October 1, I am going to trek the Annapurna Circuit, a circumlocution of one of the major Himalayan peaks. This what is called a ‘teahouse trek’ as I’ll be staying in village huts along the route and eating with the villagers. The trek will take 2 1/2 weeks and will go from semi-tropical lowlands to one pass that is slightly under 18000 ft. and possible zero degree temperatures. Wish me well.
I WILL RESUME BLOGGING ON MY RETURN — November 1
Victorious Breath, Ujayi, can be incorporated into asana practice. You breathe so the breath is purposefully audible. The breath resonates in the back of the throat, nose and mouth in such a way as to resemble the sound of waves and wind at an ocean beach. As well as maintaining attention on the breath, Victorious Breath energizes and strengthens the physical body. WEIGHT LOSS THROUGH YOGA, JEWEL IN THE LOTUS page 114.
A BEAUTIFUL CHLOROPHYLL GREEN
The fourth, or heart chakra’s, color is a beautiful chlorophyll green and its element is air. The lower three chakras are the material universe and the fourth chakra is the transition point to our divine spiritual manifestation. The heart chakra is the point of transition and the upper three chakras are the higher, or spiritual centers. The ascending line of energy through the Sushumna parallels the evolutionary ascent of humankind from animal to spiritual being. A horizontal line, the point of transition, forms a cross. This is the symbol of the fourth chakra. The teachings of Jesus are fourth chakra teachings. “…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” The Beatles’ ‘All You Need is Love’ is also an expression of fourth chakra teaching. Astrology, based on observations of earth in relationship to its slowly changing stellar influences, divided earthly time into two thousand year segments, or ages. We are now leaving the segment when the teachings of Jesus were to manifest as the prevailing order. This era, the Piscean Age, shares with Jesus the symbol of the fish. The new age we’re starting to enter is the Aquarian Age, the age of understanding. If we can get our tails over the fence, we will begin to share the promise of the miracles Jesus taught are our birthright.
TRANSITION FROM MATERIAL TO SPIRITUAL IS REPRESENTED BY THE SYMBOL OF THE FOURTH CHAKRA — THE CROSS
BEAUTIFUL BRIGHT RED
The first chakra is a beautiful bright red and is representative of the element earth. The first time the meditator may feel fear. The first chakra is associated with the birth process and entering the world for the first time. Everything is new. This experience mirrors the aspirant’s entrance into meditation. Both are natural processes and promise wonder and growth.
This is the part of the body housing the organs of digestion and elimination. The sacrum center is primordial. It has to do with our most animal nature, sexual passion, which brings forth human form to clothe another soul. As the most inherently physical of the chakras its realm is that most physical of pleasures, sexual ecstasy.
SEXUAL
COMPLETE INTEGRATED BEING
I won’t be posting for a couple days because I’m going on Mt Rainier.
Where did it come from, this yoga that is going to answer all my questions, tune me to the universe, transform me, body mind, and soul? The historical answer is still a mystery. However, one explanation based on archaeological discoveries is widely accepted. In the 1920’s, ruins of a civilization were discovered along a no longer existent river system in the region that is now Northern India and Pakistan. Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, this civilization had complex urban centers with running water and underground sewage systems. Their language, Sanskrit, is the root of all the Indo-European languages.
Among the ruins were found many statues depicting what we now associate as being yoga postures. Postures are a part of the yoga tradition that asks the practitioner to look within. This yoga tradition believes the universe is mirrored in each of us. Nature has a working set of solutions that is used on ever greater or lesser scales for everything, as our recent appreciation of fractals demonstrates. To understand something on a scale within our perceptual range allows us to imagine solutions to questions above or below that range. The yoga postures, asanas in Sanskrit, are only a part of yoga. Yoga as practiced in the West has placed most of its emphasis on the practice of asanas. Most Westerners think of yoga as a system of physical exercise, but it is much more.
Yoga asks us to look within, to relax into ourselves, to know ourselves. With complete understanding of the self comes complete understanding. This ‘looking within’ is as old as the human ability to wonder. In that sense, our origin is the beginning of our embrace of yoga.
One broad definition of yoga is the art and science of living. Yoga practice allows understanding to unfold. Other people may help by suggesting techniques for self-exploration, or how and where to look, but all the insights come from your observations. All the answers are your answers. You diligently explore your own direct experience. No faith required.
Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus Pages 8 —9.
A VIBRANT ORANGE, AND ITS ELEMENT IS WATER
The second chakra is a vibrant orange and its element is water. Its location is the center of the physical body. The navel is what remains from the umbilical cord that nourished our development in the womb where we are dependent on our host mother for life. Apana energized the erection and fueled the passion, propelled the egg to the fallopian tubes and the sperm to their union. Apana was the life force for the dividing zygote until nadis developed with the development of the umbilical connection to the prana of the mother’s body. As the embryo grew and became more complex, no longer was absorption of the mother’s apana adequate for further growth. Prana from the mother, through the umbilical, gradually replaced it as a source of life force. The mother’s apana provides energy for the birth contractions, forcing the child into the world.
The newborn enters the world separate from the mother. It exhales, and then inhales a first breath. Breathing begins with an exhalation and the last breath at death is an inhalation. With that first breath cycle, the new being draws life force into the body as an individual for the first time. This is the moment of the beginning of life. The spirit enters the body. Before, the now sentient being, was a complex growth within the mothers body. At the moment of life, with that first breath cycle, the circulation of blood in the infant’s body reverses direction. The heart pumps in the opposite direction and the blood that was being pushed through the veins out through the circulatory system is pushed through the arteries and returns to the heart through the veins. A soul has entered the little body, having picked the perfect set of parents, in the perfect set of circumstances, to give it an opportunity to experience what’s necessary for this cycle of spiritual growth. Free will determines how well the opportunity is utilized.
SECOND AND FIRST CHAKRA
Our Meditation starts with focusing on the perineum, that part of the body between the legs, from the anus to one’s sex. This has a stimulating effect and can be very pleasurable. It is the beginning of the arousal of apana. The meditator is asked to envision, seeing with the mind’s eye, or third eye, the area as a deep dark brown, almost black, like rich fertile top soil. With our focus on the perineum, we are being grounded. Feel through the bottoms of he legs and buttocks to the ground below.
GROUNDED
The meditator is being grounded to the earth, one of the five material elements that combine to structure reality on the physical plane: earth, water, fire, air, and space. Grounding links one with the core of the mother planet, Earth. This grounding is everything that supports the meditator, and all that composes him or her at this precise moment in time. Past incarnations, family and cultural history, genetic makeup, environment, and life experience are all realized in this point of focus. This isn’t a thought process. It just is.
In the Hindu yoga tradition, Kundalini is a beautiful metaphor for unimpeded flow of energy from the lowest depths of the base of the spine to beyond the crown of the skull into the realm of the divine. The Kundalini experience relies on universal body structures and has been encountered by mystics throughout the ages. The imagery reflects the occult principle of the body as the microcosm echoing the large configuration of the macrocosm. Shakti, the cosmic feminine principle, combines in perfect union (yoga) with Shiva, the masculine cosmic principle to create perfect balance.
Yoga (Union) = Shakti/Shiva = Perfect Balance
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