Harmonizing Feminine and Masculine Energies

You first breathe golden sunlight in through the crown, throat and heart, then exhale it down through your belly and feet into the earth. Next you reverse it: breathe the earth's energy up through the feet and out through the crown to the sky. This sets up the sky-and-earth dance of light and shadow that the rest of the session mirrors inside your body.

A small spark of light in your heart grows with each inhale until you fill your house, your city, your country and then the whole Earth. From there you feel what Mother Earth feels, and the same split between giving and receiving is seen at a global scale. It leads to the idea that the planet is your mirror.

You turn your attention to the left side, home of yin, the receiving energy of rest and enjoyment, and ask it what it wants. Then you do the same with the right side, the yang energy of action and results, asking whether you act too much, too little, and whether your actions come from your values. Each time you simply listen for an answer.

Your right palm rests on your stomach and your left on your chest while you breathe softly into your belly. There is nothing to fix here. The point is to create space for balance to arrive, because, as the guide says, your heart needs space.

Near the end you hold your palms facing each other and ask both parts whether they are willing to meet. If they aren't, you're told not to push, because they may need more space. If they are, you bring your palms together and feel something new born from the union.

Active and passive, day and night, feminine and masculine, dark and light, expansion and contraction, inhale and exhale. The message is that one cannot exist without the other, so they are invited to dance rather than compete.