Introductionum (sKu) refers to the body, in the sense of embodied being. Its significance goes beyond our physical form to encompass all aspects of our being and ways we can develop and nurture ourselves as embodiments of authentic existence. Nye (mNye) means massage, or exercise that heals, integrates, and invigorates. Together, the words Kum Nye refer to massage, postures, and exercises that enable us to be comfortable in our embodiment and inspired to awaken the full capacities of body and mind, senses and heart.
We learn what it means to be complete in ourselves: We discover what it means to BE.
The Joy of Being goes more deeply into the inner aspects of our embodiment. It emphasizes the inner massage of feeling, using the senses to revitalize our capacities for seeing, hearing, sensing, touching, relishing, and cognizing…
As youpractice these exercises, senses, mind, and consciousness become more familiar with bliss the rich nectar of energy flowing unobstructed through a completely relaxed and balanced body. Bliss heals the heart beset by anxiety and pain and restores calm to the pressured and conflicted mind. When bliss becomes part of your being, mind and body will cooperate when you wish to meditate, and you will no longer have to struggle so much with physical and mental distractions. So before you meditate, relax deeply and use…
The Need to BEGenerally, our inability to feel complete in ourselves, to simply BE, compels us to spend much of our time looking for something in a restless, hungry way friends,…
When all aspects of our being coexist harmoniously, each supporting and complementing the other, our inner environment becomes happier; our feeling-tones are more generally light and joyful, and our…
you ask, “How is it possible for us to give bliss to our minds at will?” The answer is as close to us as our ownbodies, breath, and senses. We can act now to attune the eyes to beauty, the ears to the quality of sound, the nose and tongue to the subtleties of fragrance and taste, and the body to its own vital energy. Then the senses can bring light…
When the mind is content, even the ego becomes mellow; free of the need to protect, assert itself, and defend, it…
If you integrate Kum Nye into your daily routine, you can do many of its postures and exercises as you go about your daily activities, during short…
Since the benefits of Kum Nye accumulate with regular practice, it is important that you select four to five exercises from this volume about every three months and remind yourself to practice one or two of them at least twice daily. In all you do, remember that Kum Nye is your armament…
power, positive feelings, a companion, or love-these are nothing in comparison to the richness of spirit Kum Nye can provide. There is no need to renounce or to give up what you cherish. You can accommodate all…
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So it is important to make strong efforts to develop this knowledge and apply it. You can do this by reminding yourself daily: There is beauty that
you have not yet seen. There is sound that carries consciousness into heavenly spheres. There is fragrance more exquisite than the rarest incense. There is joy that expands beyond ecstasy and dissolves the seeds of suffering. You deserve to experience all these treasures and manifest their significance to all humanity.
Kum
Developing from this foundation, meditation reveals new dimensions of bliss, far beyond what we may now be able to imagine.
If we are inspired to give abundantly as well, we may experience the joy of generosity free from obligation and self-interest.
Meditation can elevate the yogic practices of Kum Nye into sources of inconceivable bliss so rarified that it goes beyond thought and beyond any sense of self or location in time and place.
Our
“I” am now the subject, assertive and in control. Everything else becomes object, something other than “I.”
Kum Nye encourages us to touch sensitive places and embrace strong feelings without fear. Practicing these exercises, we can develop joy that can wash out the painful residues of regret and transform anger and resentment into positive expressions.
Tuning
A Recommended RoutineTo create a foundation for practice, establish a regular routine that you can continue daily for several months or more. Prepare for the next day with a light, preferably vegetarian, evening meal, and by relaxing for ten to twenty minutes before going to bed. Upon waking, perform the cleansing exercise.
Cleansing ExerciseTake your seat on a pillow, with legs in the lotus or half-lotus position.
Keeping the back straight, with hands palms down on yourknees, perform a series of strong exhalations: nine in all, grouped into three sets of three, allowing time to rest in between. Inhale normally, then exhale strongly through both nose and mouth. In each set, do the first two exhalations slowly and the third faster and more heavily. On the final three, exhale as forcibly as you can, as if you were emptying the stomach.
Seated in the same posture, you may vary this exercise as follows: Inhale, then exhale forcefully through both nose and mouth, projecting both arms straight in front of you as you exclaim the syllable, AH! Repeat these movements nine times.
As you perform this exercise, reflect on the residues that are being expelled from your body. You can visualize them as colors carried outward on the breath: dark red, dark black, and a dull muddy color. These residues have feeling tones: dark red carries the feeling tones of anger and revulsion; dark black carries anxiety, grasping, and neediness, and the muddy color carries sluggishness, dullness, and apathy. All these residues-qualities that you feel pressured to express verbally but are emotionally hard to release can be cleared away on the exhaling breath. With this in mind, exhale strongly and breathe them out completely.
Morning ExercisesRelax the shoulders; move them up and down, then rotate them, one side moving up as the other moves down.
While it may take a little practice to get accustomed to this way of breathing, it is important to balance the breath by allowing it to flow through both nose and mouth. Breathing through the nose stimulates the head and thoughts, while mouth breathing awakens the body. Breathing through both together helps to gently balance and integrate body and mind, head and heart.
This happens naturally when you soften the focus of your eyes and imagine you are looking inward, toward the back of the eyeballs.
Relax your body, stay with the sense of ease and relaxation, and let go all the manifestations of mental activity. As they fade, sink more deeply into your inner home of relaxation, and allow them to completely drop away.If emotions and inner dialogues continue to interfere, take this opportunity to practice melting them into calmness. Breathing through nose and mouth, relax deeply; without responding to the stories spinning through the mind, listen to the flow of sound and let your mental chatter fade into meaningless sounds and rhythms.
Once you have tasted the feeling of relaxation, it is important to understand that thoughts have no substance in themselves. When they come up, remind yourself that there is no need to avoid them, restrain them, or push them away.
Caught between the need or desire to do and the reasons why we cannot, we become tense tied up in knots-that we have no way to release. We put off, delay, and procrastinate, and in doing so miss valuable opportunities that set us up for regret.
The only way you can do it is to feel out points of tenseness in the body and relax them one by one, as much and as often as possible.
When intense pain or strong emotions come up, try to make a gap, so the sharpness of the feeling does not hit you directly. You might visualize pain as if it were a wave of aliens coming toward you, fierce beings youcan hold off by the power of awareness. Feel awareness radiating from you like a forcefield that the pain-aliens can touch, but not penetrate. Use awareness to hold the sharp emotion or pain at a distance. It may come so close that you can feel its vibrations right against you, but do not let it come in.
Until our understanding is grounded in experience, our words and gestures are not truly our own, and they cannot carry much merit.
To comprehend the full significance of these gestures, we need to experience for ourselves what it means to be a genuinely selfless being, free of doubts and uncertainties instilled by our conditioning, and endowed with boundless compassion for all sentient life.
Embodying
In that sense, we might say, to embody Kum Nye is to manifest the quality of being -a vibrant aliveness fully attuned to the present moment.
Touching the Essence of FeelingKum Nye relaxes the body, calming the mind and slowing down the speed of perceptions and thoughts. Gradually, usually after several weeks of daily practice, the mind settles more readily into a quiet attentiveness, alert, but not grasping for thoughts or fixating on perceptions.
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The three pillars of spiritual practice are relaxation, meditation, and concentration.
Breath,
Advanced yogic practitioners are said to be able to bring the essence of the five elements into the cakras through their meditation. So effectively can they nourish themselves with cosmic energy that they can live on very little physical food.
Sit quietly, and allow mind to relax deeply, as if you were looking into a deep pool, pure as crystal and blue as the open sky. See the pool as very still and calm; invite this deep calming quality into your body. Breathe it in, and allow it to pass through the throat and into the lungs; feel it warming the heart and relaxing the abdomen. When sounds come, listen for the stillness that continues on, as sound itself comes and goes. Allow mind and body to enter that stillness, following it as it deepens and expands. When feeling arises, surrender to it, relaxing completely. Let go of words, let go of concepts, let go of interpretations, and simply be one with whatever feeling comes. Melt into the feeling, taste the calmness, and relish the stillness enveloping mind and body. Sounds come and go; thoughts may drift through the mind like clouds through the sky, but the calmness remains. Restin that tranquil, yet dynamic space, open to communication from within and without. Begin by practicing this exercise for fifteen minutes and gradually extend the time to sessions of thirty to forty minutes.
As you practice, you may sensethe body becoming lighter, as if it were touching space or extending into space, beyond the physical form.
When body and mind are totally open, there remains only the sense of spaciousness, in which you may glimpse the quality that some masters have called the lightness of being. When you mature in this practice, you can enter this field of being whenever you wish.
As yoga practitioners have demonstrated, breath can be used to quiet mental activity completely and transform it into bliss.
After two or three weeks, you may observe that the breath flowing in is a light sky-blue color, with a gentle feeling-tone that flows inside and heals the body. When you exhale, feel all the tension while it is being released, passing completely out of the body. As the breath comes back, it fills body and senses with the healing nectar of relaxation.
The breath can become so slow and light that you may hardly notice it at all, perhaps as slow as one minute for each complete cycle of inhaling and exhaling. At first, inhalation and exhalation have distinct high and low points, but as the breath slows and calms, these points smooth out more and more, until there is…
Breathing in and out becomes so smooth that you may not even notice you are breathing, and breathing…
Sense the breath touching and flowing into your inner organs, and feel the rhythmic expansions and contractions of your breath massaging them, stimulating a flow of feeling that warms and revitalizes. Sink into these feelings, taste their sweetness…
Practice this exercise for fifteen to twenty minutes,…
Long BreathSensory impulses have flavors, not flavors that we can readily identify in words, but subtle flavors we might associate with such qualities as sweetness, warmth, melting, or glowing. When we listen to music, for example, we recognize notes, melodies, rhythm, and specific voices and instruments. But within these…
In every place it touches, especially the sensitive areas of the body, you may feel soft warmth, a melting, buttery…
When bliss fills body and mind, rest within it: there is no tension, no thoughts, no concepts-there is only bliss. Nothing else is needed,…