Meditation coach Peter McEwen and host Michael Taft discuss practicing Tummo, deity yoga, subtle body, challenges of Tummo practice, bliss, and staying with disturbing experiences. Peter shares insights on body energetics, benefits of Tummo practice, and importance of accurate teaching to prevent harm.
Tummo practice focuses on vital energies and shifting awareness to fundamental luminosity.
Tummo offers therapeutic benefits like enhancing pleasure and aiding in mental clarity.
Deep dives
Introduction to Practicing Tummo with Peter McEwen
Peter McEwen, a meditation coach and founder of The Field, introduces Tummo practice and its aim of working with vital energies. The practice serves as a gateway to understanding luminosity and shifting focus from object-oriented awareness to clear light awareness. Tummo involves breath retention, visualization, and posture to foster the experience of fundamental luminosity within the practitioner.
Therapeutic Benefits and Neuroplasticity of Tummo Practice
Tummo practice, besides its spiritual aspects, offers various therapeutic benefits, such as aiding immune system function and enhancing pleasure during physiological experiences. The practice leverages neuroplasticity, breath retention, and cold exposure, potentially contributing to overall well-being and mental clarity. Practitioners may experience reduced reactivity, mental clarity, and enhanced visualization skills.
Addressing Potential Challenges and Lung Disorder in Tummo Practice
Practitioners in Tummo may face challenges such as excessive mental energy rising to the head, leading to a spinning sensation or lung disorder. Encouraging practitioners to anchor their attention in the body, particularly the navel area, can help mitigate these challenges. Balancing the focus on the sensation of the body aids in reducing mental arousal and fostering stability in the practice.
Teaching and Learning Tummo Techniques with Peter McEwen
Peter McEwen offers insights into teaching Tummo practice, emphasizing attention to the body's sensations as a reliable focal point. He runs intermittent cohorts for Tummo instruction and advocates for a minimalist approach to shared practices at The Field. Learning Tummo involves cultivating stability, visualization skills, and devotion to personal potentiality.
Host Michael Taft speaks with meditation coach Peter McEwen about the traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice of tummo, deity yoga, the subtle body, ways that tummo practice can go wrong, bliss and semen retention, existential terror and staying with disturbing experience, and much more.
Peter McEwen is a meditation coach and the founder of The Field, which offers training, community, and the demystification of basic contemplative practices. Peter McEwen has been an ordained Vajrayana yogi since 1993 under the tutelage of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Lama Pema Dorje Rinpoche, and Bruce Tift. He has completed the traditional 3-year retreat curriculum of Vajrayana Buddhism.