COMPLETE INTEGRATED BEING
A CHAKRA STUDY (Over the next seven submissions)
AWAY
I won’t be posting for a couple days because I’m going on Mt Rainier.
YOGA
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.
SECOND CHAKRA — NAVEL CENTER
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
BEGIN JEWEL IN THE LOTUS MEDITATION (Grounding)
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.
KUNDALINI — YOGA
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
YOGA REVERES BALANCE
Yoga sees the human body is a finely tuned, finely balanced vessel for awareness. Multitudes of balanced chemical and functional relationships are requisite for our being. Just as the earth revolves in its perfect orbit without the coaching of our minds, so our infinitely complicated bodies draw upon a higher order.
“Yoga sees the body as a finely balanced vessel for awareness” — Weight Loss Through Yoga
YOGA REVEALS THE SECRET OF ENLIGHTENMENT
You are being let in on a big secret. This shouldn’t be a secret, but it is: ‘enlightened’ and ‘relaxed’ mean the same thing. They are synonymous. We are easing into liberation of the full expression of ‘Self’. If you had the capacity to fully let go, you would literally fall into the perfect expression of your being. Since enlightenment is so infrequent, the ability to completely relax appears to be very rare.
yoga teaches relaxation so we can let go, realizing full expression of ‘Self’
RISHIKESH, INDIA — the home of yoga. Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus
Me and my good friend and teacher, Fran Gallo, just below the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, where the river Mother Ganga, splits the city of Rishikesh — connected by two narrow suspension bridges. Here the Ganga is a rushing torrent of fresh clean mountain runoff.
River Ganga — Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus
This is considered the home of yoga and has the greatest concentration of sadhu, who have renounced worldly life to spend their time in contemplation, meditation, and the practice of yoga. More wealthy devotees, who have families, occupations, and haven’t divorced themselves from worldly concerns, donate money to support the temples that feed and shelter the renouncers. (males — sadaka, females — sadhika).
It can be a tempting thought, to renounce all worldly concerns, practice yoga and quietly sit in peaceful meditation — listening to the melodious eternal flow of this most spiritual river.
THE LOTUS AND YOGA
LOTUS
From the conclusion of the meditation with the Morning Ritual presented as a way to start each day to receive the benefits offered in the introductory chapters of Weight loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus:
After eight exhales, inhales and pauses, consciousness floats above the head and the attention is focused on a beautiful THOUSAND PETAL LOTUS (water lilly) that is so strikingly pure white, it radiates all the colors of the spectrum.
Do a final eight cycles of pranayama. Realize the lotus starts in the mud at the bottom of the pond, grows up through the muddy water to the surface and opens, a beautiful unblemished white, basking in the sun.
A Thousand White Petal Lotus so pure and brilliant-it shines with all the colors of the spectrum-Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus
Breathe normally and swing the arms overhead in a wide arc.
Bring the palms together capturing the purity. [Photo 22] Capture the radiant white in your palms.
Then slowly pull your hands down to rest on the crown of the head. [Photo 23] The radiant white mixes with the ultra violet. The elbows extend wide.
To have instruction on completing the entire Morning Ritual, see Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus. Chapter 3, pages 37 through 42.
