Often when we think of the body, we consider just the flesh, blood, and bones that are its physical make up. But our physical body is alive, animated by energy. Aliveness is happening all over. It includes the feeling of the air of your skin, the sense of warmth in and through your muscles and veins, your body’s subtle aches, your digestion, your breath. It even includes your mood.

This vibratory sense of aliveness is called the “subtle body”. It’s called “subtle” not because it is esoteric, but because we’re not in the habit of paying attention to it, so it requires us to tune in, to become more sensitive.

As Lama Willa Blythe Baker says, “the subtle body is the subjective experience of the nervous system when observed within a deep state of meditative attention. To develop sensitivity to your own nervous system, some kind of special openness is needed. You need to be ready to host your energy.”

The Subtle Body & Dreams

This subtle landscape of moving energy is the setting of our waking life and our dream life. It is the energy that gives rise to our experience of the Six Realms.

We can think of the subtle body as the surface of the ocean - moving, undulating, reflecting - and our consciousness as the sailor in a boat. Moving between waking life and dream life is like moving from one harbour to the other, one ocean to the next, on the same roiling landscape.

Because this body of moving energy is the basis for both sleep and waking experience, the traditional practice of Dream Yoga gives us simple methods for soothing, smoothing, and clearing this energy before sleep. One such practice is the Nine Cleansing Breaths.

Subtle Body Anatomy

As we tune in closer and closer to the energy in the body that gives rise to our experience of emotions, cravings, and impulses, we begin to notice patterns. There are areas in the body where this energy naturally congregates - you might be familiar with common feelings like, “a lump in my throat”, “butterflies in my stomach”, “a tight chest”. The yogis who spent their lives specializing in the study of these patterns laid out a variety of anatomical maps that we can use as we explore our own inner experience.

The map of the subtle body and the practice of Nine Cleansing Breaths presented here are from the Dzogchen lineage of Bön yogic practice. They are a simple way of getting in touch with the feeling of emotional currents as they arise in the body.

Nine Cleansing Breaths

“Perhaps you have noticed how much tension is carried in the body and how the tension affects breathing. When someone with whom we are having difficulties walks into the room, the body tightens and the breath becomes shorter and sharper. When we are frightened, the breath comes quick and shallow. In sadness, the breathing is often deep and punctuated by sighs. And if someone we genuinely like and care for enters the room, the body relaxes and the breath opens and eases. Rather than waiting for experience to alter the breath, we can deliberately alter the breath to change our experience. The nine breaths of purification is a short practice to clear the channels and relax the body and mind.”

 - Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Sit in a cross-legged meditation posture. Place your hands palm-up in your lap, with the left hand resting on the right. Bend your head just a little to straighten the neck. Visualize the three channels of energy in your body.

1. Clearing the White Right Channel

Activate an experience of anger or aversion - the tendency to avoid, reject or push away. Connect with the feeling in your body and mind.

Close your RIGHT nostril with your RIGHT ring finger. Slowly inhale clean, light green air through the LEFT nostril, imagining that it flows through the left (red) channel down to the junction. Hold the breath here and switch your hand over to close the left nostril. Breathe out while imagining that the air moves up the RIGHT channel, clearing out all feelings of anger and aversion, which dissolve into space. The outbreath is gentle at first and then more forceful towards the end.

Repeat three times.

2. Clearing the Left Red Channel

Activate an experience of attachment - the tendency to cling and crave, or the desire to fill silence and space. Connect with the feeling.

Close your LEFT nostril with your LEFT ring finger. Slowly inhale clean, light green air through the RIGHT nostril, imagining that it flows through the right (white) channel down to the junction. Hold the breath here and switch your hand over to close the left nostril. Breathe out while imagining the air moves up the LEFT channel, clearing out all feelings of anger and aversion, which dissolve into space. Repeat three times.

3. Clearing the Central Channel

Activate an experience of dullness, doubt, disconnection, or lack of confidence. Connect with the feeling in your body and mind.

Slowly inhale clean, light green air through both nostrils, imagining that it flows through both side channels, down to the junction. Hold the breath here briefly then exhale from both nostrils while imagining that the subtle breath clears the entire channel and pushes obstacles out of the crown of your head, where they dissolve. The outbreath is gentle at first and then more forceful towards the end. Repeat this three times.

4. Resting

Rest in a relaxed, open way and breath freely. See and experience all three channels as clean, clear, and radiant. Feel the openness at the centre of your body and rest in that spacious, luminous, warmth.