Gentle Revolution Ep 1
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Mark: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. My name is Mark Purser and welcome to the Gentle Revolution podcast. Episode one of this long anticipated, at least by me, podcast where we will be exploring the nuance of successful living. The Gentle Revolution is a Hopefully optimistic look into the possibilities for humankind and the evolution of the earth.
And at the heart of it, it is the evolution of awareness. If you play around with the name, The Gentle Revolution, you will get the gentler evolution. And the idea, my premise, and Perhaps the core belief that has kept me going for a long period of time is that it is possible for human beings to have a sustainable existence upon planet Earth.
We don't need to [00:01:00] abandon ship and move to Mars or start prepping for doomsday, which for some people seems to be a question of inevitability. My deep and abiding belief is one of optimism is that human beings can be successful in our ability to live in conjunction, in harmony, in union with planet Earth and all of her beings.
At the core of this belief and this practice, I'm not just believing it, I'm practicing it. I'm trying to live my life in a way that is optimistic. I'm living, planning for a future, for a joyful, successful future. At the core of this very much is the practice of yoga. The practice of meditation, breath work, self awareness, I am many of you will know a teacher of these things and not only am I a teacher, I am an advocate [00:02:00] and a practitioner.
So yoga, in certainly the way I understand it, should be coupled with a practice of meditation and self awareness, where we're looking to explore the nuance of who we are and how we are, how we show up on the planet, how we show up within social interaction, how we show up in our lives.
The Gentle Revolution ultimately is built around accountability. It's built around you and me being accountable for how we are, rather than playing the blame game, pointing the finger elsewhere and at others. We take accountability for how we show up in this world. We look towards what we can do personally to change things within ourselves, and perhaps that can ripple out into the future.
Inevitably, in fact, it will ripple out into the outside world. But it starts with us. How am I behaving? Where can I [00:03:00] improve through a practice of honesty, through a practice of cooperation, tolerance, and understanding, empathy. These are the qualities of the yogi. And again, as I pointed to just before, the practice of optimism.
We practice optimism, believing in a better future and looking towards how we can make the moment better. As it was once explained to me by one of my dear teachers, Swami Satyadharma, that optimism is at the core of yogic practice, where we're in every moment looking to how we can improve karma.
How can I make this moment better? What can I say? What can I do to improve the karma of all of the beings around me? to make life better, not just for myself, but for others around us as well. It's a big conversation and I hope that this conversation will go over a long period of time. We're looking at topics such as yoga, obviously getting into the nuance of [00:04:00] practice into the philosophy of practice into meditation and breath work, which is in fact the subject of today's podcast, the marriage between, breathwork and meditation and also other meditative practices.
I'm coming from the yogic meditation tradition. I'm a teacher and a student in that tradition. We're looking at tantra different meditation schools. I'm very open to have conversation really with anyone who has meditation as part of their practice, as this practice of self awareness and how that can ripple out into all aspects of our lives.
The practice of recovery from addiction, we're looking at trauma, what is trauma, how it shows up. We've got a conversation about that coming up in the next few weeks. Ultimately looking towards a whole range of subjects that pertain to addiction. Social evolution, communication, bio dynamics is something I'm really fascinated in regenerative [00:05:00] agriculture, sustainable agriculture, dare I say politics and religion.
I don't talk about them publicly very often, but I'm fascinated as I know many of you are. They are big topics of conversation and often they are fraught. topics of conversation where we tend to clash over our beliefs. And again, one of the things that we look to unpack is our attachment to our beliefs, how we can relate with others who have different beliefs and perhaps conflicting ideals and how we can find resolution.
Nonviolent communication is another subject that we'll be exploring over the next couple of months. So I have a lot in store. I really hope that you can join for the ride, so please do subscribe to this channel. This is episode one and there will be many more, so you can watch on YouTube.
I'm recording a video if you are already watching on YouTube, you know that. It will also be available as an audio podcast on all the major audio podcast platforms. So [00:06:00] please strap yourself in, make yourself a nice cuppa and enjoy. This is the Gentle Revolution podcast, and I am absolutely delighted and very excited to share this journey with you.
So episode one of the Gentle Revolution podcast. What we're looking at here is this relationship between breathwork and meditation. And it's a subject that's really dear to my heart because I'm a teacher of both breathwork and meditation. I have studied through the yogic lineage. So I've studied classical yoga and tantra through largely through the lineage of the Bihar School of Yoga Swami Satyananda, who's the key teacher, the instigator of that school, he was a student of Swami Sivananda, so it's a Northern Indian tradition where they teach a system of classical yoga, which is very much based on the alignment of the [00:07:00] physical, the alignment of the energetic, and the alignment of the mental body, hands, heart, mind, all coming into alignment.
So we're using the tools of asana, hatha yoga, the physical practice of yoga. We're using the tools of pranayama, which is commonly now described as breathwork, but there is differences which we will touch upon and fundamentally the practice of meditation. So the question that we're asking today is, why do breathwork and meditation need each other?
So I'll start from the breathwork perspective and just to give you, if you're Not already familiar some understanding of what breathwork is. It really is an umbrella term. Breathwork ultimately refers to any technique or practice which involves the breath and using the breath in an intentional way to cultivate a specific desired outcome.
So that might be breath to relax us, using breath to calm us. Calm the systems. Quiet, the nervous [00:08:00] system. It might be using the breath to find balance and harmony, maybe to stimulate our mind, quiet the mind, or it can, as it often is, breath to stimulate us. And a lot of the modern breath work techniques, the ones that have become really popular in the modern time not exclusively, but largely due to the work of Wim Hof, who has popularized this really energizing form of breath work, which.
is wonderful. It heats us up. These practices of dynamic breath, Wim Hof technique is based on a classical tantric technique called tummo. And tummo is in fact a breathwork technique that is designed to really stimulate and heat the system. Really useful. It was originally practiced a lot by monks living in the Himalayas and It's really useful for those guys who were enduring incredible colds and very useful for a lot of us as well.
If we're feeling sluggish, [00:09:00] not only is it heating the body, it heats our system. It creates stimulation for our entire system. There are similar practices Bastrika, many of you will know, and Kapalbhati are very similar practices. All three of those practices also have, not only the effect of heating, creating physical heat, warming the system, they are having a secondary effect in fact the primary effect is not so much the physical heating, that's more of the side effect, the intended effect of these practices from the tantric perspective is to activate what we describe as samskara.
And samskara sense impressions and often related to trauma. It's a bigger conversation, this relationship between samskara and trauma, but many of you are no doubt familiar with that term. Trauma has more of a negative implication, like it's bad. Samskara doesn't really differentiate from the yogic perspective.
It's just something that happened. An experience that's happened and dealing with our [00:10:00] subconscious mind. The practices of dynamic breath work are ultimately looking to heat the system, stimulate Samskara, which we're talking about as housed within the core, within the belly, lighting that fire, the cauldron of Agni, which is the fire.
I'm looking to cultivate this experience of heating so we can burn off Samskara. It is a wonderful technique, a wonderful series of techniques. However, it should be said that these techniques classically were never practiced in isolation. So if you're doing any form of active breath work, you would be Very well served by coupling that practice with a practice of meditation.
If you're not already, and if you're just particularly practicing something like Wim Hof or a breakthrough breathwork technique you I'm gonna go out and say it, you really need to be meditating. You really need to be [00:11:00] meditating. If you are not meditating, or have some system for calming and balancing the mind, and you don't have some system to reflect upon this trauma that you're activating, Houston, we have a problem.
You are setting yourself up for what I've heard described as a kundalini crack up, where we're raising all of this stuff, all this psychic residue, and we don't have the wherewithal to deal with it. When we teach dynamic breath work from the yogic perspective and the tantric tradition, we work firstly with ajna chakra, so it's coming out of a whole system of tantric practice.
Practice where the first part of the system is to stabilize what we describe Ajna , which is the command center. Often the work focuses on the third eye center the pineal gland and the prefrontal cortex from a neurological perspective, and ultimately helping to stabilize, settle the mind, create balance in the mind.[00:12:00]
The command center is balanced and ready to deal with the upsurge in activity. I often reflect as if you've got a really strong and powerful country and you put a despot, someone crazy, and we see many examples of this out there in the world of big powerful countries who have these lunatics who step into control.
We get into trouble. Those people are not balanced. They're not able to command the power that is gifted to them. And one of the tragedies of humanity is that those people are often the ones who are attracted to power. They want more power. And to a lesser degree, many of us are like this. We do want more power.
We crave more power. That's physical power, sexual power, intellectual power. the increased tenacity, willpower, which is wonderful. And these practices of breathwork can give us that. However, it is done as part of a system. [00:13:00] And this, as I said before, this is why breathwork needs meditation. So if you are engaging in dynamic breathwork practices, it is absolutely fundamental that you have some form of, it doesn't need to be anything complex, some form of meditation technique attached to the breathwork.
And if you're teaching this stuff, a lot of breathwork teachers are out there, and I've been to these breathwork circles, and they're wonderful. They are actively looking to bring up emotion. They're looking to activate samskara. And there does not seem to be, in a lot of these cases, the capability from the teacher to offer the meditation techniques that are required to help their students
balance that out. In a one off, I think, most of the time it's okay. So in the balance, I think it's generally a good thing for people just to jump in there and have a go. I hear a lot about people going into these breathwork circles with no real experience of yoga or meditation.
And I'm always like, just go for it, just have a [00:14:00] go. But if you are taking it on as regular practice. Know that there is a side effect. And we'll know, in fact, it's not just a side effect. The intended effect is to raise samskara. So if you're doing this regularly, or if you're a teacher who is teaching this regularly, It's really important that there is some sort of balancing practice, calming practice that is attached to it.
And that, in fact, could be a breathwork practice. I often suggest, if you're doing Tummo Wim Hof breathing or breakthrough breathwork, that just a simple practice of Nadi Shodhan, balancing breath, or Brahmari or humming bee breath, both of which can be focused on stabilizing Ajna Chakra, using them as an introductory practice.
to stabilize Ajna and then a calming practice to help counterbalance the effect. I would suggest bringing them in, creating sequences of breath work is really important. But also on top of that a meditative practice such as Vipassana or Antar Mouna basically [00:15:00] the same as Vipassana, which we teach in the yogic meditation tradition.
Antar Mouna is a practice that gives you the capacity to witness. It helps to cultivate this skill of vairagya, where we can cultivate detachment. So when we're seeing these emotions coming up we have the ability to observe and to witness. We're not inundated with this upsurge of psychic activity.
Really important stuff that we need to learn how to regulate, or else we're just going to keep. experiencing it. You can bring up all the stuff, but unless you have the capability of dealing with it effectively, you're just going to be overwhelmed. And as I pointed to before, one of my old friends who's a Buddhist monk, I was doing a lot of Kriya Yoga and he always used to say to me, beware the Kundalini crack up. He'd seen so many yogis go crazy over time because they were doing too much activating work and they weren't [00:16:00] coupling that with a meditation practice. One of the things, a really important practice, probably fundamental to most yogis and to most monks, is a practice of mantra.
Having a simple mantra, whether that's the Om the So Hum mantra of the breath exhale, hum is a beautiful mantra or a personal mantra that has been given to you. There are many mantras used again to stabilize the mind the literal translation of mantra which I dearly love is this. One of the translations is a protector of the mind or a refuge for the mind.
It's a place for the mind to go to achieve stability. So again, I think having a mantra practice is a really beautiful counterbalance, a counterpose for a dynamic, particularly a dynamic breathwork practice. So for me the ultimate practice would be to have do the dynamic breathwork practices.
I'm all for them. I think it. unless you are emotionally or mentally unstable, go for it. [00:17:00] I think they're fantastic, but do it in an informed way. I would say it's important to offer and be practicing other things, as I said, some Nadi Shodhan or Brahmari wonderful practice to help balance out the dynamic breath work.
And then a practice of meditation for me, mindfulness practice, Antar Mouna. This capacity to witness thoughts and also a mantra practice. I use ajapa japa, which is an internal mantra practice, similar to transcendental meditation, which many of you might know, again, using to stabilize the mind. And what we're doing here is creating a holistic sadhana.
So we're. enabling the system to deal with more of this activity as it is raised. So that's one side of the coin. That's, I've said, I think, fairly clearly why I think that breathwork needs meditation. So then the flip side is why does meditation need breathwork? Referring actually again to my friend, the Buddhist monk, He [00:18:00] wasn't really big on asana or pranayama, breathwork he was just focusing on meditation.
And that's cool. That's cool. Meditation, depending on what sort of technique that you're employing, can take you all the way. Ultimately meditation is the end goal. But for most of us, he's a monk living full time as a monk. He really, this guy has an amazing commitment to his sadhana. He's really withdrawn from life, spends a lot of his time in isolation, doesn't have a family has, in fact, this guy doesn't has made a choice not to get into any motorized vehicles, he has no computer or telecommunications equipment.
So he's able to live in this meditative experience for a lot of the time. But for most of us if you're listening to this podcast, then I'm guessing that you have some connection to the electronic world, and for most of us, we have a lot of distraction, and so it's not easy to come into meditation.
Meditation is well known to be difficult. We're [00:19:00] coming from a world of distraction. We're surrounded by messaging that's coming in at us.
Distraction from all sorts of people, things wanting our attention. It's hard to come into meditation. Not only is it hard to find the time and to be able to dedicate that time to come towards meditation, but to actually come into this meditative experience, it's a great challenge. So if you've got the time to sit there, most of us are dealing with a monkey mind.
If you've only got 10 minutes to meditate, to actually come quickly into that experience is really challenging. In the yogic perspective, using the tantric system, we use breathwork to this effect. The whole purpose of breathwork, or one of the key purposes, is to bring the mind into a state of calm, to balance the nervous system, pranayama literally is the name that yogis give
breathwork, prana being energy, yama being control. So learning how to control our nervous system, control energy within the [00:20:00] system, so the mind just naturally settles. And then at that point, meditation becomes easy. Using this system of pranayama, the system of breathwork, as it has been prescribed and used for many hundreds, if not thousands of years by these yogis
quickly and effectively brings us into this state of balance, of equilibrium, where the mind comes into harmony. Any students of yoga would be familiar with the model of the koshas, which is the dimensions of the experience. And the yogis use this system, it's a roadmap for cultivating a practice.
And we start with our physical body, Annamaya Kosha, Anna being food, and then we're dealing with energy Pranamaya Kosha, Manamaya Kosha which is the mind, and Vyanamaya, which connecting into bliss and Anandamaya Kosha. Using this system of the koshas gives us a model of what am I doing to balance my body?
Whether it's physical [00:21:00] exercise, going for a brisk walk, yoga asana, hatha yoga is really effective, bringing the physical body into a state of good health and balance, and using pranayama breathwork is, in my opinion, the ultimate way to balance the nervous system bringing pranamaya kosha into balance.
And then at that point we can easily access manomaya kosha and meditation is very much about manomaya kosha. So again, using for me, my experience with meditation, I'd done a lot of meditation in different sorts of schools over the years, but it wasn't until I really engaged seriously with pranayama and really engaged with an intentional, informed practice of breath work that I was able to quite simply, enter states of meditation. It doesn't need to take a long time. If you've got 10 minutes, 15 minutes a day, I would suggest that just a simple stretch, five minutes of breath work, moving into even five minutes of good quality [00:22:00] meditation is much better than sitting on your cushion and wrangling around for half an hour.
being hot and bothered. I like that rule of thirds, using a third of the time for some sort of physical practice, whether that's a stretch or some gentle exercise or yoga asana moving into a third of the time using that for pranayama breathwork and a third of the time for meditation. That for me is a good rule of thumb, so for setting up a practice.
So again, using pranayama, using the breath to harmonize. Bring balance to the nervous system, balance to the nadis so that we can easily enter this state of meditation. Breathwork and meditation should be, certainly from my perspective and the tradition of yogic meditation, the very best of friends.
They're both integral parts of a system. You really can't have the full experience of yoga without exploring them both. [00:23:00] So thank you for listening, for watching this first episode of the Gentle Revolution podcast. I decided to keep it really simple for this first week. Just me giving a simple download on a topic I'm rather familiar with.
So if you've got any questions, please do ask in the comments in YouTube. I'm very happy to discuss. and reflect. I love the discussion that can come out around this stuff. I do offer courses. You can go to yogicmeditation.net or bambooyogabyron.com I've got a whole heap of information about courses that I'm running.
Please do reach out, connect via the socials, Instagram. Facebook, whatever, I am very much, for better or for worse, connected to the digital world. So I do love to have these conversations. It is, for me, it's a life's work. It's a core passion to bring this stuff forward. So I hope it's useful. I hope it's helpful.
And I hope again to be talking to you soon. Hari Aum [00:24:00] [00:25:00] [00:26:00] [00:27:00]
