Season 1, Episode 11: The Pinwheel

This practice came to me randomly one day. Piecing it together now, I see I was pulling together two very different influences: the creative and fascinating practices invented by Nirlipta Tuli in his Nidra, Neuroscience, Mind and Brain online training held earlier this year; and the open focus technique of feeling space.

I’ve been mainlining both, and this practice is how the merge together in my body: the profound, magnetic pull of Nirlipta’s poetic archetypal ovals and the effective, scientifically proven method of open focus. For me, it’s important to feel this space in the body to move out of the frenzied everyday pace and into a more calm and centered state. Pairing that with the breath makes it even more effective.

I also alluded to Nirplita’s fictional breath, which I call “slow motion” in this practice. The concept of visualizing a breath that’s slower than the actual breath is so effective and such an elegant solution to the widespread complications of breath and breathing-related disease in COVID-times, and yet can be difficult to put in practice at first, so I added a visual element to the breath, the pinwheel, to help allow the mind and body to slow the breath and thoughts down and enter deeper into the practice.

The concept of the pinwheel stretching to infinity is a nod to Les Fehmi’s “Joint Space” open focus practice, my absolute favorite practice I’ve done in the past several years (and that’s saying something with the truly exceptional meditation leaders at work these days). Truly a masterpiece and worth exploring on its own.

I have a version of this I do for myself in my daily life: instead of breathing into my core between rotations, I shift into open focus as I breathe out and locate my strongest pain as I breathe in. Then I recenter the pinwheel on that place in my body and continue the rotation for as many rounds as I need to dissolve the pain.

As far as I know, I’ve invented this particular body and breath rotation…but as Elizabeth Zimmerman has pointed out, we often come up with something long after someone else has, a process she calls “unventing.” And I’m sure I’ll find someone else has done this one before. After all, the same thing happened to me with chilaquiles.