What is Tummo Breathing?
The purpose of Tummo Breathing is to purify the mind and gain realizations for meditation. Tummo means "Inner Fire" because the practice involves visualizing an inner at the central channel. This visualization causes the mind to become peaceful because it forces the energy winds to dissolve into the central channel. I have created an ebook PDF explaining this practice in detail, and you can access it by joining the Peaceful Paradise Community. This practice is derived from the qualified spiritual guide Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, who is the founder of Modern Buddhism.
Stage 1: Alternate Nostril Breathing - Dispelling Impure Winds
Close one nostril with your finger and fully exhale three times. Alternate nostrils until they become clear and balanced. Visualize your central channel running from your secret place up to the crown of your head like a thin shaft of bamboo (clear, blue and flexible) paired with right and left channels joining the navel point. Each exhale expels impure winds from the body in the form of inky-black smoke, purifying your body, speech and mind.
Stage 2: Formless Breathwork - Self Generation as the Deity
Relax your belly. Inhale through the nose deeply as you raise your hands to the sky and feel your diaphragm expand. As you lift your arms imagine pulling formless energy up your central channel to the crown of your head. As you exhale pull your elbows down to your sides and shoot this energy back down your central channel. Through this continuous flow of expansion and contraction you realize non-local awareness and instantly become the Enlightened Deity. (Repeat 8x, 16x, 32x, etc.)
Stage 3: Visceral Exhale - Everything Dissolves into Emptiness
Viscerally exhale all the air out of your body and imagine that everything melts into a beam of blue light at your central channel and dissolves into clear light emptiness from above and below. Only a clear and transparent shell of your skin remains with no physical resistance like a rainbow. Perform a stomach vacuum with your chin down, tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth, and pelvic floor engaged. Squeeze muscles to release air.
Stage 4: Exhale Hold - Making Special Requests
Visualize Buddha Shakyamuni and the field for accumulating merit: “I prostrate and go for refuge to my Spiritual Guide and the sublimely precious Three Jewels. Through the force of your blessings, may I easily succeed in my practice of inner fire and attain the Union of bliss and emptiness. Please make my channels both flexible and smooth, and make my winds and drops supple. Please pacify my obstacles and bestow upon me the two attainments of liberating and ripening. Please bless me so that I will become become definitive Heruka, in which state I shall experience all phenomena as purified and gathered into emptiness, inseparable from great bliss.”
Stage 5: Inhale - Receiving Blessings
Inhale 100% through the nose and receive the inspiring strength of all Buddhas. Smile as radiant white light enters through your nostrils and all the winds from the upper body, lower body, and side channels dissolve into the central channel. Buddha Shakyamuni and the Field of Merit melt into infinite light light rays and dissolve into your indestructible wind and mind at the center of your clear five-colored heart channel wheel. Gently swallow and contract your pelvic floor to move the energy winds from above and below into the navel.
Stage 6: Inhale Hold - Gather Winds into Central Channel
While holding your breath imagine this energy dissolves and ignites a needle of fire at the navel, generating great bliss. The thread of fire slowly ascends, heating up all four places of the central channel to melting point. As it ascends, carefully shine the light of awareness down all spokes of each channel wheel. Start with the navel channel wheel (64 petals, red short-AH), travel up to the indestructible drop at the heart (8 petals, white HAM), then to the throat channel wheel (16 petals, red OM), and finally up to the crown channel (32 petals, blue HUM).
Stage 7: Volcano Exhale - Generating Spontaneous Great Bliss
Allow your head and shoulders to roll backwards as you slowly exhale through the mouth with pursed lips. Imagine that the inner fire blazes into the sky like a volcano, loosening the various knots at the central channel and opening your third eye. You experience great bliss as the fire shines a five-colored lights that reach the ends of space and purify everything inside and outside of your body. All Buddhas experience this bliss.
Stage 8: Meditating on the Union of Bliss and Emptiness
All the Buddhas appearing in single pointed embrace dissolve into unified white and red drops. They dissolve into a small blue light between your eyebrows and enter the central channel. This light melts into the crown, blessing and unifying it with all the Buddhas. This causes white drops to melt down the central channel like a small hole punctured from a tin of honey. They bless each area of the central channel, synthesizing them with all enlightened beings. Finally, the drop reaches the tip of the sex organ and intensifies the spontaneous great bliss.
