Speaker 1: 0:54

my question was that I guess it's been noticing my own daily routine that like doing around first thing in the morning versus just doing like pranayama and meditation regularly, um, having had a like much better day, like I just like. I don't know exactly why, I can't explain it, but things work out a lot better than anticipated when I do around first thing in the morning. I don't know why, it's like just randomly, things come together a lot faster and things sync up. I don't know it's weird, but this is an observation, I guess, not really a question. I guess my question for that would be what's the difference in doing a round for us versus just doing regular meditation?

Speaker 2: 1:41

So, for those of you who are not aware, a round constitutes a 15-minute-ish yoga asana practice that's hatha-based but it's not practiced as if it's hatha. All the asana are done very gently, just to the point where we feel the bite of the nerves in the different parts of the body that send a signal to the brain that it's safe to let go. So it's a very specific, elegant sequence of asana that builds the foundations for transcendence. And then we do two to three minutes of pranayama. For those of you who don't know, that's just a fancy way of saying alternate nostril breathing. And prana is the Sanskrit word for the primary constituent of the universe, the life force that is in everything, everywhere. Yama, or yam in this instance, means to administer. So pranayama is a method of which we administer prana, life force, into the brain. Through breath, we know we can draw in prana, that's in the atmosphere, the life force that's animating everything. We can draw it in through our nostrils into our brain, specifically in the direction of our pineal gland or the Ajna Chakra. And when we stimulate the motion of the chakra, cha means spinning, ra means wheel Chakra, not chakra, chakra, it's the sound of the wheel spinning. When we do pranayama, administering life force up into the ajna chakra, we get it moving. Once the ajna chakra starts moving, insight about the deeper nature of reality starts to emerge very spontaneously. About the deeper nature of reality starts to emerge very spontaneously. And so we've done the asana which is settled the whole nervous system. And by the time you've done this 15 minutes of asana you're already kind of like I just want to close my eyes and go.

Speaker 2: 4:11

But then before we go, before we introduce the mantra, we do the pranayama, enliven the frontal cortex with prana, with life force that prepares it even more deeply. And then we introduce the mantra and we go into meditation. We do the 20-minute meditation and then after 20 minutes normally we take two minutes to come out slowly. In this instance we lie down in Shavasana for 10 minutes, a deeply restful state. Why? Because we've gone through this process of triggering the de-excitation function within the nervous system. Rest and repair happens much more quickly and the process of purification or unstressing the nervous system happens more deeply in that 20-minute meditation. And so when we take an extra 10 minutes to lie on our back in the most restful pose of them all, shavasana, the nervous system is able to recover in a very unique way and we experience a significantly more powerful result of our meditation practice, and that's doing one round.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Rounding was designed actually to be done consecutively and this is actually why we call it rounding. You go, thank you, you go round and round and round and round, and we do that on what is referred to as a rounding retreat. So a rounding retreat is something that I recommend. It might be a really nice time to plug ours. It's happening in india in november. I recommend all of you come. It's seven days of rounding and it's something that everybody should do at least once a year if you want to really get ahead of the game how many rounds would you do in a day?

Speaker 2: 6:24

up to 10 rounds. Yeah, some of the more experienced rounders might get up a little higher. Um, it's, yeah, it's truly an extraordinary process of purification and expansion and you know, a seven-day rounding retreat is the equivalent of two years of morning and evening meditation in terms of the advancement that you make. So you asked the question is rounding better than meditation? It is more impactful. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's better. Yeah, because your daily practice is integratable and it's achievable and we're making incredible gains by just meditating 20 minutes twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening. There's wonderful gains there. If you can add a round into your daily program, then you're seriously going to turn up the volume.

Speaker 2: 7:27

But that may cause significant unstressing in some people. Strong purification where the experience of the day might be a little more rough. So it's not always better because we don't want to walk around rough, a little grumpy. Yeah, I'm the meditation guy. You know, not very relatable and it's not a very good billboard for for taking taking on meditation. Yeah, it always sounds like at least one of us some part of the day, sometime. All right, we can all relate to that. So, yeah, it's, it's learning how to administer the rounding practice when and when to you know, turn the heat up and when to when to turn it down.