Taking the Backward Step
May 27 2026
Here’s a suggested practice session. It is a “body scan” and a form of “tonglen”.
First, recognise that what is factually real for you is always what is being experienced in the here and now. Thoughts of the past and future are abstract, are they not? We need analysis, of course, but we also need a refuge from it. It’s so easy to get lost and overwhelmed by abstract thinking. Huge stresses can build up and make us extremely reactive.
So, how do you take this “backward step?” You turn the attention inwards for a time and have a look at what is actually real for you. It’s a clear-eyed looking at reality. Check what are the sensations that the body is feeling and allow yourself to feel them. Look at what obsessive trains of thought might be happening and consciously drop them. Return to the here and now. Breathe, relax, become aware of your emotional tone, let yourself feel it.
Body Scan
Sit comfortably. Close the eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Scan down the body with your mind’s eye and check what is being felt. I’d say that it isn’t an exercise in controlling anything. We’re just letting ourselves notice what’s actually happening for us. First at the top of the head, the eyes, the face, the whole head. At each focus of the attention, let a few breaths pass. Down the neck and throat. Feel what’s happening in the shoulders, down both arms to the fingertips. What’s the sensation of the chest? Can you feel your heart beating? The lungs breathing? Travel your focus down the spine. Fill your belly with your attention. Moving the mind’s eye down into the pelvis. All the organs. Hips, thighs, knees, lower legs and feet.
Tonglen
After a good long look at what the whole body is feeling, you’ll likely be aware of some discomfort. Maybe a physical pain, maybe emotion, whatever it is, imagine it as black smoke. Your seeing your pain and suffering as a cloud of black smoke. Now imagine someone somewhere is experiencing the same thing as yourself. You see their cloud of smoke join yours. The cloud doubles in size. Breathe in this cloud in one fell swoop. The smoke goes down into your heart centre where it instantaneously disappears into a vast emptiness. All your wish to be relieved of this pain is now visualised as white light. You breathe out this wish for relief, for healing, as a white light that goes out to the other person as well as yourself. Next, you think of all the people in the world who are experiencing something like this pain. Some feeling it much worse maybe. You see it as a truly vast cloud of black smoke. The wish for this pain to be removed becomes very strong. You breathe it in, it vanishes, you breathe out white light to all those who suffer. Include all the non-human sentient beings too. Imagine the scale of all their sufferings. Get in touch with the enormity of this pain and visualise an immense cloud of darkness and distress. Slowly and deeply inhale it into the centre, see it vanish, breathe out the heartfelt wish for its relief as this beautiful white light of mercy. Let yourself feel it.
If you have time, do another body scan and let yourself rest a while. In this way we “take the backward step” and cultivate awareness & empathy. It helps us get into a state of mind where we aren’t pretending, not reacting, clearly seeing, ready to act. It puts us in the position to “take the forward step” with great force and vigour. To act skillfully and bravely. To inhabit that attitude sometimes rendered in the famous phrase “it is a good day to die”!