In Awakening the Sacred Body, The five Tsa Lung exercises are shared. these are exercises where the practitioner takes a deep breath, then inhales again and holds the breath while doing physical movements that are designed to help the practitioner work through internal blockages and connect with their internal energy. The breath is then exhaled, and the exercise is repeated. I've been learning these practices and integrating them into my daily meditation work. I've found that they've helped lead me to a deeper place of stillness, especially combined with other Dzogchen practices.
Doing the Tsa Lung exercises are interesting, especially because you are doing them while holding your breath. I find that when I holding my breath and doing these exercises, it clears my mind of any thought. I am just present with the actions, allowing myself to do them and hold space with them. When I exhale, its like I let out whatever blockages were there, letting the attachment to them go with the release of breath. The author, at one point, notes that as you do these exercises you need to pay attention to the space that occurs as a result. When I check in with that space I find that stillness in me. Sometimes it brings up close to deeper issues (especially of late), but sometimes all that is there is space.
Doing this work has illustrated even further the connection between stillness and movement. One leads into the other and vice versa. Stillness can be found through movement and movement can stir in stillness. It's an integral relationship that I'm finding to be quite profound in other areas of my spiritual work.
Radio Interview: Recently Pagan Musings Podcast interviewed the editors and contributors of Bringing Race to the Table. Here is the interview.