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Dear Integral Meditators, 

The article below explores some foundational Taoist breathing methods for opening up our body to greater energy and healing. If done regularly for short periods, the results can be surprisingly powerful. 

If you enjoy it, spaces are available this Saturday for the Taoist pranayama session!

In the spirit of the breath, 

Toby

 

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Breathing with your palms, feet & crown
 
Normally when we think of breathing, we think about it in terms of nose, mouth, and lungs. If we think of our whole body as a living organism that breathes as we breathe, we can discover ways of breathing with the totality of the body that:

• Enhances our capacity for relaxation
• Opens the body to greater energy flow and circulation
• Releases internal blockages and build-ups of stress
• Increases the positive exchange of energy between ourself and our environment

 
Feet, crown, and palm breathing are great examples of how to open the potential of our breathing to unlock these benefits.
 
Below are four exercises to become familiar with breathing with these different parts of the body.
 
Feet, crown, and palm breathing
 
In qi gong and Taoist breathwork, the soles of our feet are the main interface or energy gateway between our bodies and the qi/energy of the earth. Conversely, the crowns of our heads are seen as a major gateway between ourselves and the energy of the sky and stars, or ‘heaven’. Our palms, when activate can also be ‘breathed through’ in a way that promotes energy and healing.
 
Palm breathing for bodily healing
 
Rub your hands together to create a little heat. Then hold them in front of you, palms facing up. Now breath in and out nine times, focusing gently on the palms of your hands, imagine energy flowing in and out of them as you do so. Then place your palms on an area of your body that you want to give healing to. Do another nine breaths in and out, giving healing energy to that part of the body through your palms.
 
Earth breathing

To encourage the flow and exchange of qi between ourself and the earth we can practice ‘breathing’ through the soles of our feet. To do this, simply focus your attention on the soles of your feet. As you inhale, imagine yourself breathing in qi from the earth, like a tree drawing energy up through its roots. As you exhale, imagine and feel yourself breathing energy down into the earth.
 
Sky breathing

To encourage the flow of energy between ourself and the sky, visualize a small golf-ball sized ball of light at the crown of your head. As you breathe in, feel yourself inhaling qi and energy from the sky down into your body. As you breathe out, feel energy flowing out of your crown and connecting with the sky.
 
Putting it together – Opening the energy gates
 
In a standing, or upright sitting posture, focusing on either the palms, or the feet, or the crown:
1. Inhale deeply and bring arms out to sides up to 30-45% maximum
2. Exhaling, bring arms back down to sides.
 
This simple exercise helps to co-ordinate mind, breath and body, as well as helping to open up the energy gates in the palms, feet and crown. You can also visualize stagnant energy leaving the body as you exhale, and luminous light energy entering as you inhale.
 
Once you are familiar with it with one of the three body parts, you can do all three zones (palms, feet, crown) together as you breathe.
 
Related reading:
Breathing through your skin
Core cellular breathing


© Toby Ouvry 2025, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Who is your child-self, and how can you start to relate to her/him min a mindful and fulfilling way? The article below looks at these questions!

In the spirit of play & healing, 

Toby

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Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self 
Workshop: Saturday 21^st June, 2-5pm SG time, 

In a sentence: Learn how you can use mindfulness to discover & relate to the child-self that lies within you for the purposes of both therapeutic healing & personal thriving….read full details

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Article: Relating to the child-self within you holistically

In my twenties and early thirties, after a decade of Buddhist meditating, I had enjoyed many experiences, and got several significant results. However, I also noticed that there was a part of me that had remained untouched by all the practice. Periodically he seemed to suffer from anxiety, fear, discombobulation, and a sense of ‘lost-ness’.
After leaving my life as a monk, one of the avenues that I explored related to this inner anxiety, was my relationship to the child-self within me. All of us have a child-self within us. It is the part of us that relates to our experience as a child, and that lives as a psychic reality within us now. Building a relationship to that part of myself, and helping him to heal, feel secure and build confidence was a large part of the experiential solution to the mysterious anxiety that I felt but could not resolve through conventional meditation. I have written about this in past articles, what I want to do here is to describe some simple mindfulness exercises that can help to build a relationship to your child-self in a way that is healing, confidence-building and strengthening.

Step 1 – Find a picture of yourself as a child, if you have a few available, look through them and pick one that resonates for you. Set aside a period of time, and simply look at the picture. Allow yourself to free-associate memories and feelings around your child-hood. Be curious about what comes up for you, being mindful that you are not trying to ‘solve’ anything at this stage. Sense into the image and your memories in three ways:

• From your head awareness – Images, memories, thoughts, narratives, inner voices
• From your heart and chest awareness – The range of emotions, feelings of closeness and distance, open-ness and closed-ness
• From your belly and ‘gut’ awareness – Body sensations, instincts, non-verbal impulses, sensations of safety or danger, subtle changes in your body posture and facial expression

Step 2 – Imagine your child-self present in front of you. Smile at her/him gently, invite connection. If s/he wants to talk to you, let them talk. Let them ask questions, respond to those questions, enjoy relating to them.

Step 3 – With their permission and when ready, hold them, give them a hug. Holding them in your arms, allow an exchange of love. Extend that love to them and allow yourself to receive it from them. Let this connection of love start to work on the healing of any traumas that your child-self may have, and allow her/him to start to build trust and confidence in you as a ‘parental’ figure.

A further step is to then engage in activities each day where you are consciously doing them together with your child-self, and where there is room for play, interaction, and expression of a range of emotional states relating to your child-self. And of course, when you are with actual children, see this as a wonderful opportunity to explore your child-self with them in the outer world!

This type of mindfulness is a rich area to explore that has much to offer anyone who is willing to take the time to engage with it. It is a wonderful thing to be able to grow old with a vibrant, healthy, and energised child-self accompanying us. The body may grow older, but the spirit stays young!

If this article resonates with you, then do consider the upcoming workshop on Saturday 21^st June, 2-5pm SG time – Meditation & Mindfulness for working with your Child-self.

Related article: Meditating with your child-self

© Toby Ouvry 2025, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article looks at mindfulness when brought to bear upon the most important activities in your life. If you enjoy it, we will be exploring it in this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday Meditation sessions. 

Heads up for the upcoming Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation on 19th & 20th March!

In the spirit of mindfulness,
 
Toby 

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Mindful flow around the things that are most important
 
How mindfulness makes things better
Fundamentally, mindfulness is about being present to your life in a relaxed, focused manner. By being present in such a way, you create a ‘flow state’ where you can:

• Enjoy the present activity and derive fulfilment from it
• To more effective and wiser regarding your experience of any challenges being presented

By being relaxed, focused and present (as opposed to tense, anxious and reactionary), things essentially tend to get better and easier in a natural, unforced manner.
 
What to focus on in mindfulness?
The premise here is that, if you practice mindfulness around the most important things in your life, then they will get better. What are the most important things? Well, it depends upon the person, but since most of our time is spent in relationships and in work, then these two are very important to build your mindful flow capacity around. Here are a few pointers for how to do this:
 
Mindfulness around relationships
Sitting quietly, build a little bit of basic mindful flow around the breathing, by focusing your attention on the inbreath, then relaxing your body-mind on the outbreath. Now, bring your attention to an important relationship, perhaps your romantic partner, a family member or colleague. Picturing them in your mind’s eye, practice being mindful to what comes up as you are present to them:

• Notice the internal conversation that starts up within you
• The judgments
• The emotions and mood that settle in
• Times when you have states of blank, unknowing, ambiguity or confusion
• Particular memories of subjects that come up
• What does the content look like from your ‘I’ space? 
• What does the relationship look like from their ‘I’ space?
• What does the relationship look like from both of your ‘we’ space?

As you do this, you are not trying to fix or solve any of it, rather simply be present to all the material in a focused, relaxed manner. That is the only ‘goal’.
By being present in this way, as an observer, naturally your awareness of the relationship will increase. When you next meet the person, as you interact, practice bringing some of that mindful presence into your contact with them, be relaxed and lightly present as far as possible.
 
Mindfulness around work
Establish your basic mindful flow, then bring your attention to an important area of your work, or just your sense of work more generally. Picture the circumstances in your mind’s eye, practice being mindful to what comes up as you are present to it:

• Notice the internal conversation that starts up within you
• The judgments or anxieties
• The emotions and mood around the project
• Memories that surface persistently
• Times when you have states of blank, unknowing, ambiguity or confusion
• What does your work look like from your ‘I’ space?
• What does your work look like from other people’s perspectives?
• If someone were looking on as an observer, or ‘fly on the wall,’ what would they see?

 
As with relationships, you are not trying to fix or solve any of it, rather simply be present to all the material in a focused, relaxed manner. That is the only ‘goal’.
By being present in this way, as an observer, naturally your awareness of the relationship will increase. When you are next at work, practice brining some of that mindful presence into your tasks and interactions. Practice light, mindful attention to what you are doing.
 
If you practice these two exercises consistently, even for only a few minutes a day, you will notice your experience of relationships and of your work change in the manner that I outlined in the first two paragraphs. Sound too good to be true? Why not try it for a week and find out?!

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
 

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All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing – Effortless effort – The art of doing by non-doing, a ten-week meditation course

Tues & Weds 19,20th March, 7.30-8.30pm – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Saturday March 23rd, 9-11.30am – Integral meditation deep dive mini-retreat

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Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Meditation polarities are a key to good meditation technique, get them right and a lot of good things follow. If you enjoy the article, then you might consider my January course on Effortless effort, which integrates these principles.

This week’s Tues & Wednesday class are on the subject of ‘Mindfully healing sadness, guilt & anger’, all welcome, live or online. 

In the spirit of wings, 
 
Toby

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Meditation wings – Five foundational meditation polarities
 
Here are five pairs of qualities that you build over time in meditation. Put some working experience of all of them together and you are on your way to meditation mastery. Each pair is like the wings of a bird. Just like a bird needs two wings, not one to fly, to make significant progress in meditation we need these functional pairs.
 
1. Not lost in thought, not asleep
 
This first one gives you your basic state of meditative presence, which then acts as the basis of all other levels and types of meditation. As a beginner you try and anchor your attention to an object in the present moment, and sustain awareness of it, without getting lost in thought, and without falling asleep. It is this the state of ‘presence’ which you then place all your other meditations.
 
2. Balancing relaxation & focus
 
On the level of the physical body and the everyday mind, we build the power of our mindful concentration by combining a degree of focus with a degree of relaxation. If relaxation to the point of sleep is a zero, and total effortful focus is a ten, we are trying to sustain somewhere in between a 4-6 range. This creates a ‘mindful flow state’ that we can use daily and build upon in meditation to go deeper in our formal practice.
 
3. Warmth & space
 
Once we can stabilize a degree of mindful flow, we then start to notice that our consciousness itself has two basic qualities; a natural warmth, and a sense of space. This ‘warmth’ is the basis of our natural love and compassion, which we can focus upon ourself or others, it is a bit like the sun. The ‘space’ element is like the sky, open, spacious, naturally calm. Meditating on your inner warmth and space feels both healing and gently energizing.
 
4. Compassion & wisdom
 
The natural warmth of our consciousness them becomes the basis of our love and compassion. We can meditate to expand our compassion from self-compassion, to compassion for others we know, to compassion for all humans, to all creatures universally. Correspondingly the natural space of our consciousness acts as the basis for increasing levels of objective wisdom and insight. This has both an everyday dimension, and an ‘ultimate’ dimension, meaning it provides insights into the absolute nature of reality itself.
 
5. Bliss & emptiness
 
On the deeper levels of meditation, wisdom and compassion are experienced as a primal bliss and unitive, formless emptiness. Over time these merge together to form a singularity or non-dual state. In tantric practice for example this state is cultivated explicitly to accelerate the profundity and power of our meditation to erode our egoic conditioning and accelerate our identification with our own naturally awakened nature.  
 
So, the list above is kind of hierarchical, from basic beginners to more advanced, and the advanced levels depend upon the basic levels for their mature growth. The basic levels are integrated into the upper levels, but they also become a part of our everyday enjoyment. For example, the mindful flow of level two is a basic tool for me to use while writing this article, and the warmth and space of level three are everyday ways that I keep myself company in a balanced manner.
 


In case you missed last week’s article: Evolutionary or devolutionary mindfulness?


Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2023. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@tobyouvry.com 

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Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article explores the space between the psychological and the spiritual dimensions or our psyche, particularly with reference to our child-self. If you enjoy it, this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday meditation class will integrate this subject into the session, and the Masterclass on 9th December is focused on Working with your bright shadow. 
The Integral Meditation Two Day Retreat at the end of this month is implicitly a deep dive into the state of the ‘Spiritual Child’ mentioned in the article.
 
In the spirit of the Bright Child,
 
Toby

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Meditating on the Bright Child within you
 
Normally when we think of inner child work, we think of the psychological level of things; ‘healing’ our wounded inner child, recovering the playfulness we had as a child but forgot, and so on. Psychological practices like this refer to the child-in-time that we were, meaning:
‘The historical child, that is the child within us whose character has been shaped and informed by our own literal historical upbringing; experience with parents, peers, and other significant others, what happened to us in school, how we were treated and learned to gain approval and so on. The child within us now that is a product of our personal historical experience, and our response to that.’ (see my previous article on ‘Meditating with the child self’)
The below here offers a complementary practise, where the focus is on connecting to our Spiritual, and Archetypal/Soul level or ‘Bright child’.
 
Your ‘Spiritual Child’
You might call your Spiritual Child the ‘Eternal’ or ‘Ever-New’ Self. It is our essential nature, outside of the world of form and time. You can find it in meditation in the following way:
Observing your field of consciousness, notice three domains:

• Firstly, your body and senses in time and space, gradually getting older.
• Secondly, your mind and thoughts, also thinking and feeling according to your unfolding story in time and space, as you (as a body-mind) get older.
• Thirdly, there is consciousness itself, and the ‘simple feeling of being’ that it gives rise to. This experience is formless, timeless and ever-new, arising pristine and bright in each moment.

This third domain of consciousness itself, and the simple feeling of being, is what we are referring to as our ever-young, ‘Spiritual Child’. To meditate on the simple feeling of being is to connect, and to be fed and renewed by our inner Spiritual Child. This is a meditation we can do and continue to deepen over a lifetime.
 
Your Archetypal, or ‘Bright Child’
Having connected to your Spiritual Child as above, you can then set an intention to meet your ‘Soul-level’ child, or bright child. You can do this through visualization. If you imagine yourself in a landscape, and then imagine your ‘Bright child’ comes to meet you. S/he would look very much like yourself as a young child, but when you see her, you see that she is bright, beautiful, happy, untouched by your past traumas as an historical child. As I mention in my child-self article, the bright child is “That part of us that is ever young, ever new, ever creative, ever both innocent and wise, whose light helps us begin again each time we burn out.”
When you spend time with her you can:

• Observe the states of mind, perspectives & somatic sensations that arise when you are in contact with her
• Talk to her and troubleshoot challenges you have in your life, as well as derive inspiration
• Practice being her, now, and embodying her energy

 
These practices are great to do as meditations by themselves, but they are also valuable to do in combination with the often-difficult work of healing our historical inner-child of their past wounds and burdens from this life. Contacting the wounded child in the context of knowing the child within you that is already in perfect health makes it much easier to face the pain, and less arduous.
 
Related articles:  Meditating with the child self
Your shadow child
Progressively recovering your joie de vivre (Meditating with your inner child)

Article content © Toby Ouvry & Integral Meditation Asia 2023. you are welcome to share, but please cite the source, thanks! Contact info@tobyouvry.com  

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In case you missed it: The body is in you – How to go into deep meditation quickly
 
The deepest level of meditation is what is known as Non-Dual meditation. It is the state of meditation where, essentially the subject-object divide within consciousness collapses into ‘One Taste’ or the simple, essential unity of being.
One way to achieve this is what you might call ‘progressive witnessing’, where you realize that you are not any of the objects in your consciousness, rather you are the witness of them. You do this until you realize the Essential I, the I-I, the pure consciousness that is the witness. It would go something like this…read full article

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Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

“Once we can focus our mind in meditation, we can then skilfully think and move our attention creatively in that space without disturbing our concentration. This in turn leads to unusual and supra-normal levels of insight and creativity”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This weeks article looks at how to work creatively in meditation. As an artist myself (originally), its a subject central to my experience of meditation, and one that makes it almost infinitely enjoyable and regenerative!
If you enjoy it then do consider joining us for this weeks Tuesday & Wednesday evening meditations, where we shall be integrating a creative dimension to our meditation practice. 

My monthly Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat on 25th February is now full, waiting list only. I have added an extra session on Sunday the 26th for those who may want to participate

In the spirit of our inner artist, 

Toby 

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The fish swimming in the pond: Meditation & creative contemplation

Meditation & contemplation
Back when I began meditating in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, I was taught that meditation has two parts; contemplation and meditation. Initially you have to contemplate in order to ‘seek and find’ your object of meditation. Once you have found it you can them simply let your attention focus upon it and go deeper into it. For example:

• Before doing breathing meditation you have to seek and find the sensation of your breathing
• Before meditating on compassion, you have to assemble in your minds eye the objects of compassion (EG: other particular people) and find the feeling of compassion within yourself
• Before you can hold a visualization in meditation, you first have to build the different components of the visualization in a contemplation

Active & creative meditation – Moving your mind in a meditative state
Over time I have also increasingly used meditation as a point of departure for creative contemplation. Thinking in a meditative state I have found creates a very different experience of how things are.
To give an example, if I am anxious and stressed, often the way in which I think about my life will often be anxious and stressed. If I move into a state of meditation on say my beginners mind or compassion, and re-consider my life from there, the compassionate state of mind will create a very different view and experience from my stressed and anxious state.
From this we can start to understand how our meditative states are creative; they paint a picture of our life that is different from our everyday mind.
As well as painting a different picture in the way described above, our meditative states can often ‘plug us in’ to ideas and inspirations from a deeper level of our own consciousness, and a deeper level of the collective group consciousness. We find ourself tapping into levels of inner reality where there is an abundance of, often spontaneous creative ideas.  

The fish in the pond: Skilful creative contemplation
Initially when we meditate it can feel difficult enough to just calm our mind to focus upon and hold an object of meditation. To move back into creative contemplation often results in us just becoming distracted again. But if we keep practising then we learn to contemplate creatively in meditation whilst at the same time not disturbing our inner stillness and focus.
Again speaking of my Tibetan Buddhist days, this was illustrated by the image of a small fish swimming beneath the surface of a pond without disturbing the surface. Similarly, once we can focus our mind in meditation, we can then skilfully think and move our attention creatively in that space without disturbing our concentration. This in turn leads to unusual and supra-normal levels of insight and creativity.
Now, this may sound like a long way from where you are currently, but one way to get better at this fast is simply to practice it regularly. A simple structure might look like this. In a fifteen-minute meditation:

• Spend five minutes calming your mind and finding your meditation object, for example the breathing or compassion
• The next five minutes focus on deepening your attention on your chosen object
• For the final five minutes bring to mind a domain of your life that you want to think creatively about. Staying relaxed and present within your meditative state, contemplate your chosen domain and see what ideas, perspectives and insights come to light

You might say this is a way of using meditation to capitalize on our natural creativity, and allowing it to flourish in the deeper, more free space of our focused awareness.

Related articles: Still water that moves – Meditation for greater creativity
Mindfulness for enhancing productivity & creativity in your work
On boredom, creativity & ‘mindful fishing’

© Toby Ouvry 2023, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing – Introduction to Integral Meditation & Mindfulness Practice – An eight-week course

Saturday & Sunday February 26/27th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat

Tues 21st & Weds 22nd March, 7.30-8.30pm – Spring Equinox balancing and renewing meditation

Sat & Sunday 1st, 2nd April – Two day integral meditation retreat
 

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Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology