The Energy Body (A Little Bit of What, Why, and How)

In a way, I wish this retreat was maybe two weeks long, or something like that. If we think about building blocks, I think there are some essential things, and we're going to try and cover that, and give to everybody what they might need with the different background histories, etc. The consequence of that is that the first couple of days, today and tomorrow, will be probably a little more dense with teaching than as the retreat goes on, just to get a certain amount of material out there so that you can start playing with it. So there will be a talk this evening, for instance, and tomorrow in the morning and the evening. I hope that's okay. It's just obviously in the service of getting things across.

What I want to talk about now, and hopefully just under an hour, is this word, the 'energy body,' that you've heard about. I just want to say a few things about that. Again, I think Catherine probably said that, you know, what do you need? Where is the kind of consolidation for me, the reminder? And what's the next thing for me there? I'll mention, just to start, that I kind of slightly regret this term already, the 'energy body.' It got coined in my mind somehow some years ago in the context of different practices. But I can't really think of a better one that's not an enormously long mouthful, so staying with this for now.

I want to talk a bit about this, and introduce it as part of the practice, and what are we talking about here. And I want to say why this way of paying attention to the body. So you have mindfulness of body -- it's the first foundation of mindfulness. We're saturated in that, if you're in insight meditation. Why this? I want to address that question. And I want to talk about what it is and how you can work with it. So if we do the what first, at this point we can say there are maybe two levels of definition or description: there's a kind of narrow one, and then a larger one.

If we talk about the narrow or the smaller "What do we mean by the energy body?", this narrower definition, I would say it's actually a kind of attention, okay? So put it more in the subjective rather than in the object. It's a kind of range of ways of paying attention that feel or sense the whole bodily experience as a kind of field of energy or vibration or texture. When I pay attention in a certain way to the space of the body, it opens up differently to this sense of a field of energy, vibration, texture, which is slightly different than if I'm [taps something] mindful of knuckles sensation. We're all used to that. We're talking about something different in this smaller definition. So actually, if for now, if we just play with this a little bit, if you come into a meditation posture, at first with the energy body, posture is actually quite important. It will help you access this sense at first. Later it becomes not so important. But a posture that's comfortable, relatively relaxed, but upright -- already in the posture itself, there's a tone, an energy, reflected in the physical posture, of openness, relative energization, and uprightness, and balance.

[4:08, brief guided exercise begins]

So find a posture right now that has those qualities inherent in the physicality of it. First you can just connect with the sensations of contact of sitting in the usual way, and then you open up. When you've established that connection, then you open up the space, open up the space of awareness just a little bit bigger than the whole space that your body occupies, the whole physical space that your body occupies. Rather than paying attention to one point, or several points in the body, we're opening up a whole space of attention just a little bit bigger than the body space.

What happens if I just dwell with that more open, spacious awareness, or relatively open? And I just feel: what does it feel like in that space? The attention is kind of light and receptive, a delicate attention. What is the experience, if I use these words -- 'vibration,' or 'texture,' or 'energy'? Sometimes just doing this, just opening up the attention that way, I already have a sense of something. It's somehow related to the uprightness of the body, the symmetry of the body, the openness of the body. So it can be quite subtle, when we talk about energy or that kind of thing.

What will happen, a gazillion times, is the awareness, the attention, will shrink. From this relatively open space, it will shrink. It does that for lots of different reasons -- often when we get distracted, when there's contraction, just out of habit. So expect it to shrink, and then just open it up again to that same size, just sensitive to the feeling in that space. It's okay right now if you don't actually feel anything, but just inhabit that space with awareness, with a sensitivity, with a receptivity, and keep opening it, keep stretching it, because it will collapse many, many times.

What happens right now if you sit a little more uprightly than you usually sit? You're not forcing anything, but just you're opening the body so the spine is erect. There's almost like a line you can imagine of energy from the base, the tailbone, or even beneath the body, up through the centre, perhaps out the top of the head. You're attentive to the whole space. Very delicate, receptive attention to whatever is going on there. What happens now -- if you feel okay with it -- gently beginning to breathe long and slow deep breaths, without moving a lot of air? So actually, you don't have to take huge gulps of air with this, but just let the breath be long, and slow, and smooth, and let it fill that space. So find a long, slow breath that's comfortable. How does it feel? How does it ripple through? How does it expand or contract? What happens in the space of the body when you do that with the breath? How does the energy, how does the felt sense, the vibration, move or change? [How is it] informed by this long, slow breath? Opening up the body with the breath, and opening the awareness to the whole body, that whole space.

[9:14] So let the breath be long and slow, but still comfortable. If you want, what happens if you imagine, or feel, even, the breath coming in at the solar plexus? Entering the body -- instead of the usual way we think about, through the nostrils and the mouth -- coming in at the solar plexus? It's really okay to imagine this, and see what happens. And then the breath going both up and down the body at the same time. Coming into the solar plexus, and moving up and down in two lines from that solar plexus, up into the head -- maybe even out the top of the head -- and down to the feet. With the out-breath, it retraces those two paths, and then out of the solar plexus, out of the front of the body. Keep opening the awareness and feeling in. Long, slow, smooth, comfortable breaths. We're feeling, imagining the breath energy in the whole body space.

So radiating out from this point at the solar plexus where the breath energy comes in, radiating out, up and down, and then reversing out with the out-breath. Opening the body. Letting the energy open up the sense of the energy body. So I'm moving very quickly here just to give you a little taster of possibilities. You could keep the breath, if you like, or you can let it go at this point. What happens if you imagine this space that we're calling the energy body (a little bit bigger than your physical body, that whole space), what happens if you imagine it as a cloud of light? If you're not visual, that doesn't matter, either. It's just a cloud of energy that's somehow radiant. Use your imagination, but you're feeling into it, as well, feeling into what that imagination does to the sense of the body, the sense of that space. Here's my body as cloud of light, perhaps white or gold, or any colour that feels right for you. And again, stretching the space when it collapses, opening up again and again and again. Opening, opening, opening. Mind has a habit to contract, so just opening again, inhabiting, filling that whole space with delicate, sensitive awareness, bright awareness.

Whatever you experience is really fine. No pressure here. But if we again move on a little bit, and if you have been using the breath, let it go now. You're still attentive, stretching this whole space. What happens if this space is imagined as the source of loving-kindness, the source of mettā? So perhaps with that light, perhaps just with the sense of the space, bathing all parts of itself and radiating out goodwill, mettā, loving-kindness. The energy body as radiant mettā, the source of mettā. Keep opening that awareness, that sensitivity, to the whole space.

[14:14, brief guided exercise ends]

Okay. When you're ready, you can open your eyes. These are just some of the things you can play with, just a small, few ideas that can help to open things up or get a sense of it. The energy body will also, if you like, express or reflect the emotions. So sometimes it doesn't feel like a radiant cloud of mettā. It doesn't feel open and energized. It feels there's a twist in it or it's contracted. This is completely normal. This is completely what we expect, absolutely. This is really important to see. Actually, another reason -- we'll talk about it more tomorrow -- for emphasizing the energy body is it's a really good place to become aware of and to work with emotions -- both lovely emotions (mettā, and joy, and peace, and appreciation), and also the difficult emotions, where we get contracted. As you pay more attention in this way, you'll become aware of different flows of energy, of different kinds of texture, and different kinds of blocks and contractions. It's all just part of the everyday life of the energy body, absolutely. I'll come back to that later.

So that's, if you like, the small description. It's just, as I said, this kind of attention that feels, if you like, in terms of a field of energy, of vibration or texture. Why? Why do this? As I said, that's the question I want to address. Lots of reasons, but just to touch on, list them, very briefly: when a meditator enters into deeper states of what we call samādhi, like jhāna or that kind of real harmonization, collectedness, unification that the Buddha talked about in absorption, it's basically a state of the energy body. It's basically that's what the experience is, and one is fused with that, open to it, relishing it, enjoying it, intimate with it. So this way of working is almost like gently moving in that direction anyway. It's setting it up as a kind of inclination. So it's very helpful working this way. It's not the only way, but it's very helpful in terms of developing the samādhi, the well-being in this field right here, this body as a source of well-being, as a source of nourishment and resource.

So that's one reason. It also can be extremely useful in mettā, either as a source of the mettā, to do the mettā more from the body and from the energy rather than from the phrases, and also to tell you when you're on track in practices like mettā -- when it's kind of, "Ah, yeah, that's the attitude. That's the intention," and when one is less on track. It will also be indicative, this kind of paying attention to the energy body, what we're calling the energy body, will be extremely helpful in insight practices. It tells you when you're on track. When there is letting go, which is the function of insight practice -- to let go, right here, right now -- you feel it in the energy body. It's reflected in the energy body. So it tells me, "Ah, what I'm doing right now, this way of looking, this is helping. I can feel it. I feel it viscerally in the field there." And as I said, also in terms of working with the emotions, they're reflected, they're expressed in the space of the body. There can be a lot of subtlety and a lot of skill working with that, which we'll come to another time.

[18:04] As far as imaginal practice is concerned, opening to this kind of sense of the body will help the experience become -- instead of more like a papañca, or a daydream, or an obsession, or a fixation with a certain image -- it helps it to become erotic-imaginal,^[1] which is the direction of soulmaking. It's one of the ingredients. This kind of attention and sensitivity to the body in this way helps the experience open up to be more soulmaking. It helps what could be craving turn into eros. It's one of the things. If I have craving, sometimes bring the whole energy body awareness, and it can help the craving become eros. And it can help what we might call papañca become imaginal. So it's an ingredient that's really, really helpful. And again, it's indicative. Pay attention to this body, and it tells me when there's a sense of soulmaking going on. That's my guide. This image seems like a waste of time, my mind says, but my body says, "Mm, I can feel that doing something," and then I trust it. So the energy body has sensitivity that's a helpful indicator.

When there is an imaginal image, very quickly it's reflected in the energy body. There comes a kind of coherence, a harmonization, an organization, an opening and an energizing when something is an image. It has an immediate effect on the energy body, and also the mind. If the mind is a bit scrambled, something happens. So what this means is that paying attention in this way to the field, to the energy body, supports the imaginal, and also the imaginal opens up the energy body and helps the energy body. They feed each other.

And images, you'll also at some point discover, images can also arise through the energy body. Rather than the image being something there that I am looking at, actually this body becomes image, or it's birthed through the body. I become an image via the bodily experience. So this is some of the why. None of that will be possible -- or it will be much, much less possible -- if we don't, let's say, at first, hold the body still, and pay attention in this kind of way. None of these indicators. So there are some practices, and I was involved many years ago in kind of 'let the body move spontaneously in meditation with the flow of energy.' If you do too much of that, then none of what I'm talking about (in terms of they're helpful in the soulmaking, and the indicating, and the samādhi), none of that will happen. So it may be great as its own practice, but if we want to develop the soulmaking and the related practices, I would encourage not that. The body is still, and it's poised with this sensitivity, and I can feel the flows, or the expansions, or whatever is happening energetically. We'll talk about movement and soulmaking as the retreat goes on, but for now, it's like, that would be a really good thing, to keep it still and develop the sensitivity rather than the spontaneous movement.

One of the implications from that is that when you're doing imaginal practice, when you work with images, because it harmonizes, and opens, and energizes, and coheres the energy body, you might be working with an image, and it's as if a fork presents itself to you on the path right there in the meditation: here's this image, and there's a sense of soulmaking with it, and at the same time there's a sense of "Well, the energy body feels quite nice here, feels nice, and cohered, and aligned, and all that." So the fork is I could, if I want at that point, lean over to emphasizing more the feeling of the energy body -- actually put more weight there, and let the image either go completely, or let it recede into the background, and I'm more getting into this sense of harmonization, and good feeling, and well-being in the energy body. Then I'm going more in the samādhi direction. Or the other fork is I prioritize the image. I'm just enjoying, and noticing, and being aware of how the energy body feels, but the image and the soulmaking sense with the image is what's priority. So kind of a little bit that way, a little bit that way. You can develop control over all this.

I'm just going to say something for some of you who already may be quite experienced with all this. I was talking with someone a few weeks ago and she said, "Well, this image comes, and often what happens is I just spontaneously go into this kind of space of lovely energy, oneness, and the image just disappears." So there's a kind of habit there of moving towards this really lovely sort of melting into oneness, a kind of samādhi state, with this person. That's not wrong; it's just a certain path. If that's the only thing that ever happens, then that's going to be problematic a little bit. So what happens if an image arises, and it gives rise, it births together with it, a sense of nice energy in the energy body, and then, instead of just melting into that, we actually let the energy itself become image for the self? So we have an image then. There's twoness. We're not melting, we're not unifying, which would be the usual direction of the samādhi. We're actually keeping a twoness. There's this energy, and there's the sense of self. That can become image. It's like, what's the sense of the blessing of this energy in relation to the self? What's the imaginal sense? It's a bit like we did a little bit with that chant last night. Then the whole thing can become imaginal, and not just kind of collapse into a samādhi thing.

One more thing. For those of you who have a lot of experience with this -- it may not make sense to some -- but what is it to take the whole thing to another level, and sometimes see the energy as imaginal? I'm not even going to explain what that means. I'm just throwing it out. What does it mean to actually relate to the energy as imaginal, this perception as imaginal?

Okay. So that's a little bit of the why, and I gave the more narrow definition. If we say what would be a broader definition, which I'd like to open up now, just for the sake of making more sense and more space in the teachings: in the larger description or definition of what we mean by 'energy body,' you could say there are three interrelated aspects to it. So again, 'energy body' means a kind of poise of attention, a kind of attitude, a way of looking and of conceiving that, (1) number one, just as in the more narrow definition, feels the body as a field of energy, of vibration, of texture. So that's the first aspect, same as the smaller definition.

(2) Second is a conceiving right then of the body. That conceiving does not limit it to the usual, modern Western conception of body, which is either a kind of scientific materialist conception of molecules, and atoms, and tissues, and all that, or the usual sort of "I'm too fat, too thin, too ugly, too this, that" -- the kind of way we appraise the body, fed by more superficial levels of our culture. So there's a conceiving going on that's part of what we talk about energy body, but it's not a limiting conceiving. Within that, you can have all kinds of different conceptions of the body. We're not limiting it to this or that. So you've got the felt sense, the conception, (3) and the third aspect is an image of the body. So right now even, if you shut your eyes, it's not necessarily an imaginal image, but it's just, in my case, I see my body, and I sort of see a shape. I can see I've got these kind of maroon trousers on. I've got my legs. It's just a shape. There's an image. There's a form-sense of the body. Okay? So these three aspects of what we could call bodily awareness, all three aspects.

So felt sense, conception or idea, and, let's say, image or form-sense. What I want to do is say: all that opens hugely wide. The conception we usually have of what a body is, we don't narrow it down to any one conception. At any moment, it might be anything. And the image one might have of one's body, and the felt sense -- the range there is huge. What I really want to encourage, when we say 'energy body' now, what we mean is the opening of that range of experience, and sense, and conception, and image of body. It's a much bigger definition, and suddenly the whole territory is vast in terms of experience. So that's really, really what I want to encourage -- whatever nice nugget of a term someone can come up with, but let's say 'energy body' for now.

[28:45] Someone asked me a few months ago, "You talk about energy body, and it's great, and I really like it. But why do you never mention the chakras? I've never heard you say anything about the chakras." Someone might be hearing all this 'energy body' and think, "Okay, I get all that. Then the next thing I need to do is kind of go and meditate on the chakras, and different colours, and all that." So the person's not here, but I'll respond anyway. If you investigate a little bit teachings of chakras, you'll see that systems vary quite a bit -- what colour which chakra is, how many there are, where they are, the geometry that goes with each, etc. I would like to say that when we use the word 'energy body,' the experience we have of body is dependent on the way of looking. Just like anything, actually, the experience we have is dependent on the way of looking. We're not talking about energy body as some kind of independently existing, objective reality: "It's like this, and if you get it right, you'll see this. The next stage is ..." You understand? So it's a different conception. This underpins everything that we're doing. I don't know how that sounds right now, but this will open up the territory enormously, the territory of experience. What we call energy body is dependent on mind, let's say, in many ways, many ways.

So in kind of philosophical language, we're talking about a phenomenological approach, which means I go by experience rather than a preconceived idea. It's a certain stance that allows a much wider range, opens up whole realms of experience, of possible experience -- including in the image-sense of the body. So when I first introduced this term 'energy body,' it was really trying to help people towards the samādhi, and for that, it's really talking about more etheric, open senses, very light, tingly, and that sort of thing. So 'energy body' is quite helpful for that, pointing in that direction, because it kind of implies that. We're including that. We're including the normal, humdrum, everyday experience of the body -- it's just one particular, if you like, window of wavelengths of the whole range.

I could be sitting here and having an experience of the body as dense, hot sand. There's an image there. There's a very strange idea of body, and then there's the felt sense of that heat and that density. It's blissful in some kind of way. I could be a pterodactyl in flight. Do you know what a pterodactyl is? That's an image, obviously. So image, and energy, and felt sense -- it's all wrapped up into one, but it has with it a certain experience. I might be sitting, and no one else can see the pterodactyl ... [laughter] but it's an alive, energy body, imaginal experience. My body might become fire. My body is fire. My body, my experience -- flows, and lines of energy, and all kinds of stuff. My body might be just a field, a relatively amorphous field of energy. My body might be somehow a kind of geometrical constellation of mystical, primordial elements -- earth, air, fire, water, etc. How does that feel? What about if the image I have is "I am music"? I am music. You ask me: who am I in my deepest identity, or yours? "I am music." What does that image-sense -- it's a kind of strange image-sense -- what does that do to the sense of body?

I think I shared one time the birds outside my window felt like they were healing and weaving my energy body. That's a particular kind of idea. It's a particular kind of image. And it's a particular kind of felt sense that goes with that. Or a flock of ravenous wild birds, devouring my body. It's an image-sense, but it comes with a whole feeling. Or my erotic-imaginal beloved is there, and she's looking at me. We're looking at each other. She's breathing, and where her breath comes towards my body, flowers grow out of my body -- and the exquisite bliss of that, and the exquisite, tender healing. This is all energy body/image kind of beginning to amalgamate, concepts stretched.

So all of this includes, as I said, felt sense, implicit idea or concept, or what we're calling logos, and imaginal sense, image-sense (sometimes it won't be imaginal). There's an infinite possible range there. It's infinite, endless. Endless creation/discovery here of the felt sense, what we might call the kind of expanded version of mindfulness, the idea, and the image of the body. So as I said, it includes the very normal sense, the very conventional, everyday sense. It includes the modernist, scientific materialist idea. Absolutely. Why not? It's just part of the whole range, yeah? And an image of the body that, as I said, is not imaginal -- it's just a kind of internal picture of this form.

Just to say a little bit about this. When we talk about energy body, and also when we talk about images, oftentimes what human beings seem to be tempted to do is to bring in very quickly a kind of realist perspective: "Aha! This is now the truth. This is a certain deeper level of truth, or this is the reality." And then bringing to the whole endeavour a kind of usual thing of, like, we look for social agreement. We look for agreement: "Who sees this energy body experience like I do? Have you got these chakras or got this thing?" Because this is the way that we usually think about reality: it's real if we all agree. Or if enough people agree. The weirdos can, you know, whatever ... [laughter] If enough people agree, then that's a tick: "Okay, this must be real." Not interested. It's a different thing we're talking about, and a whole range of different possibilities will open up because of that. We're not interested in social corroboration of so-called independently existing realities.

If we bring that realist perspective, if we stay attached to it too much, somehow this whole practice that we're doing, this whole art, it will get off a little bit on the wrong foot. It will prevent things opening up as much as they could, certainly with the energy body, but also with the imaginal and the soulmaking practices. That means certain experiences won't open up, certain senses won't open up, certain whole conceptual ideas, as I said last night, of the self, of the world, of the mind, of the goal -- where are we going with all this? Where can we go? There will be some attachment to realism; it's just part of being human. But if there's too much, it's like we get off on the wrong foot, and the whole thing doesn't open up so much. What we're talking about, this whole soulmaking dynamic, certain kinds of sacredness, etc., won't be so available.

So just to pull out again one element of what I said. There's an idea, if you like, or if we use a certain language, a logos or a concept, of the body -- it's often implicit at any time -- of what the body is. There's an implicit idea we have. Often we're not thinking it consciously. It's an element of the energy body experience. So yes, if you know certain systems, we can experience the meridians, the acupressure/acupuncture meridians, if you know that system. We can experience chakras. We can experience certain kinds of sheaths of the energy field, what a lot of people call the 'subtle body' or the 'etheric body.' All of that is often connected in healing paradigms, certain kinds of healing. That's all wonderful and great. We can experience that. But in this kind of approach, or this kind of pushing the boat out, we're not taking any one of those as an objective, independent truth, nor the scientific materialist one. There's something about the whole sort of underpinning idea of this whole soulmaking business that allows ideas/concepts to expand their range and to be enormously flexible. Eventually, you know, even one can just decide to have a very different idea about this experience right now. Can see it in the conventional way. Can see it in all kinds of ways. There comes an enormous flexibility with the kind of ideas that actually shape perception, that direct and open, or close, or limit our experience. That's part of where we're going with this, the kind of beauty and facility of being flexible with ideas. It's just a part of it, but it's really a fundamental part. It's part of what we're calling the phenomenological approach.

[39:29] So back to a little bit more about the why, the purpose of all this. I sort of touched on this earlier, but the purpose of practising with the energy body is not to try and kind of achieve a state where the energy body always feels open, and harmonized, and nice, and bright, and energized. That's not the purpose. It won't happen anyway. [laughs] It's impossible. And it's not the purpose. It's not what we're doing. To take that a little further, the main point of this kind of practising with the energy body -- or imaginal practice, or emptiness practice, I would say, or samādhi practice -- the main point is not healing, unless by 'healing' we mean something much, much wider than we usually mean. What does it mean to heal the perception? And 'healing' means opening, and not being rigid: "This is reality." Unless 'soulmaking' means 'healing,' or 'healing' means 'soulmaking,' this is not the primary thing that we're doing, interested in, in healing.

It might be part of what we're doing. Absolutely. And at times there's more of an emphasis on that. But there's something -- we may talk about it -- if I use the phrase 'fullness of intention,' part of what really galvanizes and opens this whole practice is a kind of not limiting the intention of what we're trying to do or why we're doing it. Soulmaking will, to borrow Mary's term again, break through whatever intentions we have for this practice -- healing, getting my energy body just right, whatever it is. It will expand that. So there's something about when I come to these practices with this fullness of intention, the intention is not for my personal growth or development. It's not even to have less suffering. What happens when I have real fullness? Is that even possible? It's not that common, not that easy. What does it mean to practise not for me? What does it mean to practise for soul, for soulmaking? To practise for the divine, for the sake of the divine?

So there's a possibility here of opening up the ideas of why we're doing this. Yes, healing can happen. Yes, a kind of beautiful re-visioning and re-feeling of my history and my hurts and my difficulties. All of that can happen. Something more opens up if there's the fullness, if there's that openness of intention.

So I really want to encourage this. We said before, if we talk about energy body, we're really talking about a huge range, actually an infinite, endless range of possibilities. That's what we would like to encourage, this openness to possibilities of sense, of experience, of conception, and also of intention. This takes time, everything that we're talking about -- even just this felt sense. You might have sensed, "I'm not even sure I feel anything," I don't know, when we did that little exercise just half an hour ago. It takes time. Expect it to take time. It's really, really okay. It's really okay. People have different backgrounds with this, and as Catherine said, different kind of tendencies or whatever. I think it's really, really worth it. It takes time, but it's such a wonderful investment to develop these kinds of sensitivities and awarenesses, and skills, also. It will really help imaginal/soulmaking practice, and, as I said, other practices.

Is it necessary? I actually don't think so. So, you know, Jung and people like James Hillman, I don't think they had a clue about this kind of thing. It wasn't integrated into their way of working. You never hear them talk about their bodily experience when they describe ... So, lots of soulmaking going on there, certain directions and stuff. So I don't think it's necessary. And of course, there's loads of Dharma that doesn't do anything remotely like this; it's really about very different kinds of sensations that we all know about.

But if you want to -- and we are encouraging it; it's part of this kind of art that we're trying to open up -- then the development of that, the journey, that does take time. It's a journey of opening up this range, opening up the range of experience. Part of that range will include what I alluded to earlier, the relative sense, at any time, of solidity or density of the body, and ethereality or insubstantiality. So normal for Western people is not to feel any kind of sense of ethereal, light. For some people here, it might be the more normal one, and it would be good to explore the more dense, solid range. But really we're talking about the whole thing opening up.

One last thing. So opening up that is part of the journey, opening up the range in lots of different ways. But also opening up -- and again, gradually, in time, when we feel ready -- how much energy we can experience. It's not at all to say more is better, or the direction is we're going towards kind of kundalini explosions or anything. Not at all. It's just that sometimes a person has developed in their life, in their personality, and also in their bodily experience -- the range of energy is actually quite limited. They're completely normal, well-integrated into society, have a very functional and beautiful life, lots of sensitivities, but actually the range of what can be felt here, how much energy, is actually limited. That has all kinds of knock-on limitations. So sometimes, you know, this little exercise we did with the long breath, that's one of the ways of actually experiencing more energy in the body. Sometimes people are very resistant to it, partly because it takes a little getting used to, but partly because there's a resistance to feeling more energy. You're opening up the body and it's just like ... [inhales sharply]. So I'll put that out, as well, in the mix of what might be involved in the gradual path of opening all this up and developing. And then the skills to work with the energy body, and open up things, and that sort of thing.

Okay, so today, I think, in your practice, as you move through the day, you can lean more towards the intention for samādhi, for well-being. So it's working with the energy body as primary, but the real kind of gentle intention is just to feel this space here as a kind of space of well-being, of energization, of harmonization, and just dwelling with that and enjoying it. Now, images may arise, and that's fine, but if you kind of just hold that very lightly as a background emphasis of attention for today. As I said, even if an image arises, you'll notice that there's the sense in the energy body of the harmonization, etc., that comes with something when it's imaginal, and then you can just be aware of that, include that. So we're developing familiarity, awareness, sensitivity with this kind of attention, and we're also developing the skill in a certain direction today. That's the emphasis. Okay.