Only after meeting my teacher last fall did I realized that my practice has not really been moving forward. In fact, it has regressed. The formal mediation on the cushion was still more or less ok, however if I was really honest with myself, the intention and commitment to maintain the quality awareness during the day was really not there anymore. I felt stuck on a plateau.
In order to refresh my practice, I first went through all my notes from past retreats and found a lot of inspiration and nice pieces of advice I had forgotten about. I had lost many several subtle points which can have a major impact when implemented on the pillow. I could not help noticing the emphasis put on Tummo in the root texts, commentaries and my own notes. This highly appreciated practice from solid base for all the advanced practices, ramping up the liveliness aspect of awakened awareness and making it blaze, cutting through conceptualization and significantly helping in recognizing the true nature of all phenomena.
I had done Tummo during a couple of retreats, however at the time it felt tedious and I fell out of practice some time after the retreats. About six months ago I restarted the practice in earnest and the results have been very encouraging indeed.
The technique itself is a combination of breath control, muscle locks and visualization involving a fair amount of moving parts that have to click before the practice becomes fluid and natural. Some of the main results are significantly increasing the energy volume of the system and producing inner heat of dakini Vajrayogini, burning away the residual clinging to the body and dissolving the sense perception into a mass of light, greatly enhancing the view of awakened awareness. As the heat starts to rise within the body, nowadays even after just a few of rounds, and the distinct vibrations build up at the base of the pelvis, there definitely is a feeling of fierceness to the practice. Sometimes this leads to anxiousness and fear and a compulsion to just stop doing it.
Tummo has now become an indispensable part of my practice with the brightness and energy continuing throughout the day, bringing my off the cushion mindfulness to a completely new level. I have started a habit of doing an extra session before falling asleep to benefit from the clarity it brings to the dream state leading to intense dreams of brightness, power and meaning and spontaneous moments of lucid dreaming.
Antero's practice journal 