"The Day is Nearly Over"

A meditation on Quran Sura 103, Al 'Asr, from Desert Wisdom: Sacred Middle Eastern Writings from the Goddess through the Sufis (1995 edition, Harper San Francisco). The entire book in currently in revision and due for publication in early 2011.

Chinese Therapeutic Movements and Sufi Elemental Healing Breaths

These ancient Chinese folk exercises are selected from hundreds that were used therapeutically by those injured from the martial arts. I learned most of the exercises in 1976-78 from Nirtan Lim (who learned them from his teacher, Master Kwan Sai-Hung). I have edited and arranged them to provide a simple stretch and warm-up of about 10-15 minutes in the morning, which I normally lead on meditation retreats. The write-up is most useful after one has seen the exercises demonstrated and performed them oneself.

These are followed by a version of the elemental awareness and purification breaths originally taught by the Sufi Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan. The body awareness attunements were inspired by his paper on "Metaphysics" as well as my experience with various teachers in the somatic psychology and new cosmology fields. (ND-K)