Tree Breathing

This exercise allows you to experience the life of a tree and can be performed with or without a real tree. If you have a real tree, sit next to it with your back leaning against its trunk, if you don’t have a tree just visualise it. If you can find a suitable tree, try sitting in its branches.

Breathe in deeply and imagine energy welling up from deep within the earth, travelling up the roots of the tree, the trunk, branches, twigs and leaves. At the same time the energy fills you from head to toe.


Breathe out and imagine energy from the sun entering the leaves of the tree and travelling into the tree. Imagine the breath of the tree sinking into the ground through the branches, trunk and roots.

Continue this breathing pattern until you feel deeply connected to the tree. Expand your awareness to the processes happening in the tree. The sunlight shining on the leaves causing photosynthesis, the production of oxygen, to occur. The sap rising in the trunk.

Expand your awareness to all the life that lives on the tree- birds, insects & lichen.

Slowly bring you awareness back to your own breath and thank the tree (real or imaginary) for its help.

Don't let your karma run over your dogma

I have struggled for many years with the concept of karma.  Part of the problem is that there seems to be no universal agreement about what it actually is, and many people believe it does not exist anyway.  The main theories are that it is some sort of divine retribution, 'an eye for an eye', or cause and effect.  Some think that karma comes back amplified, the threefold law. 

It was not until I read the works of a Tibetan Bon lama, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, that I felt I understood what karma is all about.  His description made sense and here is my potted version:-)  If you would like a better understanding, explore the Ligmincha site http://www.ligmincha.org

What is Karma?

Karma is the Emotional Charge from Unconscious Memories and Desires, from experiences in waking life in addition to dreams, daydreams and all other thoughts.  Karma also consists of unconscious memories and desires from previous lives and experiences in the bardo plane (the after death realm described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead .) 

The Power of Dreams - Tibetan Buddhist Dreaming

A video about the spiritual importance of dreams in the Tibetan Bon tradition.