forward and bends down; the knees can also bend slightly.
You are exploring space, letting the eyes travel through space, glancing over rather than seeing ‘something.’
You are aware.
Completely relax the neck and stay in this bent position for a few moments.
Come up slowly by straightening at the waist, letting arms and head hang loosely as the body moves
toward upright. When upright, make yourself tall as the arms are raised. The eyes follow with the gaze
just above the hands that separate, so the vision opens to 180° and upward too.
8 Mind and Body in Space

(& pp. 204-5)
KEY WORDS
• Attending to space, moving in and through space
• Kum
• Large Kum
• Awareness
Exercises for the Mind, & pp 144-5

Awareness smoothes out the flow of perceptions and lessens the grasping quality inherent in perceiving and
interpreting experience. Relaxation gives us the inner space we need for feelings to flow throughout the
body, and meditation engages this flow of feeling and expands and deepens it. This is the priceless value of
Kum Nye: it integrates the energies of body, senses, and mind with the transformative power of awareness,
turning all aspects of our embodiment toward universal benefit.
INTENTION
Explore space, moving in and through space and space in all the different areas in the body. Massaging
through motion. Space everywhere. Look in the body for places that are still dense. Where there is no
awareness of space, there is darkness. That darkness will work against us as it holds residues from the past.
All exercises in The Joy of Being need to be done in context of open space. When there is a special mention
of space, the exercise is done while you also attend to space, as if moving in space.
This exercise, also in Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, is different here because of the space element.
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THE EXERCISE
Stand with the feet hip width apart, feeling the space around you as much as you feel your body.
The space is like your atmosphere—it is you too. Actually it belongs to your Kum, so this area and beyond
is part of your experience. This means your Kum is large, essentially it could be as limitless as space.
Place the hands on the hips. Knees are unlocked. Point the right foot to the right, twist your upper body
in the same direction, and look up about 60°. Now we are going to move: bend the right leg, and your
sense of space and the movement are both getting your attention.
Coming up, moving back to the center, left, right, top and bottom.
Repeat in the same direction three times. Keep going in the same direction until you experience space
everywhere. Areas that have no awareness of space, that denseness will work against us and will hold
residues of the past.
Space between the legs, space in the ribcage and your elbows, space everywhere. Space around your neck, in
your kneecaps, around your thighs, as if the space is your body, which actually it is; no dark areas in space.
How about your chest? Feel the space around your chest. Inside your chest too.
See how the body is being massaged by your moving forward and down. You are massaging the chest
space too, and the navel space. These areas are probably for most of us the most dense. And between the
legs, the thighs, all the way to the base of the trunk.
Reverse sides
Reverse position, pay attention to movement and space simultaneously. This is different space.
Bending, twist the upper body: push, push, push. The tip of the tongue against the upper palate, the
throat is open, it is easy for the breath to flow into the heart.
Again explore the space. Is there still any space that is dense? Look inside the body: is there an area where
there is nothing happening? Could be small places, like a calf—your lower leg.
Pay attention: everywhere, movement in and through space. All the different spaces in the body too.
For most people, the lower body seems the most dense. So go further down: see if you can stir it up in
that lower area.
Finally: coming back, bringing space with you—awareness in space.
Suggested follow-up practice: The Light of Healing Awareness

(Listening, Experiencing).
&p. 22
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9 Mind and Body Touching—Two Versions

(& p. 206)
Version 1
KEY WORDS
• Cultivate stronger sense of feeling
• Feeling tones
• Right rhythms
• Body; lower body
INTENTION
Listening to feeling tones. Awareness of space and awareness of movement/activity come together:
awareness in space, in the body, in the space around the body, awareness in the movement.
THE EXERCISE
Bring the arms forward and up to shoulder level. The feet are at least hip width apart. Bend the knees
and spread them outward a bit, and arch backward (the arms will slightly rise along with the arching).
Stay in the position...
Come up straight, arms parallel to the floor. While repeating the movement three times, explore to find
the right rhythm. Attend to a feeling in the lower body that arises with the gentle rocking movement.
If the practice is performed too fast, the flow of feeling goes on hold. ‘Mind and Body Touching.’ This region
is tender and full of insecurities as long as mind and body are not yet touching.
After the final repetition, the hands come down slowly; stay focused on the lower body, where there may
be new feelings.
What is happening in the lower body, the abdominal area, lower back? Contact the tone. Continue the
movement as the chin moves forward and down, then traces a path all the way up as if it were possible
to look up and up and even behind you. Do this chin movement several times, giving the chance for the
lower energies to come up.* It can also be helpful to take a deep breath at regular intervals.
*Text: The chin going up and down is first part of #12 Releasing Solidity. That exercise can follow this one.
23
Version 2
Basis in Breath; Coming Together of Awareness in Space & Awareness in Movement
KEY WORDS
• Awareness in space and movement
• Awareness in movement
• Sensory capacity of mind
• Mind Kum Nye
INTENTION
Learning to merge awareness with space. Using the sensory capacities of the mind to sense the space
right around the body, with awareness filling the space of the room and beyond.
THE EXERCISE
Awareness of space at maximum. Move the arms, keeping awareness of space, feeling the arms also. Feel
space, feel the arms, both with 100% awareness. Aware of your arms and aware of space. These two are
coming together.
Bring awareness to fill the entire room. And a little outside the room. Bigger. The space in front of you is
easier; sometimes you need to look elsewhere so that that space opens up too. Open up—go there. Look
through the building: bring your awareness into another room, in a chair etc. Move awareness behind
you, beyond the wall and further. Bring awareness above the ceiling. Bring awareness to all corners of the
room and beyond. Bring awareness in the space around you, in all directions, including up and down.
Spread the knees a bit, after raising the arms. Not so much the legs, but rather the knees that go out.
Arch backward slightly.
Check: is there still awareness of space? There is always the tendency to be absorbed by thoughts.
Don’t worry about it. Just focus on the space and the body, and this will soften.
Move up and down slowly at the rhythm of the breath: breathe in, breathe out; breathe in, breathe out.
You arch a little bit back as you do this.
Let the breath find its rhythm. You might breathe out on the down and breathe in on the up, as you
prefer. The key is this: the rhythm of the breath carries you down and back up. The breath is the basis.
24
In the meantime out of the corners of your eyes your awareness is in space. You may have glimpses of
awareness of this activity and of awareness and space coming together. That doesn’t take twenty years.
Stop. Straighten: awareness of space, in space, of movement, in the movement. Awareness in the hands,
awareness in the body, awareness in space; merging awarenesses.
7) Can you sense the space right around your body? You can imagine something like little clouds,
as if there is a very subtle substance around your body.
2nd time
As you do the movements for the second time:
Use the sensory capacities of the mind to sense the space right around the body, as your awareness is still in
the space of this room.
Awareness in the space immediately around the body.
Awareness in the space of this room.
Awareness in the body.
Coming up.
3rd time
Awareness in space, awareness in the movement. Inhale on going down, exhale on going up or the
opposite. Being carried by the soft going in and out into space.
Arching back slightly. Going on the rhythm of the breath.
Awareness in both hands.
Awareness in space, awareness in the body.
Relax your arms at your sides and remain in stillness
Suggested reading: & pp. 111-2; ‘Sensory capacity of Mind’ and pp. 92-3 ‘Feeling-Body.’
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2 & 3 in turns
Releasing Energy and Freeing Energy
(& pp. 195-7)
KEY WORDS
• Yes
• Take it in
• Releasing-loosening
• Energy pathways
• Mind in body
INTENTION
Opening the lower body; bringing the mind into the lower body; stimulating the release of energy.
Saying YES. Linking feelings to the ever-present flow of the breath; the feelings will remain alive.
Merging the feeling and the breath into a unified experience.
2 Releasing Energy
Bring the knees up and open them all the way, so that the soles of the feet are touching. * The knees are
flat, hands on the knees; see if you can push down further while the soles of the feet are still touching.
Try to pull the knees as close as possible to the trunk.
This is a different kind of releasing; a different kind of loosening up the body.
See if the breath can help you to… aaah… open up the lower body.
Keep some pressure on the knees, with the knees being down. Somehow that will stimulate the releasing
of energy.
In Kum Nye there is no enduring, no holding or fighting. Take it in.
In all the teachings we are learning here—Kum Nye, Skillful Means or Knowledge of Freedom—the secret
code is: YES. Internally saying: YES! That is what opens up.
3 Freeing Energy
Gently bring the knees together, until the soles of the feet are flat on the floor. We do this a few times:
Separating and Freeing Energy. How does it feel, when the knees are together? Is it easier for the feeling
to flow in the lower body?
Gently pull the knees apart: Freeing Energy, opening up the gates, pulling them apart, the feet stay on
the ground.
Bring the knees together. See what happens when they come together. Do you feel? When the pathways
are open, the energy in the lower body wants to go up.
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Once more : open up, gently spread the knees, while the feet remain on the floor.
With your mind, enter the area where there is some tension. Go IN there. No need to study it from
above; go in.
2 Releasing Energy
Bring the knees up and then let them go down with the soles of the feet touching. Go down.
Releasing Energy.
Can you have a continuing light push downward, so there is this constant waking up, a constant touch of
pressure, to release.
Maybe some of us feel something holding, perhaps not so much in the body, but rather the mind seems
to be holding. Bring the mind down into the lower body, down into the thighs, down into the knees, that
whole area, then open wider so the mind can let go a little bit.
Release.
3 Freeing Energy
Bring up the knees, feet on the floor, the hands gently on the knees and now tenderly moving them apart.
Breathe. If you have sensations in this position, always bring the breath there.
We want to merge the feeling and the breath into a unified experience. The breath comes and goes,
expanding the body, condensing the body. So if you link your feeling to this ever-present flow of the
breath, the feelings will remain alive. If you do not mix the feeling with the breath, the feeling will
wear out and become nothing.
Gently bring the knees back up. The opening is Freeing Energy and when the legs come back together
you may experience some of that freeing energy.
Let them come apart. How does it affect the lower body when the knees close and when they open.
Last time: the soles of the feet remain in contact with the floor: Freeing Energy.
By opening and closing continuously, you can go further. Let the mind go where the experience is.
Let the mind say; YES.
2 Releasing Energy
Coming back. Very gently because you do not want to break the flow of what is happening. Bring the
knees up and then very gently they go all the way down with the soles of the feet touching. Pull the soles
of your feet close to the trunk.
As these exercises follow one another, you might still feel the previous one going on: Freeing Energy.
And now: Releasing Energy.
The field of energy is deepening and expanding. Silently repeat the title of the exercise: ‘Releasing Energy.’
Very gently push down a little.
Gently release the posture, without stopping what is happening in your body.
Bring the legs in the Seven Gestures.
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Group Two
Embracing Space
10 Relaxing Into Space – Two versions
(& p. 208)
Version 1
KEY WORDS
• Expanding Kum
• Bigger YOU
• Borders of inner and outer
• Borders of space and body
INTENTION
Sensing into how being expands, ‘relaxing into space’: the border between body and space is not so
clearly marked, and opens up with the rotating around the axis of the heart. An indication that the body
is loosening up is when the inner and outer are not so distinct. The YOU, your being, the Kum, expands
and becomes bigger than the physical body.
THE EXERCISE
1) Place the hands on the hips.
Strongly pull in the navel, the whole abdominal area, as the right and left shoulders go forward and
down and back. Focus on the forward movement.
‘Relaxing into Space.’
[Text instruction: “Stand with your arms relaxed at both sides, palms facing the body”…“shoulders
rotated…” forwardly and backwardly in a circle.” &p. 208]
2) Shoulders move forward, crossing over the heart, then stop; release the belly and the hands, and close
your eyes for a moment.
28
Group Two Embracing Space
3) With eyes closed sense the border between body and space opening up.
With this exercise you want to sense that it is not so clear any more where inner and outer are separated.
Maybe inner and outer begin to melt a little; you do not know exactly where the border of the body ends and
space begins.
4) If you usually tend to think/sense the same place, go to another place, like the shoulders, or outside
the cheeks, or the knees.
5) Open your eyes.
2nd time
1) Place the hands on the hips and start over. Pull in the navel, stand straight, and the idea is that your
arms go forward to your chest and down.
2) You want to also focus on the backward movement, so you feel the rotating around the heart.
Then release.
3) Close your eyes for a moment: ‘Relaxing into Space.’
The borders may not be so clearly marked; you can ‘ahhhhhhh,’ relax into space. The physical body is not
relaxing into space—YOU are! The YOU becomes bigger than the body.
4) Relaxing into space, not only sideways, also forward and back.
3rd time
Open your eyes, pull in the navel. Do not hold the breath. The emphasis is on both forward and
backward, for the whole turning around the axis.
Then release. Close your eyes for a moment. Are you relaxing into space more?
The being expands, that is your KUM.
Suggested passage from p. 94
Merged with awareness of space, the energy of exhilaration flows through heart, body, and senses like
amrita, the nectar of immortality, relaxing the force of thoughts and melting the boundaries of ego.
Version 2
KEY WORDS
• Awareness
• Awareness in space
• Expanding into space
• Expanding Kum
• Flowing / Nye
29
INTENTION
Learning to merge awareness with space (& p.208).
The breath as an independent force supports the movement; feeling unfolds into an expanding path in
space. Encouraging awareness in space, practice, in the body that’s moving, exercising in space. Focus
on the border where the solidity of the body meets space, and on expanding ‘Kum’ and the flowing of
‘Nye.’ Keep going, go further.
Before you start
Awareness of space stays 100%. As you move the arm, you keep awareness of space, feeling the arm
also. Feel space, feel the arm, equal 100%. Feel space and arm, aware of your arm and aware of space.
These two have to come together. (it is not your arm moving through space).
First, awareness of the room. And a little outside the room. Bigger. What is ahead of you is easier;
sometimes need to look somewhere else so that space opens up for you too. Open up—go that way.
Look through the building: your awareness into other room, in chairs, grass etc. Move where your
back is, awareness outside wall and further. Awareness above the ceiling.
1st time
1) Standing, arms relaxed at the sides, palms facing the body, the shoulders go up, pull in the navel,
and shoulders go back. See if you want to do that, down with the breath, like exhaling, ‘Phew’,
and then inhaling when you come up.
It’s usually not how we do Kum Nye but it helps, because if you exhale going down that means everything
is going down, much lower even than shoulders, down into the ground; and you inhale—from the earth,
coming up, so you can make it much vaster breath.
2) Going down all the way to the centre of the earth, your breath. Coming from the centre of the earth,
you breathe in, ‘Phew.’ Now pull the belly in.
3) Now if the breath is kind of an independent force, can you ride the breath? The movement is
supported by the breath. That means you let the breath go and then you latch on; latch on means
you connect. The breath is like a wave, and your movement is going to sit on top of it.
The movement is secondary. First the breath, then the movement rides the wave.
4) Pull in the navel: exercising in space. Now the title [Relaxing into Space] means something.*
Awareness in space, awareness in the body which is exercising in space. You are not your body.
Now resting, exhale: ‘Phew.’
*On the subject of learning awareness in space: try to learn awareness in space and awareness in the
body. A different way of saying it, is that you are exercising in space. But it is the awareness that makes
everything different, awareness in space, awareness in the body.
2nd time
Awareness in space, awareness in the body is coming, making a movement forward, and pulling the
navel in. Awareness in space, awareness in the movement of the body, awareness in the belly that is being
pulled back.
30
Encourage yourself, awareness in space, practice, awareness in the body that’s moving, it’s exercising in
space, awareness in the navel that is pulled back.
Bring it to a stop; the body stops. Awareness in space, awareness in the body that has stopped,
awareness in the relaxed navel.
3rd time
Last time: the body is going forward, the shoulders are going up, the shoulders are going back, the belly
is pulled in. [After] a few times we can do it: awareness in space, awareness in the body that’s moving,
awareness in the belly that’s pulled in. Learn, don’t give up.
Then awareness in the stopping body, awareness in the relaxing navel.
We can be aware of more than one thing at a time—[We] can be aware of both hands: awareness in space,
awareness in body, awareness in the body that is moving back to sitting.
Sitting
1) For a moment close your eyes. The exercise suggests: “Focus on the border where the solidity of the
body meets space, and gently expand that feeling a little more outside the body and into space” (208).
2) So focus on the border where the solidity of the body meets space.
Probably you already don’t have solidity there. If you close your eyes you don’t know about solidity there;
it’s already more spacious. Can you feel? [Can you feel] the experience of where the solidity used to be,
meeting space?
3) Feeling that area, you can expand it into space because nothing stops it.
So this may be easier for the activities in the body which we begin to call ‘Nye’—‘Kum Nye.’ The activities
in the body are not held by the solidity of the body; they can flow over. They can go into the space surrounding
the body.
Are you beginning to expand your ‘Kum’?
The experience in the body flows over. And the space surrounding the physical body, there is nothing
holding it in. There is no border.
Now that feeling: expand it. How do you do that? Well, there are many ways.
Suggested practice: Vast Awareness in Space

The direction to “expand that feeling a few inches outside the body” on p.208 leads into the Vast
Awareness in Space practice.
Suggested Reading: & pp. 91-3
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11 Healing Inner Space

(& p. 209)
KEY WORDS
• Speech and mind Kum Nye
• Awareness in space, awareness in movement
INTENTION
Give instruction of “healing inner space” as a wish, suggestion or prayer, the body chanting it.
Awareness—in space, in the body—exercising in space.
THE EXERCISE
1) Awareness in both hands. Stand with feet straight. Awareness in space, Awareness in the body.
2) Awareness in space. Awareness in the right arm that is moving up to the left side of your neck.
3) Take an exhale, awareness in space, at least as big as this room.
4) Awareness in your left arm that is moving up, crossing. It may help to apply a little pressure, in.
5) The chin goes down, and you might like at this moment to close the eyes: ‘Healing inner space.’
This is a perfect moment to silently repeat, ‘Healing Inner Space.’ You are giving the body an
instruction, a wish, a suggestion, a prayer: ‘Healing Inner Space.’
6) Relay the sentence ‘Healing Inner Space’ everywhere in the body.
7) The chin comes up, hands come apart, and you can repeat this sentence inside as if the body is
repeating it while you are reversing the hands. The chin down; see if the body is still chanting,
wishing, praying, ‘Healing Inner Space.’
2nd time
1) Coming up and reversing. ‘Healing Inner Space.’
The words continue like a stream flowing through all of your body, behind the eyes, in the ears, in the
brain, in your lungs, in your organs, in your lower back.
2) Coming up. Awareness in space, awareness in the movement.
3) Opening the eyes [in this a while].
So try to learn, awareness in space and awareness in the body. A different way of saying it, is that you
are exercising in space. But it is the awareness that makes everything different, awareness in space,
awareness in the body.
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12 Releasing Solidity
(& p. 210)
KEY WORDS
• Opening vision
• Expansive vision
• Kum Nye for the mind
• Being in the body and experiencing more directly the sensing aspect of mind p.112
• In that momentary openness the mind is free to be
INTENTION
During the exercise the eyes begin to work more, into expansive and three-dimensional vision. You are
filling all space. It is all a field of seeing awareness that you are in.
‘Releasing Solidity’ aids in learning to discover the space within the mind. It comes in the middle of a
particular practice of hunting for stream of thoughts.
THE EXERCISE
1) Let the chin move forward and down*; really stretch it forward and down.
Then the chin comes back up, all the way (with a straight back), moving straight back.
[*Text: Stand with your arms relaxed at your sides. This version was done sitting, in the middle of a
meditation practice. ]
2) Now look strongly outward, 180 degrees. One way to do that is by looking through the corners of
the eyes first, and then fill it in in-between with your vision.
3) Coming back up. Close your eyes. Going forward and down (with the chin). Exhale.
4) Coming up, closed eyes, and when halfway, open your eyes, so you have at least 180 degrees of vision,
and three dimensional. The vision is forward and back so you are filling all space. Go up so you can
see even behind.
5) Coming up. In the middle close your eyes and go down.
6) Coming up, keep the eyes closed for the moment because we are [now] placing the head in between
to the side and back. Move the head to the right: in between the shoulder and backwards. Now open
your eyes. Stretch the neck.
Some of you may feel the eyes are opening. Both eyes are beginning to work more.
7) Coming up, in the middle briefly close the eyes, and then open the eyes as you move the head to the
left, in between backwards and sideways. Both shoulders are down, and the right shoulder does not
come up.
33
Expansive vision. Start with the corners of the eyes.

8) Coming up. Briefly close the eyes and then go with the head to the right, in between.
Coming up: now keep the eyes open, and in between on the left.
Coming up.
The middle is an important point. Then go to the right in between.
So you can see the floor, ceiling, walls, windows, but you are not going anywhere: it’s all a field of seeing
awareness that you are in.
Coming up, (going) to the other side.
Coming up.
After doing this KN practice: Let us see if it easier to close your eyes for a couple of minutes. Some of
you can have eyes open. We need to learn meditation with the eyes open, but for some it might help to
close the eyes for once.
13 Hand Magic
(& p. 212)
KEY WORDS
• Massaging space
• Interacting
• Awakening energy
INTENTION
This exercise/gesture can be followed by having hands interact. Placing the hands charged by the
exercise on different parts of the body gives energy channels a boost and they become more active, and
residues can emerge. Where the energy is being awakened it becomes clear, transparent.
Three factors make this work: you are neutral, you work with the energy, and you place your awareness.
Do not manipulate anything. Trust what comes up. It can be so subtle that you hardly notice it.
Don’t make it interesting. Don’t say it won’t work; none of that labeling of experience.
34
THE EXERCISE
1) Rub the hands: they get warm.

2) Gently separate the hands, and feel what is in between them. That is what we’re going to work with,
what’s between the hands. So: is it still there?
3) Do it a little bit this way: play accordion. Then hold. When you hold it, is there something there?
4) Pump a little more and now schooom….., make it long, is it there? Go back, does it come with you?
We are just massaging space; nothing weird.
Wherever you place attention, space comes to life, and you are working with a kind of dull space that’s
now alive, because your awareness is there, your hands are there.
5) Now place it on your cheeks. *You feel something on the cheeks, but can you feel something on the
hand that goes through the cheeks, through the mouth. (This is an exercise Rinpoche often did).
[*& : “When you can feel this sensation [of energy or pressure between the hands] place both hands
over your eyes and let the energy flow into the face, releasing all the tension in your face, had, and neck.”
(p.213)]
6) Let’s do it again. Play a little bit, not too serious. Put hands on your ears. Can you feel something
between the hands and ears? Wherever there’s energy being awakened, it becomes clear or transparent.
That is always the goal: transparent.
6) Put hands on top of the head.
7) Place one hand on the throat and one on the navel: you feel something on the throat and something
on the navel? And do you feel something between the throat and the navel? See if it gets a little bit of a
boost, a little bit of a zap.
2nd Time
1) Rub the hands again.
2) One very special connection: place one hand on the top of the head and the other on the heart.
Feel the head and the heart; is there something in between? The heart is not where your hand is;
it is more inside, towards the back. There’s something in between the heart and the top of the head.
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14 Evoking Space
(& p. 214)
KEY WORDS
• Place awareness
• Awareness in space
• Experience comes to life
• Moving, clearing space
INTENTION
This exercise is done within awareness of space. If you put your awareness in space, it has space to be.
Awareness of body and awareness of space come together eventually. Placing awareness, experience
comes to life.
The way we do Kum Nye now is: put your awareness in the space around you. Now we begin to do Kum
Nye which is basically body awareness, also in terms of awareness in space.
THE EXERCISE
1) Take a deep exhale and pull your navel in. Do this at least three times. Loosen up the shoulders a little
bit, up and down, back and forth.
2) Feet on the ground. The left arm stays relaxed, but there is awareness in that left arm, awareness in the
left wrist, awareness in the left palm, in the left fingers.
3) Let your right hand go a little bit to the left, in front of the body, and swing it up; Now the arm
is straight.*
[*Text: Let the mouth remain open as you do these circular motions. ]
You hear the word ‘awareness’ a lot. Can you place your awareness in this space: awareness between the
palm of the hand and top of the head. There is awareness in the left arm too.
As soon as you place awareness somewhere, something is happening to it—basically, is it is coming to life in
your experience.
4) Breathing is through nose and mouth. Start to make large circles. You remain in contact with the
awareness in the space between the palm and top of head. If you make it a little slower and a little
larger, you can get all of that space.
5) At some playful time, turn the circling around the other way.
6) Then opening your right arm comes down sideways. Bring all of that fanning of space with you.
When both arms are down, you start to reverse positions.
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7) With awareness in the right arm, this time the left arm goes in front, until it is straight overhead and
the left palm faces the top of your head.
The right palm is different from the left palm. Put your awareness in the left palm, put your awareness in
the space between your left hand and the top of your head, and in your right arm.
Moving. Space. Evoking Space.
8) At some playful moment you turn around, circling the left hand the other way.
9) Coming down. Place awareness still in this space, where your arms went. All of that space has
awareness in there.
2nd time
1) Awareness in the left arm, the right arm in front swings up, etc. Circle.
Make it a little larger—not too puny, not tiny tiny.
Turn the circle around.
Go down when you are ready.
2) Touch and then the other arm comes up. At some point circle the other way.
You want the space, like any space, to be clear, but especially this space above the head and below the hand.
It begins to clear when you move. It begins to become clear when you place your awareness in it.
3rd time
1) Come down, touch, and for a last time bring up the other hand.
When you place your awareness in space, in your experience it comes to life. This meansspace is not empty;
you may have experience, maybe you have feelings and sensations. Maybe you have glimpses.We are not so
eager to know what they are—it is more that experience comes to life.
2) All the way up, down, touch a last time.
Do you have a sense of that space, of your awareness in that space? Is there anywhere you need a bit
more awareness?
3) Feet on the ground.
It's no use if we are not in the body. Circling the other way around.
4) Go down when you are ready. Try to bring this experience in space to your sitting.
Suggested Practice: Awareness Sitting
37
15 Touching the Heart of Space

(& p. 215)
KEY WORDS
• Awareness in, between
• Experiment
• Listen, remember
• Speech Kum Nye
INTENTION
The body may connect even with the title of the exercise. There is a call for different regions to get
involved and for you, aided by the awareness between the hands, to be in the space that opens up.
SUGGESTION
Ideally if you have enough time, or you can focus on one exercise at a time, do 'Touching the Heart
of Space' in the four directions. You face the east, and you switch to the south, to the west, and to the
north. Each direction has its own qualities and sources of information.
EXPERIMENT
For those who have done this exercise before, listen as someone says the title, 'Heart of Space,' and see
if the body remembers. Does your body, not your head, remember? It is as if the body connects with the
exercise called ‘Heart of Space.’ Does the body want to take it on?
THE EXERCISE
1) Let the arms go forward. If you have done the exercise many times, this is probably what the body
remembers. Go to the side, to the left. Your left arm is straight, your right arm goes in the same
direction. Your elbow is up, not hanging.
2) ‘Heart of Space’: there is call on the chest region to get involved here, but it is more than that.
Take an exhale. The gut needs to be involved, this whole area needs to be in it: this, not the thoughts,
is what supports you.
3) Focus on the space between the hands. Look forward, and as you remain looking forward, your
awareness is in this space as well.
4) Your right arm begins to open up so the space is opening up, and you are in it. Awareness is in the
space between the hands. Shoulders down, tip of the tongue.
5) Now the left arm is moving across. Your awareness is also in the space between the hands: the left
hand goes across your heart, pointing to the right. They are joining up on the right side.
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6) Now see what you like: does your hand want to go forward to the other side or does it want to go
back and cross the heart again? Let’s try, keeping the space between the hands, going to the other side.
Experiment: All you are asked to do is to stay in space between your hands, in addition to the space around
you and in the body.
7) Move the other way.
This time the right hand goes forward, extending at the heart level staying in space, and goes to the left.
It joins up with the left hand, and the hands both start to reach. There is nothing stopping your awareness
from continuing to go to the left. The awareness between the hands helps us to contact the heart of space.
8) Let’s try again. Go forward: ‘Heart of Space.’ Awareness between the hands, the left comes forward.
What is happening to that space? Right in front of the heart, cross over—an important moment—and
joining the right.
'Heart of Space.' Open up.
9) When you are on the other side, the right hand comes over.
You sense every little change in the hand and you sense if it has an impact on the space between the hands.
10) Then you extend to the left, opening up.
11) Let the hands and arms go down. This is part of space. Stay with it until the very end—don’t drop it,
because that space will not open up.
16 Space of Joy
(& p. 216)
KEY WORDS
• Moving the Kum, not just body
• Reaching
• Locate densities, opacities
• Contrast
INTENTION
Openness—becoming transparent and clear.
You are in control of the posture, with its precise angles: you are everywhere. Observe contrasts between
right and left areas, between denser and lighter. When you think to return to the usual way, go further,
because you don’t want thoughts to give you that information. You are using the body so that you can
expand the Kum.
39
THE EXERCISE
1st time to the left
(It’s also possible to reverse arms and go to the other side, but not in this particular presentation).
1) Your right arm comes forward, and your left arm goes to the side: they go in unison. Your left stops
at the heart level, and your right arm keeps going up. The right hand stays with the palm facing
forward. Long, beautiful square, sharp 90 degree corner.
2) The upper body moves to the left so that the left ribcage stays open.
Open the right side: you reach with your right arm farther and farther.
Are there densities within your right ribcage—are there areas that are dark or black, or gray, opaque, dense?
The ribs can come apart, energetically speaking,
3) Going up.
2nd time to left

4) Go again to the left, so that the contrast is greater to observe in-between.
Reach: your left [hand] is pointing to the ground, 45 degrees. Your right arm is reaching, right palm
faces forward, and the left palm faces down.
5) Coming up. See if you are still straight, as you come up.
6) Then the last time to the left. Tip of the tongue. Coming up.
In between, check to see the difference between left and right. Is there a difference between the right side,
the ribcage, and the left?
It is always openness, that we are after. Then it becomes transparent and clear.
1st time to the Right

1) From being overhead the right arm goes forward and down, to the heart level. Then it switches
and moves to the right, as the left arm comes up. See that it comes to a precise 90°.
2) The upper body comes over to the right. Open up the left side.
3) Coming up.
4) Again move to the right: the right arm doesn’t drop and it is at 45°. You are in control of the posture
which means you are everywhere. Go a little further.
When you think to go back always go a little further. You don’t want the thought to dictate that information.
5) Coming up.
6) Do it one more time: reaching as you go to the right, reaching with your arms, hands, fingertips.
Your Kum doesn’t stop at the fingertips. It is much bigger: you are moving the Kum, not only your body. You
use the body so you can expand Kum.
Go a little further—maybe you hear a pop/little noise in your back… Coming up.
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Final Time
7) Turn the left palm out and the left arm goes down to heart level; then the arms go down together.
You own that space as you go down.
Group Three
Stimulating Inner Energy
17 Loosening Blockages
(& pp. 218-9)
KEY WORDS
• Feeling tones
• Relaxing more into space
INTENTION
We loosen the body because there are tensions all around the chakras and the organs; there is a healing
in terms of residude of the body in order to recapture inner freedom. We can sense into how each
experience has feeling tones. When the body is loosened, energy can flow through. An indication the
body is loosening up is when inner and outer are not so distinct.
THE EXERCISE
1) Spread the legs. ‘Releasing blockages,’ hands on the hips. You go down.* You want your pelvis tilted
forward a little bit.
*[Text: Bend at the knees, placing your hands on your hips, and sink down as far as you can. Hold the
position until the energy is moving in the lower body.]
2) Coming up, turn the heels a little bit together and the whole upper body twists to the right.
3) Coming to the center. Twist back to the same side, the right. Then back to the center and twist all the
way back to the same side. Coming back.
Already you might notice the difference between the side you just did and the side you are going to do.
41
Group Three Stimulating Inner Energy
4) Go to the other side, the left side. Coming back to the center, and again, twisting to the side, coming
back, twisting, last time, coming to the center.
For later rounds

As you come back to the center after twisting, feel the difference between the right side and the left. Is
there a difference? That is a feeling tone.
The last time, twisting, coming back. Release the hands and gently sit down when you are ready.

Tones of feelings resonate continually through our bodies, stimulated by our mental and sensory
perceptions, and each kind of feeing has its specific character and power. & p. 91
18 Extending Energy
(& pp. 220-4)
KEY WORDS
• Extending
• Doing, not-doing
INTENTION
Opening up areas and exploring how far you can go. Exploring the transition from ‘me doing’ to where
the body seems to be doing.
THE EXERCISE
1) Interlace the fingers behind your back, at waist level.
2) Start pushing your shoulders back: we are trying to open up this area. You maximize if you hold this,
and then bend forward. First bend until you are horizontal making a straight line from the back of
head to end of the arms. Your head goes up and down, as if it is signaling: "Yes, yes, yes, yes!"
3) Then drop the head further forward and down, and the arms go up. Push! Push!
You can make this as easy or intense as you want, but that’s a pity. You don’t want ‘you’ to decide that.
If you have a physical trainer he would not say: “Do three or as many as you like.” He would say,
“Do twenty or thirty.”
4) Slowly coming up. Keep your shoulders back. When you are straight the upper body goes to the right
and your hands go to the left, and you keep the shoulders back. ‘Extending Energy.’ Coming up.
42
5) Bend to the other side with hands going to the right. Still keep the shoulders back. Coming up.
6) Gently the hands come apart, sideways, and the arms are at shoulder height, with palms flat and
facing forward The whole upper body goes to the left.
Don’t make a kink on the left side. It stays open,; the ribs on the left are open.
Coming up, the whole upper body goes to the other side. Then coming up.
7) The hands float down like feathers.
8) Now only the upper body goes to the left.* Your chin is a little bit tilted to the right and up. Coming up.
(*&: The last time “let both arms hang loosely at your sides, completely relaxed.” p. 224 )
9) The upper body goes to the other side. Coming up. Other side. Coming up. Take a breath.
2nd time
The hands go behind the back.
Continuing without pause, you are in it. As you still take a deep breath, you are in the rhythm of the
previous exercise.
1) Go forward, first horizontally: the face down, the top of the head forward. Push the shoulders back,
and then the interwoven hands and arms push up.
2) Then you go down, saying ‘yes,’ so the neck bobs up and down and then you go down. Push yourself.
Shoulders back, arms up.
It is very nice to explore how far you can go.
Coming up.
3) Upper body bends to the right. Hands to the left. The shoulders want to go back even if you don’t.
You want to keep them back. Hands go up. Other side. Coming up.
Coming up, hands move apart.
4) Spread the fingers going to the right, your awareness in both hands, stretching as if you have very
long arms. Coming up; the other side.
There is a big transition for a Kum Nye practitioner. In the beginning you do everything. Then suddenly it
seems as if you are quiet inside and the body seems to be doing it. You are sitting inside, in the heart region;
as the body comes up, you are not doing it.
5) Hands go down to the sides. Upper body to the right, chin a little bit in. Coming up, other side, coming up.
Take a breath.
Suggestion
‘Embracing and Uplifting’ might be done in between rounds of this exercise.
43
19 Ground of Energy
(& p. 225)
KEY WORDS
• Flow of Feeling
• Beam of attention
• Restoring continuity
INTENTION
Rebuilding from the ground up: focusing on feeling so the inner architecture becomes open and stable.
Becoming familiar with the eyes in terms of the beam of attention and how they go straight ahead and
also open to the sides. Everything is in your vision but you are not attached to any one object.
THE EXERCISE
1) Standing up straight. Spread the legs, the right foot pointed out, the left foot straight ahead. The
arms go sideways and then up, with the elbows bent square to the ground, palms facing forward.
The name: ‘Ground of Energy.’
2) Bend the right knee. The arms are at shoulder height with the palms forward. They are at a precise
angle, very mathematical.
Check the awareness in all your fingers. Maybe you do two at a time: thumbs and index fingers, middle
fingers and ring fingers, little fingers.
3) Come up, straightening the right foot.
Bring your experience with you; you don’t want to start new.
Shift to the left, turn the left foot out, and now bend the left knee.
Are all the fingers with awareness?
Become familiar with the eyes dancing.
There is a beam of attention, going straight ahead, and all the way open to the sides.
We are accustomed either to focus or having a global view; you want to learn both.
You are looking straight ahead, without trying to see something. Instead the ‘trying to see something’
is put into opening: you look out of the corners of the eyes.
You can test if you are doing it right—when you are not starting to think about what it is that you see.
Everything is in your vision, but you are not getting attached to one object.
4) Coming up, turn your right foot out, go to the right and now bend the right knee.
44
If you are young and healthy, go down, and challenge. You want to go to the place where you say “ah this is
it,” and then relax in it.
Repeat on other side and then repeat once more on each side.
5) Then come back up, bring the feet together, let the forearms go forward until they are horizontal, and
then release. Bring this with you as you go back to normal standing. You can’t cut it off. Arms go
down as you remain in contact with whatever your experience is.
The practice of Kum Nye is to stimulate the flow of feeling for only one purpose: to restore the continuity. of
experience. No gaps, no stoppages no contractions: this is continuity. In the exercises everything continues.
What we are after is to stimulate the flow of life, the flow of feeling through the body.The contractions we
have in the chakras, organs, muscular and immune systems are because the energy hasn’t flowed through
the body. So we are stimulating life, and life in the body is feelings.
It does not matter if you like this posture. When you sit down again, is it working?
20 Circulating Energy
(& pp. 226-9)
KEY WORDS
• Clearing space
• Holding
• Flow
• Heart connection
• Space around us
• Gut and heart: velvet, firm spine
• Feeling
INTENTION
To include the whole body: noticing what is more active, what is holding so that energy can flow
through. Going deeper into the heart and developing the heart connection. Internally circulating energy
throughout the body and inviting positive energies, and clearing energy in space around us.
PREFACE: CIRCULATING ENERGY

Usually we associate the name of this exercise with internally circulating energy. It is true that if the lower
body is relaxed and open, then whatever happens can circulate.
45
If you have a thought and it stays, it means this circulating is not working anymore. We need to use
the staying of the thought as a signal: in meditation and psychology it is a sign that you are ignoring
something or something wants to come out. Kum Nye when something is not included, it means there
is a certain part of the body that’s more active then everything else.
If you include the whole body, then what is taken to be a good experience and a bad experience doesn’t
matter in Kum Nye. You want to play with, allow and bring up a bad experience or thought, so that the
energy is not tucked away somewhere for the next 20 years but can come and flow through the body.
That is one circulation of energy.
There is also the circulation of energy in space, in the area you are in. You know your arms only can
go ‘this far’ and also you don’t want to intrude in other people’s spaces, but we also can do circulation
of energy in the space around us. The bottom line of circulation is that the energy becomes clear. The
more it circulates the more it purifies. When an area is dense it is because the energy is not circulating.
That means something is holding.
If the space between two people is not clear and open, it means you have an opinion and I have an opin-
ion and they will never meet because the space in between is dead. You can do the most fantastic prac-
tice internally in your room, but when you see that person, there is the space again. This space needs to
clear up.
The clearing up is always the same and that is part of it. You can invite other communicative processes.
Clearing is half of the job. Now that it is clear, can you interact in a way that seems right? Can you invite
those positive energies and insights so that they circulate within you?
THE EXERCISE
Part One
1) Stand and loosen the knees a little bit. Bring the hands in front of the heart.
The heart is the central point, the beginning.
The hands are actually touching, one overlapped over the other at heart level.* We work with the space
between the hands and the heart.
(*& : Arms are at heart level, palms facing your chest and hands overlapped, with fingers extended.
Slowly move hands apart and curve them both in towards the chest, letting the elbows move forward,
and the backs of the hands touch. p. 226)
2) The elbows go out. Then you point the fingers in, to the heart. The backs of the hands are touching.
Some people think that you don’t touch; other people think it is nice if you touch. There is a pressure point
right in the center of the chest bone, and in Kum Nye pressure points become points of light. First energy
and than light.
3) Go ahead and push in on that point on the chest bone. If you don’t feel anything then push harder.
There are feelings there.
4) Then the arms go out, at first gently, palms down. The interaction between your palms and the heart
is opening up. No walls, no isolation.
46
5) Come back to the starting position, now with the other hand on the outside. Your awareness is
open and the center of your awareness is now between the hands and your heart. Is the space
changing compared to the first time?
6) Pointing in. Go deeper into the heart. Even deeper.
The heart center has layers to it. On the outside are kinds of memories—what we have done, what has been
done to us. If you go deeper there are no memories. Go deeper and deeper and there is nothing that specifically
reminds you of this life.
7) Then move hands and arms in a bit of a determined way straight out again. Now you are establishing
open space along a heart connection.
The heart connection doesn’t mean you like everything. Good teachers can be very likeable and very
tough, and that is what this practice is. Rinpoche says, “You have to develop a bone in your heart,” so
there is some toughness there but in a very wonderfully decorated space.
8) Going in one more time, this time try not exactly in, but a slight bit up.
9) Stretch. Let the arms go down, and see if you can stay with this for a moment. Do you feel it in your
spine too?
In English, the expression “he or she has no spine” means no gut and no heart. When the gut and heart
are together, then you have spine. Doing all the lower body and the heart practice makes the spine soft like
velvet and firm.
This part is the basics of openness.
Part Two
1) Bring the hands in front of the body at chest level, with one palm facing up and the other down.
Ultimately the heart energy needs to be in the hands. The heart consists of head and gut together: the head,
the gut. The head comes down and the gut comes up. The gut is the navel area.
2) Now there is an extension from the heart down the arms to the hands. If you press a little bit, you may
activate that connection: one hand presses up, one hand goes down, for no other purpose than to
circulate the energies of the heart. **
[**Text: Stand with your arms at heart level, one palm facing up and the other down. Bend your
elbows and press down with one hand and up with the other. Reverse the hand positions and repeat
the pressing. p.228.]
3) Then turn the hands around. This is different (left and right), with the other hand on top.
4) Then push it out: palms out, arms extended in front of you.
5) Now we are going to make circles, circulating energy. You make two circles: the arms go up and out,
and down. When going out, you are extending all the way to the sky. When to the sides, you go to all
the directions in space on that side and on the other side.
6) Please do this in the four directions.
With each circle bring the earth up to the sky, and the sky comes down. This is mixed with your heart energy.
47
7) Continue circling up and coming down. The next time you are in the middle wait a moment and
now you turn to the right.
You understand you are going to cover the left and the right, so you go up and go all the way to the sides.
Infinite on the right and the left: you want to have all four cardinal directions.
Forward and up, reaching towards those two sides, two directions.
8) Twist the upper body to the right: you feel the twist give the movement power. When the upper
body twists to the right, your heart energy is in this.
The heart is the culmination of body and mind, mind and body.
9) Bringing the arms down and coming back forward to the front. A moment of rest.
10) Now twist the whole upper body to a direction that has not been done. We are covering all
directions. Body in mind, mind in body—[plus] heart—and now in all directions of space.
The rhythm or movements of your hands, your breathing: all determine the brilliance in that space,
the radiance. You can open up space so that it is clear. Though clear, it may not have any radiance.
11) The last time, bring the arms down and coming to the back. Ideally you feel it all around you.
The hands open to the side, rhythmically.
12) Because you have created an experience in this space, you don’t want to step out of it.
Gently move: you can bring it all with you to sitting.
Now there is practice
Sitting is practicing with the experience called feeling.
1) In all this internal and external space, which is not separate (or less) anymore, there is an experience
we would call feeling. It could also be spaces, shifting spaces, moving spaces. It is not just clarity:
there is something happening, the Nye. Let your breath touch that. You could say that the feelings
and the breath dance.
The breath is what deepens the feelings and what sustains the feelings and what helps the feelings expand.
2) You work with the feelings and the breath. Your ‘working with’ means that 'you' are right in the
middle of that feeling and breath, the working with the breath and the feeling. It is your attention,
your concentration. The single point of your awareness: feelings touched by the breath, held
within awareness.
This is an activity. You are working. Or it is working.
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21 Opening Energy
(& p. 230)
KEY WORDS
• Space
• Relaxing in experience, in what comes up
• New experiences
• Activate feelings
• Feel more
• Nye
INTENTION
Awakening experience in the body and exploring how to welcome and relax in that. Training the mind
to be aware of space and opening space through bringing awareness. Contact with and merging of breath
and feelings so that mNye happens: inner massage.
1) Stand up. Say "Haaaaaa" (long and loud) a few times. This is part of the exercise.
2) The arms go forward to shoulder height, fingers pointed straight ahead. Though this position is the
beginning of something, it is also a posture by itself.
An important part of Kum Nye is: can you relax—not only in the posture but also in the experience?
3) Questions that open into experience:
• This posture, does it awaken some experience in the body?
Experience in the body: sensations and feelings.
• Of course you are aware of the breath. Is anything else happening?
• Also when you are standing like this, does it bring up some new experiences that you didn’t have
before you did this?
• We learn to relax in the tension and we usually say, “Can you relax in the posture?” That’s true:
canyou stand like this for a couple of days? Then you relax: “I have to stand like this for three
days.”Then you are relaxing.
• The more subtle question is: can you relax in what is coming up? This means you welcome it
and, like a feather, very light, you settle in—you are not giving weight in the experience.
It is tempting to say: “I am getting tired or it hurts,” but it might actually be the case that other parts of the
body are starting to tingle as well.
4) The arms go sideways. The hands go up, palms facing outward and the elbows go down but not
against the body—there is some space, and the elbows are lower.
49
Explore two aspects of this posture:

• As you stand here can you be in the body? Be curious about what is happening in the body becaus
you are becoming more alive.
• The other side is while you do that, can your awareness be as big as this room? Awareness in the
corners, down to the ground, up to the ceiling.
Usually we don’t do this type of Kum Nye. Usually we focus on the body, and eventually you get a big sense
of space, that feels empty but is not. If you train the mind to be aware of the space, you feed two birds with
one crumb.
5) Be with whatever is happening in the body. Let it make contact with the breath. They are very, very
close family—breath and feelings. They are much better if you put them together. Feelings much
more rich and the breath comes more functional.
6) Very slowly go down. As your arms come down you become familiar with the space where your
hands and palms are. You want to become familiar with the space. It is right in front of you.This
space needs to be opened. All you do is bring awareness in space.
Overall directions
Experience in the body. It needs the breath.
See if you can relax in it instead of being on top of it: be in it like a feather lands in a pillow.
The other aspect is: fill the room with your awareness.
2nd time
1) Slowly bring the arms up. When your arms go up you are opening up that space.
Wherever your awareness goes, space becomes clear.
The area between your palms and thighs is probably more open now if you were aware when you moved
through space.
Does this posture stir up new feelings?
Feelings need the breath and you land in it.
2) Your arms go up, sideways and elbows are down. The tips of the fingers line up with your ears. Did
anything change when you brought your hands here?
3) When you go down now, what is happening with your experience? Is it expanding? Changing?
Stay very close with it.
4) For a few exhales let us say: "Haaaaaaaaa" until there is no air left.
3rd time
1) Awareness in the fingertips and the palms of the hands as you move through space. Going forward.
Your hands are resting in space as if space pushes them up.
Now experience as well some activity between the hands and thighs. Inside the body, outside the body,
in the hands: it is all your Kum.
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2) Arms go sideways, hands go up, palms facing outward, the elbows go down. For this final time,
pull in your belly. See what the effect of that is. (Before we did not do this). Hold your belly pulled in.
Breathe lightly on top—the tip of tongue. If you can, make your breath lighter now: almost
not breathing.
3) Release. Experience the space as you go down—your hands, your fingers go down. Touch space.
4) You probably have sensations and feelings in more than one place. Some people may have them in
one or two areas. Other people may have them in the whole upper torso.
5) Make contact with breath: that is really the requirement for Nye to happen. Kum Nye. Nye happens
when the breath and feelings come together and they begin to massage you from within. They begin
to move and expand and interact.
There is awareness of space and at the same time awareness of this room.
22 Exercising Energy
(& p. 232)
KEY WORDS
• Feeling tone
• Travelling awareness
• Rhythm
• Contacting tone
INTENTION
To awaken energies and explore the relation of breath and rhythm to movement. To bring the experiences
stimulated by the movement to practicing Kum Nye on the cushion. Bringing awareness to feeling tone:
sensing tone, tasting it.
[Note: On the recording the exercise is interwoven with one repetition of Gesture 21: Opening Energy,
p. 230, and it was only done 2 times at the retreat session.]
DIRECTIONS
1) Spread the legs a bit with hands on the hips. The knees are straight but not locked, and the toes point
forward. Fill the spaces between your arm and your ribcage with your awareness. It is not a void: Awareness.
2) The upper body comes forward until you are horizontal: the face is down and the top of the head
is forward.
3) Let your hands and your arms drop down and take a deep breath. The position of your upper body
and head do not change.
With a transition such as this one you always want to take a deep breath. It can incorporate the change.
51
4) Bend the knees until your hands are on or near the floor. Take a big breath because this is
another change.
5) The practice is simple now: straighten your legs a little bit and then go down. Straighten the legs
and go down. You can do this movement with the breath. Breathe in going up, breathe out, breathe in,
breathe out. Or you could find another rhythm—you can go slower while your breath continues—no
in and out, just flow, flowing. Now the movement is carried by the breath. Straighten the legs, and
then go down.
6) One last time and then start coming up. The arms remain down.
2nd time
1) One repetition of #21 Opening Energy is done at this point in the recording.
Brieft directions here for one repetiation of Opening Energy
—Exhale a few times: Haaaaah haaaaah
—The arms go forward, up. Space between palms and thighs is appropriated. Your awareness is there.
—Arms come to the side, hands with palms forward, elbows lower and bent. Pull in the navel.
—Release the navel and bring the hands on the hips.
2) Once more: #22 Exercising Energy: Hands on hips. Deep breath in belly. Coming forward
horizontally. Go ahead: breathe a little deeper.
3) The hands leave the body. Go down to the ground. Bend your knees. Your rhythm is raise the hips
up, stay a moment, and go down. See what your pace is; what is your speed?
4) Coming up. Bring what is happening down there with you as you come up. Your arms come down to
your sides. Delicately bring this experience to sitting. We want to work with what you just stirred up.
Sitting Kum Nye

Although Kum Nye usually begins with “localize the feelings” in many cases after exercising energy,
the feelings may already be circulating all over.
1) Let your awareness contact the feeling tone. You are not sitting up and looking down and saying:
“Where is the feeling tone?” You know that your awareness can travel in more than one place at the
same time. Bring your awareness to the area of feeling to which you are attracted. Go to the feeling.
Let your awareness touch, make contact with, the tone of it.
Then let the energy of the breath touch there too. Feelings and breath are like two partners. They really
belong together. So bring the breath there.
Your awareness senses the tone

One way to sense the tone is to taste it as if you could touch it with the tongue: take it in, pass it by the
taste buds, the throat. And swallow it.
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23 Embracing and Uplifting

(& p. 234)
KEY WORDS
• No gaps in awareness
• Flow
• Expand and condense
• Going up
INTENTION
Feeling the rhythms of expanding and condensing, and finding the right rhythm of going up and
down. Movement is intended to stimulate what is going on inside and is not separate from it.
Upward movement allows energy and awareness to go up.
DIRECTIONS
1st time
1) Stand with feet somewhat apart. Arms come together: hands holding the elbows. Stretch in this position,
not holding back: stay straight but push the arms forward so the upper arms are as long as possible.
2) The whole upper body twists to the left. Push with one hand and pull with the other.
3) Slowly coming back. Use the 180 degree vision from ground to ceiling and everywhere in-between.
You do not single out any object.
4) Now twist to the other side. Reach back and push a little. You really want to twist the upper body.
Start to flow back.
Flow as if you are not going anywhere but just flowing. You don’t have a beginning point or an end.
5) Do this movement on each side a total of three times. One hand is pushing the other hand is pulling.
You want to experience each part of the movement so there are no gaps in awareness.
6) For the next part of the exercise, bring the arms still folded above the head.
7) The arms come forward and down to chest level. Touch here, into the first position where the arms
are in front. Rest very briefly and then go back up. Again come forward. Touch here, and come back
up. Forward, then releasing. Three times.
As we do more and more Kum Nye you will find that you are actually rhythmically expanding and
condensing. If you continue with another exercise or more repetitions you need to do so on an expanding
moment, not on a condensing one. At the least, continue on an inhale.
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2nd Time
1) Start on an expansion or an inhale: arms come together, hands hold the elbows, and the whole upper
body twists to the left. Push with one hand and pull with the other.
2) Find a rhythm when you come back.
You want to build on what is happening, not ignoring its rhythm.
Coming back, twisting to the other side. Choose the moment that you are just right on. Continuing to
the other side.
Your previous experience and this one are together. This is in addition; it is culminating.
3) After the last of the twisting movements the next time you are in the middle make sure you are in the
right rhythm when you raise your arms up. Then on the right rhythm go down.
When you go up, stay a little bit because the upward movement allows the energy and awareness to go up.
How do you do that? First you push up physically and you have feeling of what ‘going up’ means. Then you
continue going up, not physically, but energetically in awareness. Both are going up.
4) On the last time the arms are up, release, in harmony with experience.
The releasing is not a physical movement separate from what is going on inside. If you cannot connect
with what is going on inside use the breath.
3rd time
1) Do the first set of movements twisting the the sides again, finding your rhythm.
The movement is intended to stimulate what is going on inside and is part of it. They have to be together—
it is not a physical movement left and right.
When you come back your whole experience is coming back. The whole experience is going to the right.
When you are all the way back, your whole experience goes back, back, back, through the window, across
the grass.
The whole experience rotates.
When you are on one side, push it through the wall: the wall is transparent concerning energy and
awareness. Go beyond. How far can you go: 100 meters, 200 meters? Twenty kilometers?
2) Take a breath and go up: the whole experience opens and goes up. Feel your arms going up.
You push: you know what it feels like to go up.
Your arms cannot go up any more but your sense of going up can continue.
Going up, through the ceiling, through the roof. Go up. In the beginning it goes slow but eventually
you can do it fast, go up to center of the sky.
3) Coming forward. Take a breath.
4) Go up again to make it more open—then it stays. Push it up: go as high as you can. Push but not
physically because you are at the maximum. Push through the roof into the sky. Then coming back.
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5) This last time going up is the last chance. Now everything goes up, all your energy. First the body,
then the energy, awareness. Not just straight up but more like 180 degrees up. Push the sky up.
6) Coming back, your awareness stays up there. Only your body comes down; everything else is open.
Hands come apart. Awareness in many directions now.
24 Energy Freely Rising

(& p. 236)
KEY WORDS
• Contact
• Exchange and communion
• Awareness
INTENTION
Extending energy and awareness, exploring what it is to go up and down, and exploring the space
between the hands. Deepening during sitting, bringing feeling and seeing awareness together.
THE EXERCISE
1) Feel the feet on the ground. The feet can make contact with the earth.
Contact always means exchange: you communicate with the earth, and the earth communicates with you.
If the exchange is free, it is like a communion.
2) Your left hand points down, fingers into the ground, like a reminder of your connection with the
earth, a reminder to stay connected to the ground through the feet and this hand.
3) The right hand goes slowly forward and up. One hand is down as if it could extend into the earth.
The right hand is straight up, wrist is bent, palm is flat, fingers pointing back. Staying down,
connected to the earth, extend the arm.
You push your arm up. You know what it means to go up. Even if you physically cannot go higher, you can
continue going up as if your energy can extend up and your awareness extends up. Awareness doesn’t take
any time. It is whooossshh.
Energy freely rising. Experience the title.
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4) Now you are going to reverse. This is a special moment because you bring down what was up and
bring up what was down. See how they pass, come together. Now your other (right) arm goes down
and the left hand goes up, palm flat. Both extend: one down, one up.
Push your arm down. You can imagine continuing to go down and imagine continuing to go up.
Energy Freely Rising.
5) Reverse. What was up, bring down: you don’t leave it there. What was down, bring up. They mix in
front of the heart. They go up, and down. Don’t forget the arm going down. Stretch more so that
you know what it is to go up and down.
6) Continue. Coming together in front of the heart. What was up is brought down and what was down
is brought up. Make sure the hands cross at the front of the heart. What was down is up and up
down. Energy freely rising. Point with your right hand down. Keep that stretch. Energy freely rising.
7) Reversing, both hands cross in the front of the heart. Feel the space between the hands become even
and then continue to move. Remain in contact with the space between.
8) Coming back, do the movement one last time; the left hand goes down and the right up until both
arms are in front of the heart. Both arms come to the side, continuing to open as they come down.
9) Delicately bring this experience into sitting.
Sitting
1) Open up your vision all the way—from the corners of your eyes. Let your seeing awareness be
supported by your feeling awareness so that they are not two separate activities. Experience in the
body is probably expanding beyond into space, a seeing awareness rests on that. When they are
together, it doesn’t take effort.
Whenever we are connected to feeling awareness there is no effort needed.
2) In a few minutes you will hear a gong on the recording. [Or you can set your timer]. Don’t move at
all. Let the sound of the gong go through you and watch how the mind goes from a deeper place to a
more shallow place. Then you will hear some clicking and you can move if you are ready to move.
3) In the time remaining before the gong sounds, go as deep as you can; it is a matter of going deeper, in
or down.
4) When you finish the practice always bring your awareness to your hands. It helps to bring you in the
body and it sets the stage for the immediate future.
5) Awareness in the hands.
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Group Four
Expanding Wholeness
25 Releasing Positions
(& p. 238)
KEY WORDS
• Feelings
• Flow
• Generating happiness
• Beam of attention
• Contact
INTENTION
Getting feelings flowing and expanding them. Continuing contact. Generating and spreading happy
feelings and appreciation and extending these into space.
THE EXERCISE
1) Sitting in the Seven Gestures, say silently, ‘Releasing Positions.’ Arms come up, crossing to the
shoulders (or at least upper arms). Take a big exhale. The body is going through some movements;
inside it is still. The upper hand leaves the shoulder, going to the knee, with the palm up. The gesture
brings the hand out—perhaps push the thumb a bit out, really open handed. At the same time, the
other hand comes loose from the other shoulder and moves up straight, the palm facing in with the
fingers pointed up to the ceiling.
In Kum Nye you always want to feel the entire posture, not one part.
2) Adjust your seat to sit on both sit-bones. The hand on the knee is open and the raised hand is
stretched. One way to remain in contact during the exercise is to keep doing these. The raised arm
and hand keep going up, and the hand on the knee keeps opening up.
57
‘Releasing Positions’ flows through the body structure. You don’t have to add anything to it.
3) The hand on the knee now comes up and moves across to the shoulder, and the hand that was up
now goes over it to the other shoulder. There is a firmness to this posture. [This modification of the
exercise, which is similar to one gesture of #30 Transparent Wholeness, was done during the Wood
brooke retreat.] The upper arm releases, goes to the knee, open-handed; and then the arm that was
below goes up. Sitting on the two sit-bones; now start reaching and keep opening.
4) While you sit in this position, can you bring to mind something that makes you very happy? It could
be something small you love to do (such as going on a bicycle trip). This memory (or even something
you would love to do and haven’t) is flowing through the system now. Let a very happy occasion
flow through the body. Keep happy.
5) Change position, the hand on the knee going first. Let the movement be strong—really lay it on thick .
Then when you are sitting still, inside is all engaged in this happy occasion: lots of feeling.
6) Now the upper arm goes to the knee, and the other arm goes up, palm facing in.
Anywhere you look inside the body there’s a small happy detail or even the entire happy occasion happening.
Look in your palm, or in your elbow: it’s happening there.
Go ahead and daydream: bring up what you cannot do now because of time, commitment, or money.
Do them now, in the body.
7) Switch the position twice more after holding a while. The hand on the knee goes first each time.
Then the upper arm goes to the knee, the other arm goes up. You can pick another happy occasion to
continue with as you are engaged in the practice.
One of the most important activities in Kum Nye is to generate happy feelings because it makes the flow of
feeling go and expand. It makes us relax, wake up, and appreciate.
8) Expand those feelings even beyond the body. Don’t keep them private. You can shout what you are
doing from the rooftops to the whole city. You run around town, and everybody can see how happy
you are. Go out into space with your happy feelings. They are not only inside.
9) The hand on the knee turns graciously, and the other arm comes graciously down. *
*[ TEXTp. 241: “Conclude by cradling the hands together resting on your crossed legs.” ]
Suggested Further Practice: Variation on 'Beam of Attention'

If you know the basic exercise, you might continue in the following way:
DIRECTIONS
While you still have these happy feelings, use the 'Beam of Attention' to get a sense of what that beam is.
Shift the beam of attention to different objects so you have a good feel for it. Then focus the beam on
your hand. Bring the beam to the feel of the breath, and then bring the beam in. Direct the beam of
attention on you, on that which does not change all the time, on what does not come and go such as
thoughts and experiences. Instead direct the beam of attention on the real You, on what might be
called the nature of your being. Or just on you.
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Group Four Expanding Wholeness
26 Body of Rhythm
(& p. 242)
KEY WORDS
• Field of energy
• Left and right sides
• Beginning, middle and end
• Compact
INTENTION
Opening and stimulating the field of energy; widening vision. Discovering the Kum/sKu of Rhythm and
working with the beginning, middle and end.
PREFACE
The exercise is called ‘Body of Rhythm.’ It refers not to the physical body, but to the Kum/sKu: the Kum
of Rhythm.
During the first movement, the text of The Joy of Being suggests attending to the beginning, middle and
end, both going out and coming back. Though this is true for all exercises, Rinpoche only mentions it
specifically in Body of Rhythm.
THE EXERCISE
Part One: Legs
1) Take a deep exhale: ‘Body of Rhythm.’
2) In the sitting posture, the left leg stays underneath and your right leg comes up, the foot flat on
the floor. Your arms go round the right knee, pulling it so the foot is close to the body, with the body
straight. Your vision is 180° and can go from the side to the center or from the center to the side.
3) Pull the left leg in a little bit to activate the field of energy.
You are a field of energy, and the field is infinite. When we contract we get in trouble—we become stressed.
So pull while you keep the field of energy open. Do that also by extending your vision, your sense of space,
around you.
• Tighten the right leg a little bit so the heel is closer; this adds something to your field of energy
• Now pull the right knee in more and see what happens.
• Then pull your ankle closer.
• Then relax: experience opens up and deepens at the same time (or perhaps one comes after the
other).
59
4) Gently stretch out your right leg along the ground, as your hands come to rest, palms down, on the
knees. Fully extend your right leg. Turn the toes toward your head, and then point them. (that is the
point). Reach out with the toes: reach, reach, reach, reach.
5) Alternately pull the toes towards your face, and then point them forward, reaching.
6) One last time, pull the toes toward you. You are adding a charge to the field of energy.
Straighten; straight.
2nd and 3rd Rounds: Right Leg

1) As you pull your right leg in, hold it close to the body, and tighten, can you sense a beginning, a
middle and end? Can you sense if there’s a difference with respect to your field of energy?
Bring your lower back into that posture, by pushing it a little bit forward, and in.
Many of us have lower back problems—it’s not included as much in our field of energy.
Push it in; straight back.
Your vision is from the center out—open all from the corners of your eye in, a range of whole, 100%
seeing, one area seeing as much as another. If you find it hard to maintain, muster determination
(not quite anger) in your vision, so that all of it is awakened.
2) Remember the suggestion that there is a beginning, middle, and end and how it affects the field of
energy that you are) as you begin to release the right leg. Hands on the knees; pull the toes towards
your head. Pull, pull, pull, and then reach forward with the foot pointed.
Do this a total of three times. The tip of the tongue is an active ingredient. Keep the toes forward.
How wide do you feel your field of energy is? How shining is it? The upper body, the mind, the head, can
make it wide, but its vitality and the brilliance comes from the lower body, in time. Ask again: how wide is
your field of energy? You are stimulating not the body, not the flow of energy, but the field of energy.
3) Repeat the basic movements one more time with this leg. Notice also what is happening with your
breath, if it is becoming wider, more vast, more internal. Or is it still trying to catch up—is it a little
bit in a hurry?
4) Sense into the way the right leg, right thigh, right side of the body—including the right side of the
pelvis—contribute one quality to the energy field.
Left Leg Rounds:

Doing this practice on the left side adds another quality, different from the previous side. You continue now
to explore, touch and sense, and there is no need to report.
1) In the sitting posture, the right leg now stays underneath and your left leg comes up, the foot flat on
the floor.
Although the text directions say to “contract and condense your energy” as one knee is held close to the body,
‘compact,’ not ‘contract’ should be understood.
2) Make it compact when you pull the left knee in, pulling the heel too. The body is straight, the chin a
little in and a bit up.
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3) Remember to then stretch out your leg, unfolding from a beginning, a middle and an end. Follow this
by having your toes do those little activities of pointing toward the head and the reaching forward.
4) When your foot reaches forward, energy goes forward. Sit in the forward toe position for a moment.
Your awareness can continue. Although your toes cannot go further, your energy and awareness
can do so.
Ask through the body if there has been a shift in your energy field since you started to add your left leg.
Use the sensory capacities of the mind to explore the question—you’re not doing it with thoughts and
reporting to yourself. Stick out your sensory antennae, or tune in through your inner ear.
4) Observe as you do these movements a total of three times how the compacting and unwinding does
you good. It’s not a matter of liking the exercise: is your field of energy wider and richer?
5) End with your foot forward and flat and pushing. Mind in the leg, in the thigh, in the knee, in the leg,
in the foot, in the toes and further out.
Remember, your Kum/ sKu is not your physical body. Your Kum/sKu is the sense of space that your
awareness occupies. If have a lot of space but no awareness there, that is not a big Kum/ sKu. When
it is bigger space with your awareness in it, that is a bigger Kum/sKu. Let your awareness go through
the legs, further, further: then it becomes Kum/ sKu.
Part Two: Rocking
1st Time
1) Bring both legs back in. Pull the knees up and bring your arms around them. Get accustomed to the
legs held in this way, close to the body with the feet flat on the floor.
2) Raise up your feet until just the tips of your toes touch the ground. From there lift off and start rocking
on your sit bones, with the feet remaining off the floor if you can. Continue to rock back and forth,
toes not touching down. In the rocking there’s a hinge.
3) Then touch the toes down, feet coming down on the ground, and exhale. What has happened to the
field of energy?
The exercise is called ‘Body of Rhythm.’ It is not the physical body, it’s the Kum/ sKu: the ‘Kum of Rhythm.’
2nd Time
1) Exhale. This time bring your breath in line with your movement. You cannot hold the breath or have
a sporadic breath.
If you breathe and rock, breathe and move in unison, your Kum gets much more vast. If breath and motion
are out of sync, the Kum narrows down. In sync, Kum will ripple out.
2) Toes and then feet come back to the ground. Exhale. Imagine you release your lower body, including
the anus-genital area, into the field of energy. Perhaps the root chakra, the bottom of the trunk,
relaxes, and the energy of the root chakra joins into the field of energy.
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3rd Time
This last time do the movement in a different way, perhaps with more rocking, or funny rocking, or light
rocking, or heavy-duty rocking. Breathe in line with the rocking and include your lower back. Return:
touch, exhale, and sit in the Seven Gestures.
Feel your energy.
Suggested Follow-up Exercise: Vast Awareness in Space which Means the Mind is Free to Be
27 Awakening Heart
(& p. 246)
KEY WORDS
• Offering
• Seed
• One flavor
• Origin and destination
INTENTION
Preparing the structure to awaken the heart. Encouraging flowing through the heart. Putting all of
yourself into this activity and offering it.
PREFACE
We associate the heart with certain experiences of loving, and loving itself with the heart. But the heart in
the context of this exercise is nothing sentimental. It is the starting point, the moment of conception. It is
the beginning; from the heart chakra the deepest, deepest seed of your being starts to grow and extend.
To awaken the heart is to awaken that original, central place. Regarding becoming enlightened, it is said
that from the innermost heart Bodhicitta releases.
Every gesture works symbolically and is also real. In Kum Nye, ‘awakening the heart’ is thought to
be the way.
Repeat 3 times
Why repeat three times? You want your being to remember. Three times once is the structure of
Opening the Heart:
The first time is for the structure of opening the heart (Body)
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The second time is for the movement through the structure, the awakening, so that it can flow and happen.
(Breath)
The third time is for the mind, for what is really flowing, what is really the awakening heart. (Mind)
Opening, awakening the heart has a structure to it. You prepare it. Then you make sure it is open so it can
go anywhere: that’s the breath part. The third time the awakening is now flowing; breath flows through the
structure (Body).
THE EXERCISE
1st Time
1) Standing,* bring the arms up and forward to shoulder height, the palms up.
The palms are open: you are putting everything in the palms of your hands, leaving nothing out.
Everything is visible, and you offer it.
*[TEXT: In text the exercise is done sitting]
You offer: this is what I am. Everything is in the palm of your hand; there is no secret thought in back.
Or if you have one, put it in your hands. Put your secrets there. Also put your low self esteem there, your
doubt and core beliefs. You offer: this is me, here I am.
2) Use "Here I am", putting it now into the hands that you make into fists. We are going to massage
them, make them very tight. Turn the hands so that the fisted palms face down, and bring them in
front of the heart. The fists face each other but are not touching. The shoulders are down.
3) Push the fists against each other, without touching. Basically you put them into a vibrator.
Push, push, vibrate. What is inside is shaking. Where? In front of the heart. Bring it in the heart.
Sooner or later what is inside the heart and what comes with this intensive pushing intensively start to
listen to each other.
Make it intense. Why not? Why save anything for later?
4) Now offer. The hands come open, offering, palms up. The heart is in the hands. The deepest place
inside is in the palm of the hands. Accepting everything—who you are, what you are—it is all good.
Arms go down.
2nd Time
Go into your experience: is there an invitation to do it again? “Please, come again.”
1) Ride that energy as the hands come up again, palms facing up. You can safely put everything in them:
your youth, your adulthood, good times, hard times, everything about you. The heart of it is all the
same flavor, the flavor of life. Put it there, in the offering. It is safe.
2) Bring everything together: you need all of it. You cannot have just part of your self in order to awaken
the heart. Once everything is in the fist, it is all the same. Bring it closer as the closed-fist palms come
in, shoulders down, and push. The whole area begins to shake, and the heart energy will start to
become acquainted with what you have brought and will start to match it. If that is not happening,
make the pushing more intense. Give it a sense of urgency, of immediacy.
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3) Now your heart is on the palm of your hand. Everything that was good and bad before has one taste
now, one flavor. Your hands come down to your knees, and this stays open.
You cannot possibly label this experience, since the opposite is also included.
3rd Time
1) Find a sense of longing or belonging anywhere in your experience. Ride the longing, which is not the
desperate kind but the knowing longing. Put in your hands whatever else remains that you think is
not so nice.
To the heart it does not make a difference. For the heart it is juice. The heart does not know good and bad,
the things you did or did not do. Put it here.
Put here all the things you wanted to have done, wanted to say, to people who are dead or alive:
put it here.
2) All of that: one, two fists. Bring together. Relate it to the heart energy. It is where our origin is, and
our destination. Can you go deep with this, not stay on the surface? As if there are chambers in your
heart and you can go through the first, through the second into the third most inner chamber and
that comes out.
3) Coming down: widening, widening, spreading, spreading, sharing, without agenda.
4) When you are ready, sit down.
28 Exercising Flexibility
(& p. 248)
KEY WORDS
• Floating
• Flexibility
INTENTION
To explore how the body structure supports being flexible. If we fall, we come back up. If it does not
work this way, then we can try that way. The body structure will support these moves. The body will not
resist being flexible.
THE EXERCISE
1) Bring up your right knee—your right heel is in front of your left, close to the body. Place your hands
around the knee.
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2) First, expand the belly and keep breathing. Now pull in the navel as the chest goes up. Pull the chin
in, not down. Pull in; keep breathing. Then release.
3) Expand the belly, keeping it wide while you are breathing. You will not stay here.
4) Pull the belly in, and the chest goes up the chin in. Now the navel is all the way in.
5) Again extend your belly, make it big, keep breathing.
6) Pull the belly in as tight as you can. Chest is high, bring up your chest, chin is in.
7) Release.
2nd and 3rd rounds with right knee drawn into chest. See if you can make these more compact.
1) Pull in the knee closer to your body, the heel closer too, really up, tight, with the back straight.
2) Keep pulling while now extend the belly. Still pushing, bring in the belly, chest up, chin in.
Make it intense.
3) Do first the expanding belly and shifting back to pulling in the belly two more times. Release.
Do it a third round with as much space as possible in the abdominal area in the first position with the
belly expanded. Have very high breath as you pull the abdominal area in and up.
4) Rounds with the Left Knee Up
After the third round of the right knee up, very gently unwind the posture. The left knee now comes up.
Do the exercise with this leg up for 3 rounds. Pull the heel in closely to your body. Pull all the time, the
knee in to your chest. Expand your belly and now pull in the navel, chest going up, chin in.
You may feel floating, something like floating on water. If you do feel this, go along with it.
Further practice: Melting into the Center of Feeling

1) Maybe you are still floating, as if you are going a little up and down in the water.
2) Begin to breathe lightly, as if you are almost not breathing. If you like, you can make the breath soft,
or tender.
3) At the end of the inhale, you may hold the breath for a very short moment. Then let it go.
Light, light breathing.
4) When you are breathing lightly, you may become aware of a feeling, or a group of feelings, or an area
of feeling. The text of The Joy of Being asks: “Can you melt into the center of that feeling...
And rest in the inner silence you may find there?”
5) Breathe lightly and melt into the center of any feeling. In the center of the feeling, rest in the inner
silence you may find there.
Suggested passage & p.155
Kum Nye practice reveals the lightness of feeling that flows through our mental activity.
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29 Being in Time
(& p. 250)
KEY WORDS
• Wakefulness
• Mind Kum Nye
• Intelligence
• Feelings
• Intensity in space
• Go in like a humble guest
• Sparkling quality
• Lightness of feeling
INTENTION
To stimulate feelings. To wake up the intelligence in the feeling. To use relaxation, maintaining a posture
in order to wake up. Using concentration and experience in space. When the body and mind become
integrated through KN for the body, we feel calmness. KN for the mind develops clarity, actually brilliance
of the calmness.
THE EXERCISE
1) Pull up your knees, with the feet flat on the floor. The left hand is around your left kneecap, your right
hand around your right kneecap. Let the breath go down.* We are not interested in stimulating
powerful feelings. It’s just a little tightening, a little sharpening.
[*Text: leave the mouth open and leave the breath be. & p. 250]
2) Hands remain around the knees as you raise your shoulders and pull in the belly strongly. The text
suggests pushing the belly in tight as if the navel were touching the spine. Pull in, shoulders up.
Breathe a little high in the chest.**
[**Text: Loosen the neck and throat, and feel the air in the chest. & p. 250]
3) Three points: the knees are pulled up, the belly is pulled in and a little bit up, and the shoulders are up.
4) The left ear goes to the left shoulder. This is a very strange position, but can you still relax in it?
Though it is usually an unfolding, relaxation is also waking up. So relax and keep awake by pulling in the
knees, pulling in the navel, and pulling up the shoulders.
5) Flow to the other side, right ear to right shoulder. The throat becomes more and more open.
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6) As you come up and go to the right side, slightly change something in the posture so it becomes
more awakening. Perhaps you move back or forward a little bit more. Or the chin comes a little bit
more forward, a change that stimulates wakefulness. You aren’t stimulating feeling or energy—rather a
little bit more sparkling.
7) Do three complete back and forth head tilts on both sides. Then come up in the middle and release
everything at once. Legs relax.
When the body and mind become integrated through KN for the body, we feel calmness. KN for the mind
develops clarity, actually brilliance of the calmness.
2nd Time
This time as you move into the posture although it is still physical—you still pull—it is more like mind that
is working. Yes, your legs are up, your hands are holding the posture. It is more mental, more mind, more
wakefulness, in the hands and knees. The wakefulness in the belly is by pulling it up, pulling in the navel.
Your experience of it is not so physical.
1) Knees come up. Now there are the three: hands, belly, shoulders. Let the right ear go to the right
shoulder: you pull up the shoulders but it is not so physical. Of course they physically go up, but it is
more energetically a pulling up, or the space you pull up.
2) Coming up, going to the other side.
The intensity in space is what you are working with. Open up as if you are pulling up the space.
3) Head back, again to the other side…coming up…other side...coming up….other side…coming
up….other side…coming up… and release. Release the body, but it is more like space is opening
and widening. One way of opening to compact, is what we did. Now open.
See if your experience has some sparkle to it. Lightness of feeling and of thought: is there a very subtle
inviting quality? Go in as a respectful humble guest. Go in.
3rd time
1) For the last time pull up the legs, as if the legs are space, the hands are spaces. All spaces, so you work
with concentration and space.
2) Pull up. Though you are pulling in the navel physically, it is much more a space activity: pull the
space in. Shoulders up, let the right ear go to the right shoulder, coming up, other side. See if pulling
the shoulders back a little helps awakening.
Awakening is sparkling, or sharp, brilliant.
3) Go back and forth twice more. We are not working so much with feeling, but more with the experience
in space, lightness, brilliance, sparkling, as opposed to dullness or denseness. If you don’t sense it,
you can make it. It is a very good way to start: you can make it sparkling.
Ultimately KN is a space experience, experience of spaces and one space.
4) As you unwind the posture, all spaces may be tumbling, over one another, or into one another.
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30 Transparent Wholeness
(& p. 252)
KEY WORDS
• Sharp
• Generous
• Brilliant
• Precise
• 360 degree seeing
INTENTION
Creating an open, generous base. Sharpening alertness, making it more shiny, brilliant. Bringing together
a gesture of openness and clarity.
THE EXERCISE
A very mathematical, precise exercise.
1) Standing,* both arms come up and hold the opposite shoulder, left on top of the right arm. The left
arm leaves the shoulder in a gesture of opening up** coming diagonally down to the left side. The
right arm (with elbow remaining bent) moves to the right. At first hold the right arm firmly next to
you, fingers pointing up, palm facing in, your elbow against you. Feel your feet on the ground.
Take an exhale.
Work with that left hand at your side: if you move it to the left would there be more opening?
The gesture is not one of protection but of opening from a very solid base.
[*&: sitting p. 252]
[**If you sit down this hand would be on your knee].
2) Sustain that open base with the left arm and hand while the right hand and arm go up. At the same
time look up with just your eyes. Move them up vertically while the head remains still (not tilting it).
Keep looking up as you continue to extend both hands: the left one being generous, and the right
hand precise and clear.
3) Both arms shift: the right hand comes down from that position of sharpness until it is next to the right
ear. When the left arm has come up to the same level, about at the chest, the arms cross. The right
arm, the one that went up, now needs to be the arm on top, holding the left shoulder. The eyes are
forward Go ahead and look sharp, clear, cutting.
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[*Text: repeat extending and bending three times. Then switch to the other side and do three cycles.]
4) Both arms move. This time the right opens up and to the side. You don’t need to protect: make it
open towards the outside. The left arms comes in tight to the body. Stand tall.
5) As the left arm rises the eyes look up vertically. Tip of the tongue.
6) Releasing, bring the arms once more to the shoulder: the right arm that was up goes below the left.
The eyes are forward, seeing 360 degrees, and there is a sharpness to the looking.
7) Continue these movements, alternating the arm positions for a total of three cycles. When the eyes
are looking up they go at the same speed that the fingertips move up to point toward the ceiling.
You are making a statement.
Final time
The final time hold the position for a few moments. See if you can adjust to make it more brilliant.
Transparent Wholeness. Is there anything you can do to make it more sharp, more brilliant,
more shiny?
The last time you bring the one arm up there is harmony between looking up and movement. They go
together. Don’t ‘shoot up’ your eyes. Extending them might make everything more transparent, more of
wholeness.
Keep it sharp until the end. When the fingertips are the same height release them forward and down.
No hurry. Bring it with you when you sit down.
Suggested meditation: Beam of attention
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Group Five
Harmonizing
31 Balancing Inner and Outer
(& p. 257)
KEY WORDS
• mNye
• Communication
• Right language
• Ground
• Energy feeding you
• Stimulate being
• Center of gravity
• Tasting
• Mindset: Positive thoughts
• Speech Kum Nye
• Breath
INTENTION
To contact the center of gravity and the anchor of your being, which is energetic. Developing
communication with the lower body, using Speech Kum Nye and promoting the flow of feeling.
When positive thoughts and speech are brought to the body, the energy flows and starts to contribute
to your being.
THE EXERCISE
In this exercise Rinpoche suggests establishing being in contact with our center of gravity.*
It is energetic. Where is the center of gravity, the anchor of your being?
[*Text: Feel the quality of being completely stable and balanced, focusing especially on your connection
with the ground & p. 258]
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Part One 1st Time
1) Both knees are up, feet flat on floor. Place the arms around your left leg as your right leg stretches
straight in front of you, off the ground. Reach with the toes of the right foot, stretching them forward
(not pointed toward your head), continuing to have the right leg extended off the ground. Then rest.
Do the exercise the first time so the body learns what is happening and can get into it. The initial round is
usually extra heavy because not as much blood is there yet.
2) With hands wrapped a little below the left knee, once again straighten the right leg off the ground.
Back is straight: sit up, chest up, tip of the tongue, slow and deep breath. Then relax.
You always need to be in charge of the breath. Which of these breaths: slow-deep, even, or soft? Eventually
they all come together into a calm breath, but you need to decide what to do. Because it is the lower body,
the breath needs to begin with slow and deep.
3) One more time: lift the right leg up, slow and deep breathing—you cannot hold the breath.
Then relax. Notice it is heavy.
Do this several more times, continuing the slow and deep breathing. The last time you bring the leg up,
give it a reward. You can pat it and say to it, ‘Good leg.’ And relax.
4) Now switch to the other leg. Your arms go around your right knee, pull up your heels if you can.
Back straight, letting the body be a bit ‘proud’ without the negative associations. In English the word
is ‘tall’: the chest raised up a bit. Body straight, lift your left leg, decide on your breath, not doing as
much as telling your breath and the body “slow and deep.” And relax.
You need to have some blood going there. You may say again, “Poor leg…oh.”
5) Once more. The leg wants to do this. But it is a little bit new. And relax.
The communication you have with your leg is important, part of speech and therefore part of speech KN.
If you are judging the leg, do you think it helps? Find a language that is soft and tender and encouraging.
Below the head the body is very simple: lift the leg, speak to it with speech KN, “Good guy, good girl.” If you
care for your speech, the feelings flow, and there is more ease. That is what we want.
6) One last time, lift the left leg, speak to it. (and it doesn’t matter if it is baby language). Then release.
What is your last thought now? Let it be a nice one. Pull up your knees, “Good leg, good leg.”
Part Two 1st Time

1) Now you are invited to have your vision opening.
With both arms around the knees, sit straight, first gazing up, in a strong look. Then fan the looking:
open that up all the way to the corners of the eye. For this part the breath is not slow and deep. Is it even,
is it soft? Or maybe the breath is gone.
2) Bring your eyes back to the center, head comes back. Deep exhale.
3) The chest comes up so the back arches. The emphasis is now on the chest, not so much on the eyes
which are up but almost back. The mouth is wide open. Don’t close off the base of the skull: it needs
to be open. Ideally your mind is in the body, meaning you feel your arms, your feet, your knees, and
you still have contact with your legs—but now your chest is the centerpiece. Come up.
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Group Five Harmonizing
4) Just for a moment be in the 7 gestures, coming into it in one movement. Wherever you are, be in just
2 minutes. You don’t need a throne. You might push the knees out a little bit more: does that feel like
there is more happening?
After 4-5-6 days of KN something is happening in the whole body, in all kinds of places. That is the
beginning of ‘KumNye,’ internal massage, when areas start to interact with one another, to move.
At some point it will circulate, but don’t hurry: first activate everything.
Part One, 2nd Time

1) Deep exhale. See if in one movement the knees can come up arms wrapping around them:
one body moving.
Now tune into your legs, your right leg. Is your right leg already a little bit more accommodating?
There is a language there, and you can hear it. In the beginning the body wants nothing because there
is no feeling there and so it resists. Now feeling begins.
What does your right leg say?
2) Bring the arms around the left knee, straighten the right, first along the ground, and then as if the
body is doing it by itself you lift the right leg, stretching the toes forward. The breath is either long or
deep or subtle, meaning inside, finding its way. Leg comes down.
In the beginning you instruct the leg, but once activated it becomes an equal partner (as is also the case
with equal partnering visualization practices). Now there is knowing in it that you can relate to, that you
can pick up. Your leg and you are one body, but communication is from parts to part.
3) As you make contact with the energy in your leg, bring it up. See if you can relax in there. The leg is
saying much more than that; it is heavy and difficult and takes a long time. Let it go down.
The moment you touch the ground the leg says much more than “Oh thank God.”
In Kum Nye the energy starts to feed you. You might be already there: the energy in the leg begins to contrib-
ute to your being instead of not being there or being a burden or heavy. It starts to come to life and starts to
contribute as if it gives to your mind.
4) See if you can relax the ‘do-er.’ Of course there is a signal to the brain, but give a slight instruction,
telling the leg to lift as if the leg understands and does the lifting itself. Give this instruction for the
right leg to come up.
Now your leg is up for the sole purpose of stimulating your being. It is not ‘heavy’ anymore—of course it is
heavy, but its real purpose is to stimulate your being, to enliven your being.
Drink it in, draw it in, pull it in, drink it in….and release.
5) Now when your leg is down you experience what continue. Let it come in. The first book of Kum
Nye says, “Can you taste this?”* Can you taste what is happening in your legs? Let it come in and
taste it by putting it in your mouth, by swallowing it, digesting it, assimilating it.
[*Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, Ex. 3 ‘Tasting Relaxation’, p. 35.]
With a little bit more practice it doesn’t make a difference to the leg if it is straight or pulled up;
it is stimulating you either way.
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6) Bring the right leg up, knee bends and foot flat on ground: in openness it perhaps doesn’t make a
difference, energetically speaking, or in terms of the awareness level, whether the leg is straight or
pulled up. Exhale.
Can you tune into your left leg? Maybe on the surface it says ‘oh no’ but deeper inside it says different
things. It might say it is not doing well. It might say it is high time to do some exercises. Relax.
7) Your right leg can come close to your body. Leave your left leg there, straight out. What does it tell
you? Your left leg is straight, the right is up. Is there a language in the left leg?
How do you know if there is the fitting language? It’s always the case that if there is joy, it is the right
language. There must be a tinge of joy to make it right. Right means complete.
8) Lift the left leg. What is your breath? Still long and deep, or is it more subtle-inside?
What you are thinking now goes into the energy of the leg. Your energy can do all its work but your
thoughts may not be so good. Your thoughts go into your leg and your leg goes into the thoughts.
Make them nice thoughts. And down.
Your thought and the energy of the leg come together. The energy of the leg is neutral; if your thought is
positive it will flow. If it is negative it will stop. When you are guiding yourself like this have positive
thoughts, positive speech.
9) Lift your left leg. All you need to do is instruct your breath. You don’t need to work on it.
What kind of mindset do you have?
If you have 2 little kids at home and you miss them and you like them a lot, send them down your leg.
Send their pictures, their voices, their running around, their running to you when you come home,
running in the leg. And relax. (You cannot do that your whole life because the kids grow up. Then it is
time to put something else there.)
10) Experiment. Lift your left leg one more time and send your favorite music down your leg “na na na
na na….nananana, nananana”—your favorite, down the leg. Send joyful music that makes your
heart happy. And down. Did your leg like that?
Part 2, 2nd Time

1) Bring up the legs, pull them up. Now it is time to look up. Your looking up doesn’t start in your eyes;
it starts at the base of your trunk.
You are looking up through your body as if you are looking from the earth, through the body, up.
The back is straight.
Set now: looking up, the body is up, the back is straight —what is going to flow through that?
Speech Kum Nye, or part of it.
2) Eyes are back, exhale, and now bring your chest into it. Your chest goes up so you arch, and your
mouth is wide open. Pull your knees because that is where your energy is coming from—the lower
body. Pull in tight so you are pushing up the energy, up to your chest. Don’t hold your breath.
Let the energy of the heart come up, coming into the mouth as if the heart is in your mouth, in your
tongue. All the heart energy comes into the throat, the mouth, the tongue, the lips.
3) Coming back. Sit in the 7 Gestures for a moment. Have the knees be perhaps a little bit further apart
because they automatically tend to go to the same position.
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32 Harmonizing Opposites
(& p. 262)
KEY WORDS
• Breath
• Sensations
• Going deeper, even to the cell level
• Residues
• Density
• Domain of latent tendencies
• Space
INTENTION
Noticing how the ‘opposite’ sides feel, being curious about how far the feelings go. Breath, feelings and
movement become partners. The words ‘Harmonizing Opposites’ lead into the instruction of ‘going
deeper’ (the residues are always lower, deeper). Your experience becomes one of light and space, led by
feelings and sensations.
THE EXERCISE
1st Time, Right Side
1) Sitting in 7 gestures, take a breath. The right shoulder goes up and begins to rotate forward, then
down and back. The whole body stays still: just the shoulder moves. Beginning ‘Harmonizing
Opposites.’ Exaggerate the movement: as up as can be, forward as can be, down as can be, back
as can be. Don’t cut corners.
2) Without making a big deal of it, go the other way around.
See if you can make the shift. You’re sitting ‘inside’: let’s say the ‘thinker’ is in the heart area, sitting on a
chair or a pillow, watching the shoulder going up and back and down.
Keep moving, not holding. Then stop, and take a breath.
3) The same right shoulder comes up, and your head moves to that shoulder. You are opening the left
side as the right ear moves toward the right shoulder. Stretching, you might need to go a little bit
back because you are going to keep the head there as the shoulder goes forward, back and down.
The head doesn’t move; see if you can find the right position in which the neck is the longest.
4) At some point rotate the shoulder around the other direction. Always breathe through nose and
mouth. Tip of the tongue. After a while, when the shoulder has rotated up, bring the head back to
the center and the right shoulder down.
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Notice how the right side feels as opposed to the left. Don’t spend too much time telling yourself the
difference. Go into the right side and let the breath touch it. How far does that go? Is the neck also changed?
Half the neck and half the head? Let the breath touch any sensations you have on the right upper side.
2nd Time, Right Side

1) Do the practice again. The right shoulder coming up, the head bends to the right; start moving the
right shoulder forward, down and back. The left shoulder is down. Once in a while take a deep
breath to make sure the belly stays with the movement.
In Kum Nye we move slowly in order for the head to slow down, and also so that the belly can come to life.
2) Rotate around the other way. See if you can stretch your neck, stretch the circle. When you’re up,
bring the head back to the center and the arm down.
Is what you felt after the first round deeper now? Kum Nye intends the going deeper. How deep do your
feelings and sensations go on the right side? In the body?
3) The same right shoulder comes up, and the head goes to the right. Now start backwards. You always
want to do it differently; otherwise the experience tends to become automatic. Try to slow down a
little bit so the belly can remain involved. Otherwise it will go on hold.
At some point, go around the other way.
When you are up, bring the head back and the shoulder down.
How deep do the feelings and sensations go? You can instruct that. You can say: ‘Deeper.’ Not making a
judgment in there, just deeper. Rinpoche suggests there’s nothing preventing us from going to the cell level.
As if these feelings just generated can go to the cell level.
1st Time, Left side

1) Take a breath. Right shoulder remains down as feelings at/on the right side continue to go to cell
level, and the left shoulder comes up. You may want to slide your hand up your thigh and go forward
and back.
In the beginning it’s dramatically physical. See if you need to move/move slowly to have the breath ‘catch
on’ to moving and breathing.
2) At some point, gradually rotate the other way, still dramatically physical. Stop and bring the left
shoulder down.
Notice the difference on the left and the right. Maybe the right is more subtle? The left is more coarse,
meaning bigger particles.
Stay with the left. Just say, ‘Continue,’ and then you go to the left shoulder.
3) Take a breath, coming up. Is your mind soft? Caring? Accepting?
2nd Time, Left Side

Now let your left ear go to the left shoulder, making your neck as long as possible. Maybe moving a
little back, a little up, or forward. The right shoulder is down. Let it be clumsy. It doesn’t have to be
nice-looking.
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Turn around. After some rotations, lower the shoulder from the up position, and the head returns to
the middle.
4) A final time, the left shoulder goes up, the left ear moving toward it. Do this also with the breath:
breath, feelings, and movement are all partners. First the movement and the breath are together;
later, it’s the breath and the feelings.
One way would be to inhale when you go up, and exhale when you go down.
Turn around at some point.
5) Next time you’re up, the head comes back and the left shoulder goes down. How deep does the left
side go? You can say: “I'd like to go deeper.” Go deeper: is there more, via this instruction, as long as
your voice is neutral or inviting, and has no taste of judgment? After some time, take a breath.
Harmonizing Opposites: Last Part

1) The hands slide up the thighs, the shoulders go up. Within your posture, let the words ‘Harmonizing
Opposites’ float around. If there’s an area with specifically strong feelings or sensations, put those in
the mix. There are feelings, breathing, and ‘Harmonizing Opposites’.
2) Pull in the navel—we’re going to sit like this for a little bit. Don’t endure this; don’t make it a test.
Sit like this as if it is just your natural posture, how you have grown up. Pull in the navel and relax in
the posture.
3) Very slowly release—the shoulders, the navel, and go with the change. If you feel something is
‘aaahhhh’ go with it. If you start thinking it stops. Go with it. Go deeper.
The residues are always lower, deeper. Can you go deeper? Cell level?
How do you know if you’re at the deepest level? The Kum Nye text says when your experience becomes
one of space. Go deeper and it becomes light and space. Trust. Go deeper, and it becomes more space.
Feelings and sensations have led you to this open space. You have followed the feelings to opening space—no
more layers. If you hit a density or dark area, that’s very good, that’s where we want to go. Space will come.
The density is important: it is the domain of latent tendencies.
4) You can go in there, you can go in, deeper, gently.
So maybe you feel you’re coming out of it, but it will help you to go deeper.
5) Raise the shoulders: we make the access easier. Shoulders up. Navel in. ‘Harmonizing Opposites’
is the title.
6) Now release them. In the release you’re going further down—the arms going down helps you to find
the way down, like you’re an elevator, going down. That’s what the shoulders and arms can help with.
Keep going down even if the shoulders are already at their normal position. Go down. Is it dark there?
Dense? We’re in a good direction, if you’re opening space. Deep, deep down there, there are no feelings,
no sensations, no breath, seemingly.
7) Do this a last time, so that we can go still deeper. Shoulders go up. The more inner space, the easier.
Pull in the belly. If you like you can also make an ‘O’ with your mouth and pull up the muscles at the
base of your trunk.
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8) Release everything at once. As the arms go down you go down into your experience. Is the open
space more open? Is the density changed? It’s very subtle work we’re doing here.
Don’t move. Very still. Go down. Can you go deeper?
Suggested Sequence: #35 Vibrant Harmony, #32 Harmonizing Opposites, followed by

main Practice: Relieving Pressure, p.93
33 Letting Go Images
(& p. 265)
KEY WORDS
• Mind KN
• Lightness of being
• Unadulterated experience
• Energy of thought
• Awakening being
• Tap into vitality
INTENTION
Kum Nye for the mind culminates in lightness of being. In mind KN there is energy in there and
unadulterated intelligence, knowing: direct experience, not channeled through thoughts.
The energy of the thought is the feeling of the thought. Feeling will contact the inside of each thought.
Intention is awakening being. There are many thoughts in a thought (that is, thoughts cluster), and
much vitality. If you stay with the feeling instead of the content you can tap into the energy that is there.
THE EXERCISE
1) Sitting in 7 Gestures. Chest is up, breathing lightly. Can you get a sense of the strength of your
posture? Power is like internal strength that you can rely on. You want to come from the body posture.
2) In this exercises the exhale is Aah, Aah. Each time, repeat Aah two times.
1st time
You want to say it with strength on the first exhale ‘Aah, Aah.’ Then immediately after
on the next exhale we do it gently ‘Aah Aah.’
The first one is strong and there are two times of exhaling. The idea is you push it that first time.
Then right away exhale the second time, two times gentler.
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We are not singing ‘aaaah.’ It is not long and drawn out.

3) Repeat this.
2nd time
Strong and then right away softly on the same exhale.
3rd time
Right away you can ask: does it have an impact. Is something happening inside?
One last time.
Another Way to do the Exercise

In the sitting posture, bring up images such as items in your kitchen. Then on the AAHHH, they
stream away. You can use a series of images.
Suggested further practice

Go to the Center
Suggested Reading: & p.155
34 Releasing Resistance
(& p. 266)
KEY WORDS
• Kum Nye for the mind
• Awareness in the space surrounding you
• Space for the mind
• Importance of the armpit
• Stillness
INTENTION
With Kum Nye for the mind you always want to have your awareness in the space surrounding you.
The practice keeps going with awareness and energy.
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THE EXERCISE
1st Time (right arm out)
1) In the sitting posture take a breath. Place your right hand to the side, elbow against the body. Place
your other hand, the left one in your right armpit, and hold on firmly there. There is a little bit of
pressure in. In the armpit. Exhale.
Always create space in the belly.
2) Now imagine that you have to push a force out with your right arm. Don’t hold your breath as you are
pushing out. The right arm goes straight eventually, palm facing out. You may have to adjust your left
hand so it fits well in the armpit.
This first time is checking the physical aspect.
3) Come back as if your right arm is being pushed in. You want to have some weight around the right
palm. Ideally this movement is carried by the breath: the movement and the breath are not separate.
4) Expanding the arm out when you are ready, at your own pace. When your hand and arm are out to
the maximum, don’t stop there. You know what it feels like to go to the side.
Energetically and awareness-wise you can keep going in that direction, as if your arm becomes very,
very long. Don’t stop.
5) When you pull the right arm in, it doesn’t diminish what you just did; it does not get less.
You keep the openness that you pushed into.
6) Come back once more and then you push again, further and further and further.
Once you have this feeling of the arm moving to the side you can continue that feeling.
First stretch to the maximum physically and then continue that stretching with your energy and
then awareness.
7) Coming in, keep the openness but there is a pressure that is stronger than you, pushing you in.
It is all centered on the palm.
8) This last time, go in, in, in, and then out, out on the breath, as if you can move a mountain. Keep
extending awareness. The awareness stays open as your hand comes in. Continue to have a little
pressure in the armpit.
9) Releasing.
How you release is important. Don’t be sloppy. It is gracious, elegant, however you feel is a good ending.
1st Time (left arm out)

1) The hands are carried in front to the other side. Shoulders down. Take an exhale.
Let’s go. Awareness in space, right there where your left palm is pushing. Push it out.
What happens if you apply a little more pressure with your right hand in your armpit?
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In Kum Nye armpits are important.

2) Coming in. The elbow close to the trunk: compact, compact, compact.
3) Then it eases out. Push, like it is heavy. Go to the absolute maximum and then further.
Coming back, on the breath.
Do the same number of repetitions as you did with the right arm, and then release.
4) For a brief moment, sit very still, so you can be awakening feelings and have some time to expand
or circulate or begin some Nye.
2nd Time (for both sides)

Sense how the space feels on your right side and on your left. You don’t need to tell this; sense it rather.
1) Deep exhale. Right arm coming to the side, extending.
Always a flavor of exploring…making little adjustments.
2) When you come in leave it open. When you are all the way in, compact, the hands release,
come in front of the heart, left arm out to the other side, pushing, right hand in armpit.
3) Continue: Compact, shoulders down. Then you move, push against something that is even heavier.
Straight arm. Push, push, push, and release. Control… compact, compact, and release.
4) Again move to the front of the heart and to the other side. Continue, right hand pushing out, left hand
in armpit. Then coming in. Keep it intense on the coming in, as if you are barely losing ground.
You want to come to a place where you are still and the body is moving, as if you are not doing it.
Last repetitions: hold in the navel

5) During the last cycle see what happens when you hold in the navel throughout. When the navel is
pulled in, it is actually in and a little bit up. Coming in, slowly. It is work to come in. You are resisting
but you are coming in. Hold in the belly. Always have the tip of the tongue against the upper palate.
6) Even in your release, hold the belly in. Releasing, make it intense, not holding the breath.
Then release the posture, the navel.
7) As you sit, keep it up: don’t sag, don’t sink. Keep it up.
Suggested further practices

Before the exercise: 'Contacting Stillness of the Body: Sense of Space'
Afterwards: 'Beam of Attention'
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35 Vibrant Harmony - Step One

(& p. 269)
KEY WORDS
• Excavating treasures
• Vitality
• Vibrant Harmony
• Residues
• Energy flow
• Long breath
INTENTION
The basis for the practice is that the breath is long. We excavate for deeper treasures; what agitation,
envy, etc turn into. The more that residues come to the surface, the more the energy flows.
THE EXERCISE
We do this exercise called ‘Vibrant Harmony’ a little bit casually, not too big time.
1) Exhale to start. Take a breath. Make an ‘O’ with your mouth, but not only with your mouth. You make
an ‘O’ with all those muscles at the base of your body: the genital-anus area. There are whole noodles
of muscles there. You pull them up. Let’s go: make your mouth like this ‘O’, and inside, pull up the
floor of your body. Breathe: we’re going to hold this for a while.
2) Relax. Go to the feelings.
3) Again, make a circle with your mouth, an ‘O,’ and pull up the floor of your trunk, all those muscles at
the front and the back: pull them up. Then release.
4) Do it one more time: an ‘O’, pull it in, also pull your navel and everything up, and then silently say
‘Vibrant Harmony’ in your language, or in English. After some time, at least about a minute, release.
Where is something happening in the body that wasn’t there before you started?
5) Let the breath touch it. Also put the words there: ‘Vibrant Harmony.’ Now you have feelings,
breathing, and the words, ‘Vibrant Harmony.’
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35 Vibrant Harmony - Step Two

(& p. 270)
KEY WORDS
• Breath
• Resistance
• Right and left
• Breath, vision, movement
• Tasting, savoring, drinking
• Space opening
• Spontaneous burst of joy
• Awareness
INTENTION
At some point the body tells you what you should focus on, or what you’re skipping. Merging breath,
movement, feeling, and awareness of space, vision clears. Merging total openness and breath, becoming
lighter with awareness of space.
In the beginning, we move through fog: it’s heavy, it’s dense, it is effort. After a while, it becomes clear
and light, and if the breath and the movement are together, you may have spontaneous bursts of joy, a
moment of happiness, or a very loving thought about something.
THE EXERCISE
Right Side
1) Take a big breath. Let go of incoming thoughts by focusing on the body, the experience within,
an awareness of the space that your body is in.
2) Let the chin go to the right and a little bit up so your vision is diagonally (not vertically) up,
about 70 degrees. Push up your chin a little.
3) Gently come back, with maximum vision. Once more the chin goes back to the right the same way,
looking up, the chin up. Then let the energy of the breath go to the abdominal region, and let that
area catch up.
4) Coming back, doing so on the breath if you can. The breath is carrying the movement.
Moving to the middle, take a deep exhale and then do very light breathing going back to the right.
We do all kinds of breath work. This one is light: light breath.
Going all the way to the right. And now let your mouth drop open a little bit. Let the stomach catch up:
breathe in the belly—it’s the exhale that you want.
5) Coming back. One more time: Breath, vision, movement.
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Rinpoche writes that if we do these practices, [paraphrasing]: Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere a joyful
feeling bursts up.” Watch: maybe suddenly you have a joyful, brief moment somewhere in the body.
6) Coming back. Go to the middle.
In the beginning, we move through fog: it’s heavy, it’s dense, it is effort. After a while, it becomes clear and
light, and if the breath and when the movement are together, you may have bursts of joy.
7) Let’s do it once more to the right. Explore. Up.
Now go slower, not holding back but savoring the movement. To the middle. Breathe.
And for a moment look at your left and your right side of experience. Wouldn’t you agree: the right is
lighter, more open? Is there more joy anywhere on the right? Just taste the difference: it’s your experience.
8) Coming back. One more time, same direction.
When the vision and the movement and the breath come together, as we’re practicing now, you might have
spontaneous experience like joy, a moment of happiness or a very loving thought about something.
Coming back. Go slower. As if every inch has a pocket of joy in it.
9) Continue several more times: Is there a texture to this space? Coming back, slower: so many little
experiences. What was dense is coming to life.
Left Side
The body doesn’t know yet how nice it is if we go to the left too, so there may be a slight resistance.
But you know. You can tell the difference.
1) Let’s go to the left. Your body will learn quickly. Looking up, not vertically, but to the corner of
the room.
2) Coming back. Do you sense that your heart region is more engaged? By talking about tasting, and
savoring and drinking? To the middle. Exhale.
3) Let’s go again. Is the body already less resistant?
4) Returning. Is the space opening up for you? First it was dense, and now it’s already different, maybe?
To the center: exhale. Give it your best.
5) Coming back.
In the beginning the body was resistant, then maybe less resistant. At some point the body is telling you
what you should focus on, or what you’re skipping.
Merging breath, movement, feeling, an awareness of space.
To the center. We’re not going to the right, but does the right feel well? Returning to the left.
Is your body more alive?
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6) Flowing back. If you go slower, you can better savor it all.

Exhale. If you exhale, your belly can remain engaged more easily.
7) Let’s do one more time. Is your vision clearing?
Flowing back through space, to the center.
Suggested Followup Practice: Calming Intense Energy
36 Relinquishing Negativity
(& p. 271)
KEY WORDS
• Small rituals
• Awareness
• Heart
• Open up
• Feeling
• Body
Passage from The Joy of Being

Breathing lightly, we can melt into the center of the feeling and rest in that inner silence
(‘Feeling—Body’ p. 93)
INTENTION
Loosening and opening up the body and making the infrastructure more healthy. Extending awareness
past limits; awareness can go very fast. When there is feeling tone, go to the center of the feeling and rest
in the inner silence.
THE EXERCISE
1) Sitting, bring up your right knee and pull your right heel close to and in front of your left ankle.
Interlace the fingers around the right knee and pull it in close to the chest.
2) The spine arches: come up, bringing the chest up, and arch back. You have to find the right place
for the head, not extended all the way but maybe three-quarters arching back. Ideally the chest keeps
going up.
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Physically you cannot go up anymore, but your intention or your energy—certainly your awareness from
the chest on—continue to go up. Then there is no limit to how high it can go. Imagine that the chest, energy,
and awareness keep going up. Awareness can go very fast.
Don’t wait for new instructions: keep going up.
3) Very gently come back. Loosen the neck to the side, perhaps move the neck once around one way and
then the other way.
4) Take a deep breath, haaaa, exhale and reverse the position: bring up your left knee in front of the right
ankle, clasp it, etc.
These Kum Nye postures are like little rituals: you go in to it. Loosen up the body and make the infrastruc-
ture, the inner architecture, more healthy.
5) Go up, the chest arching, head three-quarters back, now the mouth open. Then the chest goes up
then energy goes up and then awareness goes up, awareness between the chest and the center of the
sky. It goes up and up and up.
6) Open up. Open up the chest. Open up—let whatever is there be free.
Open up the doors to your heart, the windows to your soul. Open up, let it go up.
Be in this a little longer. Your eyes don’t move. You can go higher.
Everything is up.
Open your heart, let out what is in there. Give it space.
7) Very gently come back. Loosen up the neck ever so slightly so you do not disturb the feeling.
8) If you do have feeling tone, maybe in the chest or even outside the chest, the suggestion is: go to the
center of that feeling and rest in its inner silence. There is a feeling, perhaps a wave or an area: go to
the center and then rest in its inner silence.
Suggested Reading: & p. 93
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Group Six
Opening Presence
37 Opening Mind and Body
(& p. 274)
KEY WORDS
• Awareness
• Space
• Soft
• Vigor
• Fast
INTENTION
Joining awareness of the body, awareness in the body, with awareness in space. Giving space in the body
so the mind can unfold and have space to be.
THE EXERCISE
7890
We do the exercises in the space in which we put our awareness, so awareness is in the space.
yuiop
jkl;' 1st Time: Soft
./ The suggestion is that this first round be ‘soft.’*
&*() 1) Stand and create space for yourself so that you have the room to bring your arms up and sideways.
{{{ Awareness in the space: join awareness of the body, awareness in the body, with awareness in space. The
arms go forward and up.
*[“At first, repeat these six postures in sequence softly and gently. When you become more experienced,
you can practice the whole series with more vigor.” ({ p. 279)]
2) Softly move the arms to the side, at shoulder level. Soft breath, soft movements—to the side.
The shoulders are down.
Softly extending in this position: always when the body is like this, your energy and awareness can
keep going. Also smooth your breath. Release.
During all of this, go through space with sensitive mind.
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Group Six Opening Presence
3) Not stopping, come forward so your sensing mind makes contact with space. Can you somehow get
your shoulder blades in? The points of light there, your pressure points, need to stay open.
4) The arms go up, touching space as you are going up. Now your feet seem to be going down and
your hands seem to be going up, palms up. Go ahead, go to the edge, physically. Then you surrender
as awareness unfolds upwards. Like you roll out the carpet: to shoulder height you roll up, awareness
up. Awareness keeps going up.
5) Touching space bring the arms down sideways, palms forward, fingers spread, the shoulders down.
Now the fingers are in space.
6) Softly moving down, soft breath, soft movement through space, Arms remain at shoulder height
going forward.
7) Now you do two things at once: your right arm keeps going forward and your left pulls back, palms
front is going in. You want to keep that opposing effect.
When your left hand is at your shoulder, you briefly face the side. You are aware of space of your side,
you make contact and then the left arm goes back.
Now stretch, looking forward, looking above the fingers of the right hand.
8) Softly coming back, soft breath. Your right hand stays forward until the left reaches it. Then your left
goes forward and your right comes in. Keep pushing the left in that forward position, and start
pushing the right back. The right palm faces the right side, make contact, coming through space.
Then forward, the hands go flat, and down. Stay with this movement.
Do an extended exhale.
2nd Time: with vigor

The text suggests you then do the movement with vigor. The movements could be faster but let’s not do it
this way but with strength and power as you go forward. The whole body is vigorous.
1) Arms in front, palms face forward. As the arms go to the side there is strength: nothing soft any more.
You still move gently but the whole posture, the movements, are vigorous. Going down.
Don’t lose the vigor, don’t let it go so that you need to and catch up again. Stay with vigor.
2) Going forward, then arms up overhead.
As if each fiber, each cell are inundated with vigor.
(Book: Then move your hands apart unitl your arms are spead out to the sides at should height. p. 275)
Arms to the sides, coming down to shoulder height, spread the fingers, vigorous posture.
3) Arms come forward to shoulder height; the left arm stays forward, the right arm comes in.
The whole body is filled with vigor.
The right arm comes back. Keep pushing the left forward.
There is no letting up, which means, not getting less.
4) Reverse, make it intense. Coming back and down.
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3rd Time: with speed

Now a little bit more with speed: arms come forward, and continue the exercise.
Then sit down for the main practice.
Suggested follow-up meditation: Beam of Attention
38 Releasing Beauty—Two Ways

(& p. 280)
KEY WORDS
• Lifting the veil
• Transparency
• Traveling through and feeling space
• Fear and Not knowing Fear
• Configuration of energy
INTENTION 1
The posture is an initiation into a certain symbolic existence, and has an effect on the energy in space.
A certain configuration of your energy starts to flow harmoniously, empowering you.
THE EXERCISE
1) The arms go up, palms facing forward: including space and opening it up, lifting the veil so that
suddenly you can see very, very, very, far into space.
With Kum Nye all material, all matter, becomes more transparent so you can see its makeup.
Matter becomes more like space—your body. Do justice to the posture.
The photo in The Joy of Being shows the palms are facing forward. In the text it says sideways, palms
face out, elbows bent 90°. Go with the text, so the palms are facing out. But after you have done one ver-
sion, say 25 times, to the point that you really know that experience, then turn the palms the other way
and experience the difference.
2) Arms go sideways. Feel as they travel through space until the arms are bent at the elbows and remain
up, parallel to the floor.
When we experience fear, it’s probably because we’ve contracted, and after the contraction we say we
are afraid. It’s also fear that comes when you’re entering into a larger space. Since we really are on the
threshold of the future, whether we know it or not, of course there is fear. So open.
88
This posture with the palms forward and open and up, stimulates internally a configuration that makes
you say: “I’m not afraid.” There’s fear, maybe, but Being is not afraid. When we have open hands we get
a configuration of energy that doesn’t know fear.
3) The arms go forward and then bring only the left arm to the side as the right extends forward (palm
out). The left arm doesn’t go all the way back: the elbow remains bent and the palm faces out. No
fear: there is a configuration of energy in which fear does not come up. When fear comes up, it is
because we didn’t see it coming.
4) Coming back with the left arm, the right slowly comes in. These are very special movements that
generate a certain configuration of energy flow. The right palm faces to the right—although your
visual eye cannot see to the right, you know the right. The right is within your space. Again: when
space is open you see the fear as it is coming. When fear has come up we have not seen it coming.
5) The right hand goes forward. They already move together now, an important moment: left and right
together. They each contribute to a configuration of no fear. And then you elegantly open up:
it’s done, it’s going.
Suggestion
This exercise can be done after #16 Space of Joy. If so, the following intention can operate:
Releasing Beauty: Done Differently (after #16 Space of Joy &)
INTENTION 2
Using bodily movements in The Joy of Being to open space energetically, with awareness, and your body.
Feeling hands as they travel through space.
Includes more space, lifting the veil, being in more than one place at a time.
THE EXERCISE
As you move feel the hands travelling through space and feel the space they travel through. Can you
remain aware of the area where you came from: way above your head to now at shoulder height.
In energy terms it is more open now because you were there, with your awareness, with your body.
When one arm and then the other goes to the side, consider:
Usually we are aware of the arm that is in front of us. Usually we stop where the physical body stops.
Keep going with your right hand or the energy that is in it and extend your awareness, starting with the
shoulder, the arm, the palm, and then going forward and out. Keep going in the same way on the left side
with your palm facing to the left.
In the beginning you might feel you have to push through some heaviness. That is because there wasn’t
much awareness. If you do this a few times it will be lighter and lighter.
In The Joy of Being you can learn to be in more than one place at the same time: you are in your right
hand, your left hand and you are in infinity in front of you and infinity on your left. Can you be in both?
89
Theoretically you can—it maybe takes a little bit of practice. You can because awareness is already there.
You only need to lift the veil, open the curtain.
If you start thinking, you have lost connection with the infinity in front or the infinity on the right.
When you go from one repetition to another:
At the point when both hands are down go all the way up. How do your hands feel? Do you feel there
is some sensitivity in the hands, in the fingertips? That sensitivity can go forward and upward and
sideways. It can radiate. Why? Because it already does that.
The final time the hands come down, release both hands. The space you are going through will be more
open for you. Can you take this experience—small or big—with you?
Suggested Practice: Hello to Places Where Life Doesn’t Seem To Be Yet ( {)
39 Expanding Joy
(& p. 282)
KEY WORDS
• Breath
• Activating energy
• Adding and mixing
INTENTION
The breath must be activated with all the aspects of this exercise of expanding joy. Be aware of the timing
of holding the postures, releasing, and what happens in-between.
THE EXERCISE
The suggestion is to start the whole exercise with a few neck rotations, not too many, just so the neck is
relaxed. Do this briefly, so the head is free.
Throughout, arms are as straight as possible: you want to have energy in the hands.
1) The first time is a run-through to get the parts of the exercise. Standing comfortably, the arms go up,
out to the sides, to shoulder height.
2) Turn the palms outward. It is nice if you do this second step a while because you want the palms as
straight as possible, which also brings the energy in the hands.
3) Raise the shoulders. The head cannot go up and stay out of it; you want to go in it, and high breath
needs to sink. Higher, higher, and then settle.
4) The arms and shoulders go back.
5) Slowly release the arms down.
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It is very important not to drop the arms down automatically or unmindfully. At this point of bringing
down the arms the breath usually changes, first of all because of the physical aspect, but also because the
breath suddenly has a lot more to do. All kinds of activities are happening because of the exercise, and the
breath needs to be activated to be able to do its work.
2nd Time
How long do you do stand in this posture with the arms to the side and the palms out? Ideally you decide
beforehand—otherwise your mental activity is going to be busy with “well, this is enough, etc.”
The second suggestion is to hold all the postures for the same amount of time, up the same amount as
down, not too rigid. For this reason it is nice to practice with other people, or to have guidance or do the
exercise with a tape. They all cut down on the mental activity.
1) The arms go up sideways, with the palms down. Then turn the palms. Go up: all the attention is high
in the shoulder. Then settle in it, with your alertness in both hands at the same time.
2) The shoulders stay up as the arms go back. Can you go back further?
Sometimes the head needs to move a little, so it doesn’t freeze the way a computer can freeze.
Release. Stay with it when the hands go down. As you do this, exhale so that whatever is lagging behind
has a chance to catch up.
The lower body has a slower speed than the upper head region. If you exhale, the lower body has a chance to
catch up, to stay together with the rest of the body.
Remaining times
Arms go sideways, turn the palms, push the wrists forward, push. Raise the shoulders, never holding the
breath, tip of the tongue. Coming back, back, back, a little bit down with the shoulders. Then release,
guiding the arms down. As you come down, this might be a good moment to exhale. Pull in the belly.
40 Flowing into Space

(& p. 284)
KEY WORDS
• Flowing
• Awareness
• Opening
• Space
INTENTION
Flowing into space, just as the name indicates. Much more terrain is a part of you.
91
THE EXERCISE
1) You want to have space to do this. Toes and feet are straight. Take a deep exhale.
2) The left hand goes on the hip, the right hand comes up, and the palm goes up, facing the sky as parallel
to the ground as possible, without strain. First the right arm is straight, palm up. The contact is above
the head. Your awareness is in space, above the head—all the way to the sky. Arch a little bit, and do not
collapse on the left. You want the right side to be open.
3) Coming up, the right arm goes down and then goes back up. Now the right palm faces down and to
the left as you arch all the way to the left. Still not collapsing on the left, now you reach. Your left
elbow is pointing in the same direction (not back or forward). Your weight as you stand is distributed
through both legs. Then coming up, arm goes down
3) Continue these two movements a total of three times on this side. Be eager, with your awareness
continuing up, up, up when your palm goes up. Much more terrain is part of you. Arching a little
bit, stand on both legs.
4) Coming up.
When you come over and the palm moves down, flowing into space, the name of the exercise. Keep reaching.
The last time when you come down make it a grand gesture: space and hands together,
5) The right hand floats to the right hip, the left hand releases and comes up, palm up, arching. You are over
both feet…coming up. Then the left hand comes up, palm down, right elbow, same direction [same plane].
6) Coming up.
7) Continue these two movements with the left hand and arm up for three repetitions. When the palm
is up, try to get the hand horizontal. It is not pointing anywhere but the palm faces the sky parallel to
the ground. Arch. When the left hand and arm come down the last time, be with both hands and space.
Suggested practice after the exercise: Beam of Attention ( {)
41 Evoking Presence
(& p. 286)
KEY WORDS
• Fully participating: both moving and not moving parts
• Wholeness of the body
• Engaged
• Body in mind, mind in body
• Evoking presence
• Residues
• All the cells wakeful
• Vividly present energy
92
& p. 287
…note the wholeness of the body: the parts that are not moving are fully participating in the movement.
Note the merging of mind and body as awareness permeates the movements.
INTENTION
Eventually, this is one movement. 'Evoking Presence's a transition to Kum Nye Dancing in which the
exercises are all expressions of presence.
This exercise can be both a conclusion and what leads to more Kum Nye. The phrase from The Joy of
Being: “emerging of mind and body as awareness permeates the movements” is what we need to do
in daily life to strengthen Kum Nye and all the insights associated with it. Note the wholeness of body
when you are on a bicycle, in a meeting, when you are by yourself, when you do afternoon practice. The
awareness of body is from top to bottom, side to side, front to back. Notice the whole unit. The parts
that are not moving—not thinking, and not talking (maybe 80% of it all) are fully participating.
With this Evoking Presence, all the residues open up and participate. When they have participated they
are not there any more, temporarily.
Suggestion
Even sitting and talking you can feel wholeness of body. At the beginning you need to check in—you
need to have navel, hips, feet, ears, nose all engaged. In the beginning it is like a quick scan everywhere
and then of course ‘in.’ The body parts and not just what is physical need to be engaged.
You can break down this exercise or you can gently let the parts follow one another. These steps here do both.
THE EXERCISE
Part One (steps one and two in the The Joy of Being)
The exercise is called ‘Evoking Presence.’ It is the last one in The Joy of Being.
In the beginning we are always trying to figure out if we are doing it right. Then as we are more at ease it
goes more in the direction of Kum Nye Dancing.
1) Standing tall. Breathing through nose and mouth, tip of the tongue, the toes pointing forward,
same direction.
Bring the hands in front of the heart with the palms down and the right hand on top of the left. There is
a little space—an inch or so—between the hands. Can you sense the space between the hands?
Of course the heart area, the chest area, is included.
2) Moving slowly but as if you need a strong force to do so, the hands come apart, palms beginning to
face out as if you are showing [them] going to the side and a little bit down.
3) Let’s do this again: now the other hand is on top. We are adding two features:
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The chest is up, and the navel is kept pulled in. Breathing is gentle through nose and mouth even with
the navel pulled in, as if you need to apply strong power. The hands come apart and you flex the wrists a
little bit and push to the side, all the way back.
4) Releasing, coming back forward, place your other hand on top.As you keep going, extend the arms
from the elbows, and again bring them toward the back. Keep going out, turn the wrists, with strong
force. As you do remember this The Joy of Being passage, “note the wholeness of the body” (page
287).
The parts that are not moving are fully participating: your hips, your legs, your gut, your bottom, your
head, everything—your feet your knees, are all included, as if the whole body is doing this, not just the
arms and shoulders. When the whole body participates in the movement, the mind and the body merge.
Body becomes mind and mind becomes body. The result is awareness.
2nd Time
1) Doing it again: this time place the other hand on top (it doesn’t matter so much which one now).
Palms down. In a moment we are once more going to go through it all, engaging the whole body,
meaning that mind is everywhere in the body: in the ears, the nose, the hair, teeth, the tongue, the
lips…everywhere: the spine, the hips.
The mind is in every part of you. Body and mind are merged. Body is mind, and mind is body. Then an
awareness arises out of that union; that is what we are looking for.
2) Coming apart, with strong force: the whole body is involved in this power. When you flex the hands,
the whole body is doing this: your butt, your navel, your gut, your thighs, your knees, your feet, your
will power, your eyes, your ears, everything pushes this to the side. The chest is high, and the belly is
tucked in.
Release. That is the first part.
When the mind is in the body, sooner or later you will feel that, as if all your cells have a mind quality,
a wakefulness.
Part Two (Steps Three and Four in The Joy of Being)

1) In this second part start as you did at the beginning of the first: right palm on top of the other, both
palms down but they are not touching. The whole body is engaged.
2) The upper (right) hand is going to move to the right. The lower hand stays exactly where it is, at
heart level. The right arm opens up and comes to at a 45° angle. Stretch the arm and push the palm
out. The right arm is as straight as it can be.
Theoretically, everything is in this posture, as if your knees are in it—not only where they are now, but in
your hands that stretch out…as if your knees are in there in your gut, your bottom, your power, your navel,
your eyes and ears. Everything is in each part of the posture.
3) Then bend the right elbow and turn the right palm up, parallel to the sky.
Rinpoche says to hold it for a while. It is not like waiting out the minutes, but rather seeing if every part
of the body is engaged. How long is a while? In the beginning until the mind is everywhere. Then a
while is until you are happy to stand like this. Physically this may be difficult but there is a little time you
can go through that, like “move through it.”
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The first way to engage is to sense: your legs, your feet, your back. But when the body is in the mind and the
mind is in the body, it means that in each particle of you, everything else is there. In your left hand, that is
at the heart level, there are your head and eyes and your ears and your heart and your bottom.
Everything is everywhere. Then the body is mind and the mind is body.
4) The body is warming up, the mind is enlivening, and then you undo the whole structure. Gracefully
(is one word), mindfully (is one word). As you undo the posture it is as if in the movement everything
of you is there: your eyes are in the arms moving down, your ears, your back, your heart, your gut.
The wholeness of the body means each part contains the whole.
‘Evoking Presence,’ it is called. There is no room for residues if we are fully present, because we use all the
energy to be present. All the residues have opened up and participated. When they have participated they
are not there any more, temporarily.
Reverse the hands

1) Come back into position and now take the other (left) hand on top. The lower hand is at heart level
and stays that way. The left goes up at a 45 degree angle, the palm is facing out. Test if it is true: is
everything in your upper arm? In your right eye, is the whole posture there? Is your heart in your
gut? Is your heart in your feet?
2) Bend at the elbow and turn the hand palm up.
Evoking presence could be very gradual, but for some people it could happen quickly. They could feel very
tearful. Some may feel a jump in energy level. Present is normal, being present. If we return to more and
more presence there is a sense maybe of appreciation, or of just plain happy.
3) Undo the whole posture, showing all of you… the arms going down. Not just the arms: all of you is in
the movement.
4) Then the arms come forward to the chest level. This time the palms are facing the heart. The fingers
are overlapping. We first had the palms down. We now have them facing the heart.
5) Reverse the hands.
Part Three (Steps Five and Six in The Joy of Being)

1) Turn the palms outward, and again move the arms to the side, all the way down the palms still
facing outward.
2) Coming back up, the hands move to the same position facing the chest, with the other hand now in
front. The hands come in towards each other, palms facing the chest, the heart, and the fingertips are
almost touching.
3) Turn the palms so they are facing outward and flex the wrists—there is a little angle in them. Turn the
arms out and start to move them to the side, a powerful gesture. You move slowly but powerfully.
Keep your hands flexed, all the way back, and stand for a moment.
4) Release the posture, relaxing the belly.
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Part Four (Steps Seven and Eight in The Joy of Being)

1) The arms come forward to heart level. The left palm is up, and the right palm is down, on top of the
left. The lower hand remains where it is, facing up, while the right arm and hand come up and extend
to the right at a 45° angle, the palm facing out. The chest is up and the navel is in.
2) Releasing the belly, the right hand comes in and trades places with the left. Now the right hand is
below the left, with the right palm facing up. The left palm faces down, on top of the right.
3) While the right hand stays in front of the heart with palm up—offering, open, present—the left hand
goes up straight, at a 45 degree angle. The left palm faces out and the fingers tips are up. Feel both
the right hand opening, supporting the heart, and the left hand. .Pull in the navel.
4) Release the left hand. Bring it back in front of the chest, and let the arms go down from there.
5) As the arms go down your upper body goes forward and down too. All the way down: you don’t need
to reach the ground but just hang forward and down. Move the chin a little bit forward. See if that
helps you to release the inner air
6) Coming up. Gently return to a standing position. Now comes an important sentence. Standing
straight “deeply relax into your vivid present energy.” Actually it is better to say “deeply relax into
vividly present energy.” The energy is not even yours any more.
Relax in it. Means not sinking, maybe a little bit but more like enter it so everything is vividly present
energy. You are not on top of it and so it seems to be below you, but you enter it—sometimes you go
down a millimeter or a centimeter with the purpose of embodying it, not of sinking in it.
Relax in the vividly present energy.
7) Delicately return to sitting.
Suggested Practice: What is it You Want to Tell Me? ( {)
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Establishing Your Practice
Awareness in Eight Places
First the 7 gestures
Second all gestures at the same time, which translates into the mind is in the body.
Then you might like to add this simple practice:
1) Let your awareness touch the soles of your feet

2) Let your awareness touch the knees
3) Let your awareness touch the base of your trunk.
4) Let your awareness touch the navel.
5) Let your awareness touch the center of the chest.
6) Let your awareness touch the throat.
7) Let your awareness touch the forehead.
8) Let your awareness touch the top of the head.
Then all points at the same time.

If we think, then those connections are lost, which is really not so bad. It is how quickly you can come
back that matters.
All of these things are practices, not a matter of being measured if you are doing it right or wrong.
With practice awareness stays longer, and comes back more easily.
All you need is “I would love to learn this,” not “I have to”, “I should”, or “I cannot.” Your mindset is
“I would love to learn this.”
Keep doing the 7 gestures, until they are all there. One or two are less well developed, or the points are
after that…Keep doing that "tuc, tuc, tuc, tuc, tuc, tuc, tuc. "
They start to establish themselves. Some are weaker than others.
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Doing Kum Nye

The first step is always:
1) Localize the feelings. The practice in the chapter on Body/feelings suggests: Can you sense a feeling
tone. Your first contact with the feeling might be the tone.
What makes it THIS feeling? That is the feeling tone.
2) With the second step you can start again: Let the breath touch this feeling tone. Allow the combined
experience of feeling tone and breath: allow that to expand. You have to work a little to open up space
and direct it.
3) Go outside the body. As you are merging the feeling tone and the breath, let it go outside the body,
Follow it. It probably dissolves into space. Right there where it dissolves: is there a touch of joy? It is
not an emotional or psychological joy—some sparkle of light maybe?
4) Follow the joined feeling tone and the breath outside the body. At some point it dissolves into
space…right there, contact that moment.
If the feeling disappeared and you go back, you might find another set of feelings on a deeper level.
It turns out there are layers in the beginning. So go back where you were and go a little deeper as if
you go beneath or inside.
Feeling tone may be more subtle and breath may also be more subtle. Give it freedom, let it go outside
the body.
Context from Woodbrooke retreat is section Feeling/Body pp.91 ff. Day 1 July 25, 2011
Opening Up
Listen and open up.
Be aware that parts of us are not open. They are holding.
Start simple. You open your eyes. You feel. You listen. Listen more; listen deeper. Deeper is opening.
You don’t have to open up psychological stuff, your soul on table.
Open up.
Woodbrooke retreat, Day 1 Monday July 25, 2011
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Exhale at the Start

Make it a habit to always breathe in the belly before you start something new.
Breathe in the belly as you start.
The belly expands when you inhale but it is the exhale that matters.
Woodbrooke retreat, Instruction at the beginning, done with (&) #4 Inviting Feeling.
Awareness Sitting
Suggested practice after #14 Evoking Space
You hear many instructions, but twhat is the same is that there’s body awareness, your awareness is in
the space above the head and also your awareness in the space around you.
You would probably agree that the awareness in the space above your head is more alive than the space
where you have not done much. You need it.
Can you stabilize that awareness? If you drift off, you want to come back.
The way to not drift off is to be in the body. Especially make contact with the feelings within, and then
you’re much less likely to drift off.
Awareness in the body, experience within—the nye is what supports you.
From that, bring your awareness in this space. Then it will be much more stable. You don’t do it with
your thoughts.
Contacting Stillness in the Body

1) Take some exhales.
2) If there is mental activity (‘stuff’) in the head, you can make space around it greater by creating more space.
One way to do this is to focus on stillness. There is a connection between physical stillness and space.
3) Close eyes now to start.
4) Can you feel/sense the stillness of the physical body? You don’t need to report because then you
are not sensing.
5) Once you sense the stillness of the body, what happens to your sense of space?
6) Can your sensing of stillness turn into contacting the stillness, sensing its texture, taste, feeling?
7) Make contact. You can actually take these elements in as if you swallow them and allow them to go
to the heart.
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Hello to Unalive Places

This practice can be done after #38 Releasing Beauty
1) Eventually we will feel Kum Nye in the entire body and the space around us. But for the moment let
us focus first on the face, the head, the upper body, and the arms. Do you feel sensations and feelings?
That means life in the body.
For most of us it is not so difficult. A little bit of Kum Nye restores the experience of life in the body, at least
on a surface level. Sensations are more surface, and feelings can go much deeper. Just as there is infinity
outward there is also infinity inward. Feelings can reach that.
We are going to do this practice for a while.
2) First take time to focus on: where do you experience life in the body? Do not move on to the next
part until you are comfortable—all these places where you feel something.
3) After 5-7 minutes, go to an area in the head or the upper body where presently you are not
experiencing anything. That is the whole practice.
Bring your attention there: that is all. Don’t add any other practice to it.
As if you walk there, as if you slide there, as if you just go there and say, “Hello. Here I am. …Hello.
There you are.”
4) After a while you go to another area that also seems not to have sensations and feelings yet.
Decide What To Do During the

Time between Exercises
The time in between exercises is important. What to do with that little gap? Decide.
1) One way is to take some time. The internal activation of energy will continue, even if the arms are
down. It doesn’t stop, and you want it to merge with the breath. The exercise will keep working. You
want it to continue which it can do for between 5 and 10 minutes, or much longer, even a whole day.
2) Sometimes if you are stimulating and transforming energies, take a brief break. You can use the
experience as the starting point for your next exercise.
During the break you keep massaging what you are experiencing. In this case you do not need any
transition because you are adding and mixing, adding and mixing.
If you do not decide, likely the activation is cut off, as if you squeeze off the previous experience,
and tie it off.
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Basic Practices for Speech

and Mind Kum Nye
Light of Healing Awareness
Speech Kum Nye (Listening, Interacting) and Mind Kum Nye
EXERCISES FOR THE MIND

Awareness smoothes out the flow of perceptions and lessens the grasping quality inherent in perceiving
and interpreting experience. Relaxation gives us the inner space we need for feelings to flow throughout
the body, and meditation engages this flow of feeling and expands and deepens it. This is the priceless
value of Kum Nye: it integrates the energies of body, senses, and mind with the transformative power of
awareness, turning all aspects of our embodiment toward universal benefit.
& page 144
1. At first when sitting, it perhaps helps if the eyes are closed. Eventually we want to be able to sit with
open eyes. As you sit, go in. Eventually the internal environment is clear, transparent, with a sense of
vibrancy. It can be more or less.
2. Go and look inside, but not like a police detective. Go inside and just look for treasures.
The dark areas turn out to be treasures. Go look around: your awareness can move. Look for what has
stayed behind. Those areas might be your sweetest parts, so would you like to go find them? Could be in
a little area under your armpit, could be the right side of your right eyeball. Just look.
3. Loving, caring, not manipulating, not adding thoughts. Like a gentle touch of awareness. It is actually
the light of awareness doing this work.
4. If you find an area that is dense, stay with it. The energy of the breath comes there. See if the light of
awareness can gently move in a little bit. No thoughts. Once you are in and feel it is beginning to move
a little bit, see if there is meaning there. It is not a thought, not something you get. It is something that
comes if you ask, “What is going on here, what is the meaning, what message do you have, what are
you telling me that I did not hear before?”
THE PROCESS
You listen, experience, hear, understand, and then move to another area. No adding of thoughts.
Then go to another area.
Stay with it. The light of awareness will begin to let it heal. It will mature as it grows. Don’t hunt for
experiences.
Woodbrooke retreat, after sequence of (&199) Body and Mind Balance and (exercise #?) Mind and Body
in Space
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On Circulating Energy
Usually we associate the name of this exercise with internally circulating energy. It is true that if the lower
body is relaxed and open, then whatever happens can circulate. Usually it circulates in our head and in
our our throat. Speech, mind, mental activity routinely circulate there, in the head. Theoretically if they
are moving through the body and something happens—whether a good experience or a bad experience
— the experience circulates. Right away this is going and now you throw in a sausage and of course it
becomes minced meat. So you have a sausage, you have a bad feeling, but if this goes up [circulates] then
it just goes back into minced meat.
If you have a thought and it stays, it means this circulating is not working anymore. Consider the stay-
ing of the thought as a signal: in meditation and psychology it is a sign that you are ignoring something
or something wants to come out. But in Kum Nye when something is not included, it means there is a
certain part of the body that’s more active then everything else.
If you include the whole body then a good experience and a bad experience in Kum Nye doesn’t matter.
You want to play with, allow and bring up a bad experience or thought, so that the energy is not tucked
away somewhere for the next 20 years but can come and flow through the body. That is one circulation
of energy.
There is also the circulation of energy in space, in the area you are in. You know your arms only can
go ‘this far’ and also you don’t want to intrude in other people’s spaces, but we also can do circulation
of energy in the space around us. The bottom line of circulation is that the energy becomes clear. The
more it circulates the more it purifies. When an area is dense it is because the energy is not circulating.
That means something is holding.
If the space between two people is not clear and open, it means you have an opinion and I have an
opinion and they will never meet because the space in between is dead. You can do the most fantastic
practice
internally in your room, but when you see that person, there is the dead space again. This space needs
to clear up.
The clearing up is always the same process and that is part of it. You can invite other communicative
processes. Clearing is half of the job. Now that it is clear, can you interact in a way that seems right?
Can you invite those positive energies and insights so that they circulate within you?
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Taking Practices Further

Vast Awareness in Space
This practice can be done after #10 Relaxing into Space as a way to “focus on the border where the
solidity of the body meets space and gently expand the feeling” (& p. 208).
How do you expand the feeling? There are many ways.
1) The feeling unfolds, and you are walking an unfolding path into space. You begin to sense your
awareness in space, as you bring your awareness in space. Soon you will be able to sense that.
Expand: bring your awareness into the space further than the body.
We may be inclined to think that it takes time. It doesn’t. You can already go outside of this room;
it doesn’t need effort.
2) Open up, go out, let your awareness fill the space of Birmingham, *let your awareness fill the island
and the surrounding seas. Because our awareness is in the island and in the seas we can learn about
the island and the seas in non-conceptual ways. Bring your awareness further than the island and
the surrounding seas—covering Europe, covering Asia, covering the United States, going down,
covering Northern Africa and Africa, South-East Asia, New Zealand, Australia and all the islands in
between. Fill your awareness in that space. Later we can learn about all those different places because
our awareness is there. Let it go beyond the earth into the atmosphere, to the rings around the earth.
Bring your awareness into the atmosphere of the earth. Because our awareness is there, we can learn
about it in non-conceptual ways. Extend your awareness into the space around the earth and further
and further. The earth is passing by, even the sun and moon are passing by and become like distant
stars, as you place your awareness farther and farther into space. Your awareness is in all of creation
and you can still go further.
Don’t tell yourself things like ‘this or that’. This process is nothing to do with the thinking reality. Go
further. There is a whole other reality where thinking doesn’t reach, but your mind does. Maybe it’s not
your mind, maybe it’s ‘mind’. Extend awareness into space, beyond the galaxies—there’s no reason to stop.
Keep extending your awareness further and further into space.
3) And your awareness of THAT, you bring IN the body.
4) You may be ready to open your eyes and see if this vast awareness in space can be maintained.
Location named is from the Woodbrooke retreat. You can substitute your location.
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Discovering Space within Mind

Blowing Breath into Thoughts, Entering Openness Practice
Suggestion: Do this practice before and after #12 Releasing Solidity & p. 210
Learn to discover the space within your mind, rather than having reactive tendencies. Then if you have
thoughts that is good.
Can you see there is a stream to the thoughts—a cluster. They come together. Imagine that your breath
which is soft, infuses. You pump your breath into that stream and let that stream go away. Then there is a
brief moment of openness. You want to enter this. There is perhaps a quarter of a second before another
thought comes.
Thoughts come in clusters, in groups. Pump your breath into that cluster, that stream, and let the
stream go by.
What is KN about it is that you sense it, you experience it. It is NOT a thought. You sense it with the
mind-this momentary openness. Don’t try to describe it. There are no thoughts in that little opening.
Your body has the tools, your mind is in the body; you sense it.
After #12 Releasing Solidity

You are looking for thoughts. Go hunt: where are the thoughts, “I want them.”
Then you may discover there is a togetherness of thoughts, a stream of thoughts, and in your imagination
you place your breath in there, as if you fill it up with the energy of your breath. Because there was a
stream you can let the stream go by, but this time do so with your breath in it. When it is going, going,
gone, there is a momentary experience before another thought comes in. Your mind can sense that.
Sooner or later we can taste that. If it doesn’t help with eyes closed, open them up, because that is how
we need to learn it anyway.
In that momentary openness the mind is free to be.
It is important to acknowledge that if it is working it also because you are in the body. Isn’t it also true to
say you are quite aware of experience in the body?
This is the basis for the sensory capacities of the mind: you are in the body which makes it much easier than
if you did not have that connection.
Shorter Directions
1) Welcome thoughts. Is there a stream?
2) Blow the energy of your breath in there and let the stream go by.
3) We are looking for that brief moment that follows: the space within the mind. We can learn to enter it.
Here the mind is free to be.
Suggested Reading: & pp. 112-5 (MAKE RED)
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Mind is Free to Be
Variation: Listen to Words
Can be done afterbook& #26 Body of Rhythm
In this version you will be listening to words in vast space. Going through residues, the residues
dissolve. The object is fresh, neutral, almost identical with space.
Kum Nye for the mind relaxes the pattern of mental activity so the mind gets the space to be. You get in
touch with the sensory capacities of mind. Speech Kum Nye relaxes labeling and keeps experience open.
When there is vitality in space, and the patterns are relaxed, when speech opens, you get insights.
THE EXERCISE
1) Bring your awareness into your right hand. Awareness can be in more than place at a time. Bring it
in your hand, 100%. You don’t have to save it for somewhere else because it is already everywhere
else. Do you feel the palm, sensations, muscles, tension sweating? Fingers.
2) Now bring your awareness into your left hand. Not only in the palm but in the fingers, the
fingertips, your nails. Bring your awareness into your left hand.
The text suggests you do so wholeheartedly but that sounds sentimental. Do it as if your life depended
on it, that kind of wholeheartedly: holding nothing back.
3) Now place your awareness in your right and your left hand at the same time. Awareness can do that.
It is not 50-50; it is 100-100%.
4) Bring the awareness in the chest. Although these directions take time to read or hear, this can go
very, very fast when the space is open. There is a pressure point there in the chest. Bring the
awareness right there, and the pressure point becomes a point of light.
5) Bring your awareness into your right eyebrow. Into your left eyebrow. Bring your awareness into the
space between the two eyebrows.
6) Bring your awareness into the tip of your nose.
7) Bring your awareness into one point on your chin.
8) Bring your awareness on the forehead, between your eyebrows and a little bit up.
One point, not dancing. Place it there.
9) Place your awareness on both ears, on the outside lobes.
10) Bring your awareness on top of the head. You can bring your awareness to all those points.
11) Bring your awareness on top of the left shoulder, that whole region covered with your awareness.
12) Bring your awareness on the right shoulder.
13) Bring your awareness on your lower back.
14) Bring your awareness in both knees at the same time.
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15) Bring your awareness in the soles of both feet, right in the center.
16) Bring your awareness in your navel button.
17) Bring your awareness inside the whole body. The more precisely we do this, the greater the benefit
of the main exercise.
18) Have your awareness surrounding the body as if there is an eggshell around you. As if you are
sitting in an egg and just around you is the shell of the egg. You bring awareness into the shell, outside
the physical body, but inside the shell. Make sure you bring it everywhere and not just a certain area.
19) Bring your awareness outside the shell: on the sides, on the top, on the bottom.
20) Bring your awareness into this room. into the corners, down to the ground and up to the ceiling.
The whole room. Place your awareness in the space of this room.
21) Place your awareness just outside this room, about a yard, 1-2 meters then all around this room and
you put your awareness in that space.
22) Put your awareness into the grounds of this property: the gardens, the house, the fence, inside the
fence. Go all the way to the vegetable garden to the lake, to the big red trees. To the rooms.
You haven’t been in all the rooms but place your awareness in all the rooms and the gardens.
23) Place your awareness outside of that. Let’s call it Birmingham. You place your awareness outside
the property.
24) Place your awareness more vastly, in the British Isles, with the Atlantic Ocean, the waves, and the
North Sea, the Channel. Place your awareness in the Isles of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Northern Ireland, the seas, in the oceans with all the fish, and sand and waves and wetness.
Build it systematically. Go wider.
25) Place your awareness in the Northern Hemisphere: Europe, Russia, China, coming around,
everywhere, Japan, all the way down to the Equator. South Africa, Indonesia, the Pacific Ocean,
Central America all the way around: North and South America.
26) Now place your awareness in the bottom, the Southern Hemisphere: Africa, Australia, and
New Zealand, South America.
27) Place your awareness IN the entire Earth.
28) Place your awareness right outside the Earth. There is an atmosphere, so your awareness is in the
Earth and now also outside.
Your awareness is in the body, in the room, in the country, in the oceans, in the Earth and now outside.
You have placed your awareness everywhere.
29) Now go further into space. As a result of that the Earth is getting smaller. You place your awareness
in the space surrounding the Earth, and vaster.
30) Your sense of space is bigger. Place your awareness in it. The space includes the Sun and the Moon,
the other planets—they are all planets passing by, because your awareness is in that vaster space.
31) Go further into the Universe, further into dark space. The galaxies. Vaster.
32) Then you have a sense of all of Creation, that we know of now. Place your awareness in all of
Creation. As if it were a gigantic egg.
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33) Now you place your awareness outside the egg and further, as if the egg were passing by and
becoming smaller and smaller in the biggest imaginable space
Keep going: place your awareness all the time in the expanding space.
34) Now you are aware that your awareness is in vast space. You are aware that your awareness is in
all of space.
35) Bring that awareness in the body. The vast space remains with your awareness in it. Also your
awareness of that is in the body.
36) If you haven’t done so yet, now close your eyes unless it makes you really uncomfortable. Now your
awareness in vast space.
37) In a moment some words will be said. Thoughts may come up: relax those. Don’t go with them.
Let them come up as murmurs or little clouds. As you hear words, see what happens.
The more awareness in the greater space, the more effective this exercise and exploration will be.
The words and phrases that are heard:
• A house that you grew up in as a small child.
• Your bedroom as a child, whether you were alone or shared it.
• One of your first teachers in school.
• The first person who was not nice to you in school, who did or said something that upset you.
• The first place you lived after you left home.
• Sadness in your younger years when you were still at home.
• The first accomplishment that you remember.
• The first time you wanted to run away.
• The first holiday you really liked.
• Jealousy.
• Hatred.
• Not being understood.
• Tension in the womb of your mother.
• Not much time left.
• Doing what you want to be doing.
• Dying, death.
• Love.
39) Now let all the words and all the stories go. Just as we called them up, we can let them go.
Let them go.
Body, space, awareness in space. Your awareness, in the body.
40) Gently open your eyes, not interrupting what is going on. (If that happens, close them again).
No words, no images, vibrant open space.
41) Write and let it continue, extending and deepening.
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Working with Feeling

Practicing with the Experience
Called Feeling: Two Ways
Breath and Feelings Dance
Suggested practice after (&)#20 Circulating Energy

1) In all this internal and external space, which is no longer or is less separate now, there is an
experience we would call feeling, It could also be spaces, shifting spaces, moving spaces. It is not
just clarity: there is something happening, the Nye. Let your breath touch that. You could say that
the feelings and the breath dance.
The breath is what deepens the feelings and what sustains the feelings and what helps the feelings expand.
2) You work with the feelings and the breath. ‘Working with’ means that right in the middle of that
feeling and breath is you. It is your attention, your concentration. The single point of your awareness:
Feelings are touched by the breath, held within awareness.
This is an activity. You are working. Or it is working.
Another sitting practice:
Sitting and Tasting Feeling Tone

Although Kum Nye usually begins with “localize the feelings,” in many cases after exercising energy, the
feelings may already be circulating all over.
1) Let your awareness contact the feeling tone. You are not sitting up and looking down and saying
“where is the feeling tone?” You know that your awareness can travel in more than one place at the
same time. Bring your awareness to the area of feeling that you are attracted to. Go to the feeling.
2) Let your awareness touch, make contact with, the tone of it.
Then let the energy of the breath touch there too –the energy of the breath. Feelings and breath are like
two partners. They really belong together. So bring the breath there.
3) Your awareness senses the tone. One way to sense the tone is to taste it as if you could touch it with
the tongue, take it in, have it pass by the taste buds (the throat). And swallow it.
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Melt into the Center of Feeling

Can be done after &#28 Exercising Flexibility
1) Maybe you are still floating from the exercise, as if you are going a little up and down in the water
(“Then relax and float, as if in water” & p.248.)
2) Begin to breathe lightly, as if you are almost not breathing. If you like, you can make the breath soft,
or tender. Breathe lightly.
3) At the end of the inhale, you may momentarily hold the breath for a very short moment. Then you let
it go. Light, light breathing.
4) When you are breathing lightly, you may become aware of a feeling or a group of feelings, or an
area of feeling. “Can you melt into the center of the feeling and rest in that inner silence you may
find there?” (& p. 93)
Lightness of Feeling
Can be done interspersed with &#29 Being in Time
Kum Nye practice reveals the lightness of feeling that flows through all our mental activity. It invites us to
enter the momentum of feeling itself, and enjoy the games of mind from a more detached perspective. Once
we are not trapped in the playing fields of mind, we can use mind’s talents more productively to assure
ourselves of a better journey and experience intimacy with our own being. This is how we can become
good companions.
& p. 155
1st Time
1) Chant the Manjushri mantra for 7-10 minutes.
2) After chanting, go into the forehead, the area where thoughts seem to operate. Is there a sense
of spaciousness, a light? Light comes with openness.
3) If a thought comes in (and of course they do), do you find a feeling associated with that thought or
stream of thoughts?
The text suggests that there is a lightness of feeling that goes through the thoughts.
4) Sometimes it helps to imagine that a thought is like a train in the space of your head, and you imagine
a lightness of feeling going through it. It doesn’t come by hard studying, or really looking and wanting
to find it.
109
Open up and make this more casual. Be with it more lightly. Is there more lightness of feeling—
in the head?
The text suggests if you get closer to the lightness of feeling it may have an inviting quality, an open
invitation, something inviting you to go in.
5) If you look very precisely, that lightness of feeling has a quality. It is not that you go in but you
reciprocate. There is a lightness of feeling.
Does that word have meaning to you, ‘invitation’? Is there an inviting quality?
6) It is already inviting, and you slide in. Like an honored guest, you enter. The lightness of feeling is
primary and your awareness eases into it.
2nd Time
1) Direct your attention into the head, which you can do after so much Kum Nye because the whole
body is engaged. You won’t go “into the head”; don’t get disconnected from the lower body.
When you look inside the head, is there space, is there lightness?
2) A thought comes. Is there lightness of feeling through, in, or around the train of thought?
Ideally we drum up or get a thought because that contains the sparkling. We can open up the thought:
we recapture the brilliance, the sparkling quality.
If you contact the lightness of feeling, the thought may fall to pieces and you recapture the brilliance that
was the heart of the thought.
3) Lightness of feeling. Does it have an invitation to it? Let’s enter it.
Awareness and Attention

Beam of Attention
What makes the practice much more effective and helpful for a KN’er is direct attention to the feel of
chest, breath, belly and then to the feel of you. It needs heart; it is not a head thing. You have to have
your heart in it, as if you are with something very, very lovable.
What is important is to direct attention inward.
This is leading the directionality of mind to focus your attention. Directionality of mind is a beam of
attention like a flashlight, that you now use at will. Like a flashlight, you direct your attention. After a
couple of minutes, you become familiar with how the beam of attention feels. Instead of rampant,
110
jumping, rudderless movements, it becomes your decision where next to shine the light.
When you are able to stay in this energized state of relaxation for 20-30 minutes at a time, feelings of
relief and joy may begin to arise spontaneously, not only during practice, but also in your work and other
daily activities.
PRIMARY DIRECTIONS
1) Direct the beam of attention at your will.
You can take an external object (maybe 3-4?) to make sure you know the beam.
2) Then you can direct it to the feel of your breath.
3) Then direct it to your chest. As it expands, condenses, it has a feel to it.
4) Then direct it to the breath and the belly.
5) To your left knee, You decide.
6) At some point turn the beam in and direct it to you, the real you, beneath and behind all the thoughts.
The surface manifestations change but the real you does not. It is always there.
7) Do it with the heart. If you start to think you look again.
8) At the end, feel your hands, sense the body. Take the experience with you. Do not leave it behind on
the meditation cushion.
The main directions for Beam of Attention are found in eKN 9 Lesson 4: Kum Nye for Mind, Part 2,
“Awareness of you.”
WHEN YOU DO ROUND TWO OR DO MORE BEAM OF ATTENTION

The beam is not only external but also your chest, your breath. We are focusing on the feel of the breath,
the feel of the chest. Now you direct your attention to you.
Two things may happen:

1) You may start having thoughts. Then you can open up your eyes and go more quickly, with
a sharpness.
2) Sleepiness can occur because you are going almost too slowly. Or someone else could be doing so.
Hard work, the falling asleep, beaming falling asleep and beaming.
It may seem like a lot to do. Try to make it easy.

3) Go in and try to stay with feeling. But if you go in and there are a lot of thoughts, consider: When you
go to a special place, you tiptoe to the temple (if you have some devotional feelings): Push the door to
the temple open. Then there are no thoughts; you are flooded with feeling.
111
When you turn inward you leave outer projections behind. Mind is always looking for something to latch
onto, and then there is a story that comes. There are serious consequences: what you orient yourself to
outwardly (that is, what you identify with) will not last. Then the beam of attention immediately orients
toward something else for the sake of solidity. Rinpoche describes it as eating by yourself and getting
nothing; a major source of depression.
There is much more to mind than this. A lot is happening on this side (the inside), that we do not have
access to although the basis is inside; directionality of mind doesn’t go in because there are no objects.
Once you turn in you begin to experience everything that is not ruled by thoughts. See the forward of
Openness Mind on being without channeling through thoughts.
There may be a little fog in the beginning or not knowing how. If you stay with it, perhaps for longer, and
if and when you feel the beam, it will clear here. You will discover as Rinpoche says on p. 116, “the whole of
your being.” There are no thoughts there. It feels peaceful, light.
The idea is that you are not in charge. That is a big change in Kum Nye.
You might find symbols, images, pointers to aspects of your mind that are not mixed with thought.
Now you are in touch with your real vision and might find guides that can guide you.
Calming and Releasing

Relieving Pressure
& p. 93
This practice can be done after &#35 Vibrant Harmony and then #32 Harmonizing Opposites.
1) Close your eyes. Try to be very, very curious. Don’t go on hold or park or space out.
2) Think of a situation that arouses intense energy in your body. Maybe the breath has changed because
of Kum Nye but it is still there. If it isn’t much, you can make it more intense. Rinpoche calls this
process ‘heating it up.’
3) Probably your breathing has already changed; slow it down. Observe the breath moving smoothly in
and out of the body.
4) Touch the agitation with the breath. As you follow the movement of the breath, you may notice that
the breath and feeling are coming together and merging into a single sensation.
112
Do it again and again.
Calming Inner Energy

Based on & p. 94:
Let everything go and surrender completely to the experience. Without focusing on anything, just BE.
Let your entire being become openness—just breath moving back and forth through empty space…
Surrender to the experience, merging experience of openness and awareness of space.
For perhaps five minutes, try out these suggestions:

1) Close your eyes. Can you surrender to the experience? Now with awareness of space, that might be
easier: surrender to the experience.
No need to focus on anything. Let your entire being become openness. The breath is moving back
and forth through empty space. Over time the breath will become slower and lighter, and turn into
space as well.
Let your entire being become openness. Rinpoche writes: ‘Just BE’ [JB 94].
2) Now let’s try: This JUST BEING experience that you’re having now is total openness with the
breath moving back and forth through empty space. The breath is becoming slower and lighter
until it turns into space as well. Merge this experience with awareness of space—and you can use
awareness of this room.
3) Merge with awareness of space. There are two different experiences: merge them and let that
experience of merging these two flood your being.
4) Gently open your eyes and see if you can continue: awareness of space merging with your experience
of total openness.
5) Don’t follow the thoughts—there might be something happening that you went away from. Go back.
6) Ending, feel your hands.
Suggested practice: Can be done with or after Vibrant Harmony Step 3.
113
Go to the Center
Suggestion: These practices can be done after &#33 Letting Go Images.
Be with body, wholeness, the power of the body. Please follow the very clear steps closely because this
work is too sensitive to do another way.
Say it! Say: “Go to the Center!"

1) After whatever exercise has been done, remain very still.
2) Go to something that keeps bothering you. Use a name: it could be a person, organization, situation.
Do not go to a big trauma with a capital T; don’t choose something too big.
3) All you need to do internally is say the name, the code for the thing that has been bothering you for
years. Pick one that is bothering you again and again. Say that.
4) Where in the body is something happening because of that? Location in the body.
5) Here comes the practice: Go to the center of that feeling activity.
To Summarize
• Say the name
• Where in the body
• Go to the center of it
• Again and again and again.
Done during Holland retreat 2012 in conjunction with &#33 Letting Go Images.
Bringing Your Potential to Life

1) Go to an area where there are sensations.
2) Go to an area where you don’t feel anything, or where it is dense, dark, opaque, etc.
3) Stay there until it comes to life. Invite it.
An area where you do not feel is your potential.
114
What is it You Want to Tell Me?

1) Bring to mind something that weighs on you, something that makes you heavy. Perhaps choose a
topic you have not done before.
Take another situation, a current or a long-standing one, or something from the distant past that affects
you either very much or once and a while. Either way, it affects your life.
2) Find a code name for it, something like the person, the situation or the time or your age when
it happened.
3) In a moment you are going to bring up that situation. Now you silently say the name of the situation
in your body.
Then maybe—not necessarily—energy might come up in a specific location.
If nothing comes up, fine. Pick another one.
4) If something comes up you are going to stay with it—as if you are going to sit down as a very caring
intimate friend. Sitting with it you are going to invite it, “What is it you want to tell me?”
Rinpoche calls it “listening to feelings.”
As you are stay with that invitation, “What is it that you are trying to tell me?” you are the listener. You
are open: no judgments, you don’t make up stories, you don’t answer. You just see, hear, feel. You are the
best friend of this feeling.
4) Now call the name again. If nothing happens in the body, take another one, but don’t pick a
huge trauma.
Wherever something is happening you are going to sit there. And like an intimate spiritual friend you
invite, “What are you actually telling me?” And you wait. Maybe something comes. But your waiting is
enough. Being present is enough.
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Joy of Being Compendium

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Companion to

Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche's

The Joy of Being

Companion to The Joy of Being

Suggested Steps for Becoming Aware

Working with Breath and Mind

Expanding and Creating Inner Space

“Language a Mixed Blessing”( & pp.120-124): Exercise Supports the Study.

1 Half-Lotus Sitting Posture

Do you know how to establish a connection to the earth?

Suggested reading: & pp. 92-3

Suggested reading: & p. 287

2nd, 3rd and Final time

Suggested reading: & pp. 92-3 ‘Feeling-Body’

5 Body and Mind Balance

Recommended reading: & 'Pressures of Polarity', p. 144

7 Opening the Flow

8 Mind and Body in Space

Exercises for the Mind, & pp 144-5

Suggested follow-up practice: The Light of Healing Awareness

9 Mind and Body Touching—Two Versions

Suggested practice: Vast Awareness in Space

Suggested Reading: & pp. 91-3

11 Healing Inner Space

Expansive vision. Start with the corners of the eyes.

Suggested Reading: & pp. 112-5

1) Rub the hands: they get warm.

Suggested Practice: Awareness Sitting

15 Touching the Heart of Space

2nd time to left

1st time to the Right

For later rounds

Suggested Reading: & pp. 91-3

Suggested Reading: & pp. 92-3

PREFACE: CIRCULATING ENERGY

Sitting is practicing with the experience called feeling.

Explore two aspects of this posture:

Sitting Kum Nye

Your awareness senses the tone

23 Embracing and Uplifting

24 Energy Freely Rising

Suggested Further Practice: Variation on 'Beam of Attention'

2nd and 3rd Rounds: Right Leg

Left Leg Rounds:

Part Two: Rocking

Further practice: Melting into the Center of Feeling

Suggested meditation: Beam of attention

Part Two 1st Time

Part One, 2nd Time

Part 2, 2nd Time

2nd Time, Right Side

1st Time, Left side

2nd Time, Left Side

Harmonizing Opposites: Last Part

Suggested Sequence: #35 Vibrant Harmony, #32 Harmonizing Opposites, followed by

We are not singing ‘aaaah.’ It is not long and drawn out.

Another Way to do the Exercise

Suggested further practice

1st Time (left arm out)

In Kum Nye armpits are important.

2nd Time (for both sides)

Last repetitions: hold in the navel

Suggested further practices

Suggested Reading: & pp. 111-2