01 Settling the Body, Speech and Mind in its Natural State

Alan starts off by giving a meditation on settling the body, speech and mind in its natural state. He then elaborates on practices of mindfulness of breathing which follows three steps in the Theravada tradition: Focussing on the whole body experience, being aware of the rise and fall of the abdomen and finally paying close attention to the sensations at the nostrils. Alan, however, presents a Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing which does not follow these steps but proposes to let the awareness rest still. That way you do not explicitly focus on the sensations of the breath, but you are implicitly aware of them - just as in a lucid dream in which your eye movements as well as the rhythm of your “dream breath” correlate with the movements of your physical body. In such a state you are also simply implicitly aware of your physical body but you don’t explicitly focus on it.
This then explains how one can transfer from the desire realm (in which you are focussed on your bodily sensations) to the form realm: by simply letting the body do its job without interfering in the natural flow of the breath (the body knows it better than you do anyways!) and letting your awareness hold its own ground.

Meditation starts at 01:18