High in the mountains of Sagada Philipines, I was able to teach the ancient Tibetan technique if Light Breathing to a group of local priests.
I had led a normal mandala making workshop with the priests, deacons and parish women of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Sagada that afternoon. We moved from making individual mandalas to making a co-creative group mandala with ripped paper.
They caught on really fast.
At the end of the afternoon there were five of us left. I felt that these men had so fully grasped the way of the mandala that I could impart to them an ancient, and all but lost Tibetan technique of ‘Light Breathing’.
This ancient way requires meditating for several hours outdoors on the beauty of nature, until one jas acheived a purity of focus that can be literally breathed into reality. Then, joining forces in a circle, the energy of the tibetan monks, in this case Anglican priests, manifests through breath alone a mandala.
After meditating in the beautiful mountain light and air, the men came in and we were able to record their magical co-creation on film.
😉
The music is played and sung by Father Prenzel then and there. He is one of the light breathers in the movie. It is in the Canka’ne dialect of Sagada.
It was a beautiful afternoon, and as usual the making of mandalas together was a profound and insightful experience all round.
And… We had fun too!
