Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 2-minute session, Choedak introduces a foundational breathing practice for Medicine Buddha meditation: the nine-fold cleansing breath. This preparatory technique releases imbalances and accumulated tension held in the body’s elements through mindful, rhythmic exhalation. He begins by setting the mental frame — coming to the practice with awareness of why you’re releasing residual feelings and thoughts — then covers the practical setup: sitting in a comfortable cross-legged posture on the floor, spine straight, hands resting naturally. He explains the physiology: the body is constantly producing, processing, and dissolving the four elements through the nervous system’s activity. The nine-fold breathing works with this natural flux to lighten the body and free trapped emotional and mental patterns. This practice can be done anytime as a standalone exercise or as preparation before formal meditation, making it accessible to practitioners new to the Medicine Buddha approach.
File metadata (for organising)
File: choedak-medicine-buddha-02-mb
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Medicine Buddha (Choedak)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~342
Now, for this session we have, you will learn a breathing meditation which is very much to help us to release residual imbalances of elements which if residual is an understatement I suppose. Any sort of imbalances or symptoms of imbalances of elements that we have, we try to release them and so that first is a nine fold cleansing, I would say preparatory cleansing visualization and then after that followed by the dharani recitation. First I will show you how to do the nine fold cleansing preparatory sort of breathing exercise. This can be done at any time, either preliminary to your meditation or any time. Any time you do this nine fold breathing practice, breathing practice, it always seems to lighten your body and unable to, becomes able to release a lot of trapped feelings or thoughts or whatever similar to those.
So, when you start this meditation, you come in mindfully in a very untroubled state of mind. Mind knowing the importance of releasing residual feelings or thoughts and sit in a comfortable meditation posture, preferably on the ground, on the floor, Keep your back straight and hands on the meditation posture, meditation posture. And now I was talking to you about the four elements. Right now our body is in many ways working with the four elements and some are being produced, others are being processed because each time, every time when we are sitting or doing something there’s always a commotion of activities goes in our nervous system. Some things are being produced, other things are being dissolved, and so forth.
So the idea of this mindful breathing practice