Hollow Bamboo Breathing

For the last number of years I’ve been exploring and refining an extremely potent breathing practice. What I’m calling Hollow Bamboo Breathing (from Tilopa’s exhortation to become like hollow bamboo) is an adaptation of a Burmese form of Vipassana called Sunlun that I’ve modified and expanded to more compatibly support the practices and goals of radiant body meditation: the establishment of a posture that’s upright, relaxed, and resiliently motile; the awakening of felt, shimmering presence throughout the body; the surrender to a breath that can be felt to move through the entire body; the cleansing of emotional blockages, the melting of the egoic fixation of the mind, and the natural entrance into the state I call The Great Wide Open. Hollow Bamboo Breathing powerfully supports all these goals and has four phases, each of them fifteen minutes long.

Sit down on your meditation seat—be it cross-legged on supporting cushions and floor mats, on a kneeling bench, or in a chair. Make sure your pelvis is higher than your knees to create a stable base over which the upright torso can float. Start feeling your way into The Line, the axis of verticality. Sit up as tall as you can be but as relaxed as you can be. Pass your feeling awareness through your entire body, over and over again, inviting felt sensation and presence to awaken and relax. Let breath create movement through your entire body, like an amoeba expanding on the inhalation, contracting on the exhalation. Become your awakened sensations and breath.

Start breathing forcibly and rapidly through the nose and/or mouth. Take about two strong breaths a second. Sometimes you find that you’re breathing more through the mouth or through the nose. Sometimes you find that you’re accenting the inhalation, other times the exhalation.

As you surrender in this way to the breath, it’s very important that you keep the entire body in constant motion. Begin by accenting the motions of Undulating Breath. On the sharp inhalation the pelvis and lumbar spine rock forward; on the exhalation they move backward. The head is in constant motion, bobbing up and down to the rhythms of the breath. The entire spine undulates like a fly fishing rod in rapid motion. Surrender to the breath and the movement breath inspires.

Start letting whatever movements want to occur to express themselves freely as you continue to sit on your cushion, chair, or kneeling bench. The body may gyrate from side to side, rotating around The Line. The legs may tense and release as though you’re riding a horse. The hands may shake. Surrender into a spontaneous dance, and ride the motions deep inside your body where long unexpressed feelings live.

Surrender to the breath and the movement breath inspires.

The strong breath gives you an opportunity to let go completely into The Line. Areas of blockage, both physical and emotional, start revealing themselves. Let everything come: ecstasy, sadness, fear, rage, anything. As deep states arise, the breath will change its rhythms and the body may start taking on the frozen postures of these deep states. This second phase of Hollow Bamboo Breathing is more a journey into your deep self than it is a breathing exercise.

Feel the breath touching everywhere in your body. Don’t be tame. The breath will change according to whatever it’s bringing up: old memories, elation, pain, emotion, strong sensation. With every breath you can feel a cleansing happening through the long interior shaft of the body. The stronger the surrendered breath the deeper you go into yourself: bottomless sadness, beaming happiness, feral rage. Don’t fish for any kind of cathartic release. Just keep letting go and be with whatever comes, however strong or mild it may be.

At the end of fifteen minutes, exhale through your mouth as deeply as you can and empty your lungs as completely as you can. The body will curl down into a C-curve, your head will fall forward, and you will rotate back behind your pelvis as you forcibly push out every last little bit of used air in your lungs. Keep pushing the air out, and feel the belly and chest tense to force out the last bit of breath. Hold your breath out as long as you can. Then let go through your entire body and breathe in as deeply as you can. Start by breathing in through your nose and then complete the breath by breathing through your mouth. Your torso will uncoil from its collapsed position into a strong and long upright posture. After the initial surrender to the incoming breath keep opening to as full an inhalation as you possibly can by taking a final few short, sharp sipping breaths to fill your body completely. Now hold your breath in for as long as you possibly can. Keep relaxing the body as you hold the breath in, and let whatever wants to happen happen.

Explore the koan that a body is something wrapped around the breath; let the wraps flow freely like silk scarves.

Now let it out, surrender into your exhalation, and then just continue to let yourself breathe in whatever way is natural for you.

Your body will be vibrating strongly from the Phase Two breathing, so just sit and let go. Let strong currents and flows of sensation and emotion build and subside throughout this phase. Ride the changing flows and presence of the feeling body. Feel the vibratory nature of your body as a flame burning up everything that restricts your radiance. If you start feeling too adrift in your thoughts, resummon the helpers of The Line: awakened radiance and undulation. Perhaps explore the koan that a body is something wrapped around the breath; let the wraps flow freely like silk scarves. When you can once again feel your entire body all at once as a unified field of shimmer, just let go. You may want to open your eyes, embrace vision and sound, and play with The Great Wide Open.

Lie down on your back, your arms at your side. Feel the whole body and mind surrendering its weight to gravity’s tug in conjunction with long and extended exhalation. However breath wants to breathe, let it breathe you that way, and just keep letting go. The body will continue to tingle and shimmer, but your breath will eventually slow way down, and you may even fall asleep on a long, extended exhalation.

A more complete sadhana (spiritual practice) might have you exploring the practices of the radiant body for an hour, taking an hour break from sitting and going for a brisk walk or run, doing yoga or chi kung, Kum Nye, or Pilates, the Five Tibetan Rites, spontaneous dance, whatever you do as your preferred form of exercise, and then sitting down again for a final hour of Hollow Bamboo Breathing. Perhaps once a month you can take an entire day just for yourself and do this full sadhana two or even three times during the day. It’s extremely powerful and works to awaken the unfelt body, heal chronic pain, and melt contractions at the center of body and mind.

♦

Excerpted and adapted from The Radical Path of Somatic Dharma by Will Johnson © 2025 Inner Traditions. Printed with permission from the publisher, Inner Traditions International.