Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Complete Relaxation
Lie still and deliberately slacken the body part by part — feet, legs, trunk, arms, face — until every muscle is loose and the mind is quiet, so that (in Rampa’s frame) ‘inner work’ can begin from a settled body rather than a tense one.
Rampa’s complete relaxation: Lie down warm and quiet. Slow the breath, lengthening the out-breath. Then sweep through the body — feet, legs, trunk, hands, arms, neck, and especially the face — letting each part go slack and heavy until you can find no tension left. Re-scan and release wherever it crept back. Rest in the looseness. (Use as a calmer in its own right, or as the prelude to breathing/visualisation.)
What it is
Across his books Rampa insists that nothing else he teaches will work until the practitioner can let the body go completely. You Forever — his explicit “how-to” volume — opens its practical instruction with relaxation, treating it as the on-ramp to everything from breathing exercises to “astral travel.” The method is plain: lie down comfortably, then move attention through the body and consciously slacken each part in turn until not a single muscle is held.
He describes the test of success as a body so loose it feels almost as if it could be lifted away. In his own (unsupported) framing this looseness is what frees consciousness for inner perception; stripped of that, it is a clean, ordinary progressive-relaxation drill that anyone can use to calm down.
The Method
Faithfully described from You Forever (short paraphrase, not full reproduction):
- Lie down and get warm. Lie flat on your back somewhere quiet, loosen tight clothing, and make sure you are warm — Rampa stresses that a chilled or constricted body cannot relax.
- Settle the breath first. Breathe slowly and easily for a few rounds, letting the out-breath lengthen, so the body begins to quieten before you start the relaxation sweep.
- Sweep the body, releasing as you go. Take the muscles in order — feet and toes, then calves, thighs, the abdomen and back, the chest, the hands, the arms and shoulders, the neck, and finally the face and scalp. At each region, deliberately let go so the muscle goes slack and heavy. Rampa’s instruction is to keep going until you genuinely cannot find any tension left.
- Drop the jaw and brow. He gives special attention to the face — let the jaw hang slightly, smooth the forehead, soften around the eyes — because tension hides there last.
- Check and re-release. Mentally re-scan the body; wherever you find a muscle has crept back into tension, release it again. Rampa expects this re-checking, not a single perfect pass.
- Rest in the looseness. Once the whole body is slack, simply lie still and let the quiet deepen for a few minutes. In his books this is the point from which he tells the reader to begin the breathing or visualisation exercises; on its own it is a complete calming practice.
Source & Lineage
“Lobsang Rampa” was the pen name of Cyril Henry Hoskin (1910-1981), an English plumber’s son who in The Third Eye (1956) and a long series of sequels presented himself as a Tibetan lama.
Investigators established that the author had never been to Tibet and was English; Hoskin then claimed his body had been taken over by the spirit of a real lama (a “walk-in”). The Tibetan persona and provenance are documented fabrications. What is not fabricated is that his paperbacks sold in the millions and introduced a mass Western audience to relaxation-and-breathing routines dressed in Tibetan-mystic language.
The relaxation method itself is unremarkable and sound — it mirrors Edmund Jacobson’s progressive muscle relaxation and the general relaxation tradition — which is exactly why it remained useful to readers regardless of the false backstory.
The Traditions' versions
The move — lie down and systematically release the body until it is wholly slack — is one of the most cross-confirmed techniques in this library; Rampa’s version is distinctive mainly for being framed as the mandatory gateway to occult perception: - Savasana / conscious relaxation (Iyengar) — the yogic “corpse pose” relaxation that quiets the body after practice.
- 61-points relaxation (Swami Rama) — a fixed itinerary of points through the body, more elaborate than Rampa’s loose sweep.
- The Relaxation Response (Benson) — the clinical, religiously-neutral version pairing rest with a repeated word.
- Rhythmic Breathing & Relaxation (Alder) — a near-identical Theosophical “settle the body, then breathe” prelude, also offered as preparation for inner work.
Common refinements
Trying to force relaxation. Straining to relax re-tenses the body; the instruction is to let go, not to clamp down on calmness.
- Skipping the face. The jaw, brow, and eyes hold tension last; if you stop at the limbs you stay half-tense. Re-check the face.
- Doing it cold or cramped. Rampa is right that a chilled or constricted body resists release — warmth and loose clothing matter.
- Expecting visions. Treating drowsy hypnagogic imagery as proof of psychic opening leads to disappointment or self-deception; take the calm as the benefit and leave the metaphysics aside.
- Stopping at one pass. Tension creeps back; the re-scan-and-release loop is the practice, not a failure.