Nadi Yoga Part 8 - Preliminaries - Shauca

The Five Niyamas

            The niyamas are orientations and attitudes that we take in aligning ourselves with the direct practices of the yamas given above. Together, the yamas and niyamas are like a strong pair of legs that form the  foundation of our yoga practice. Depending on the tradition consulted there are 5 or 10 niyamas. I will follow the tradition of the Yoga Sutras which list 5 practices. You will find that the 10 niyamas of other traditions are subsumed under these 5. 

              Traditionally, the last 3 niyamas of tapas, svadhyaya, and Isvara pranidhana are known as kriya yoga and can be considered a separate series of practices themselves. For the purposes of the Nadi Yoga I am choosing to consider the first 3 niyamas as part of an orienting group which helps to stabilize the 3 traditional energies of the gunas. 

              The 3 gunas are the primal energies of creation. Sattva is the energy of clarity, rajas is the energy of movement, and tamas is the energy of stability. These are similar to the western alchemical energies of mercury, sulphur, and salt. They correspond to the 5 elements as well. Sattva corresponds more to the lighter elements of space and air, rajas to the elements of air and fire, and tamas corresponds to water and earth. If these gunic energies are out of balance in the individual, then disease results. For the practice of yoga, we need primarily sattvic energies, with a careful balance of rajas and tamas. 

                 From the perspective of Nadi Yoga, the niyama of shauca can stabilize sattvic energies, the niyama of santosha can stabilize the rajasic energies, and the niyama of tapas can stabilize the tamasic energies.

Shauca

            The niyama of shauca is oftentimes translated as cleanliness and/or purity. At the outermost level, this niyama is about cleanliness of body and external surroundings, all of which are conducive to clarity of mind. On a more internal nadi level, shauca is about cleaning our house, our internal house. If our system is clogged with impurity and undigested food, how can we function? How can energy flow clearly and cleanly?

             Shauca is about having the willingness/intention to bring internal balance about  within ourselves. It is about clarity. If this willingness is fully embodied with the actions of the yamas, then we have the means to move forward to clean the house. If we cannot first assess with full satya - clarity and truth, the state of our house, how can we hope to clean it?  If we violate ourselves, if we are not willing to see the truth in ourself, if we expend ourselves, if we hoard undigested food, if we rely on others for our strength, we find that we are already living in an unclean house and no amount of cleaning will be able to overcome these tendencies that we have habituated ourselves to. The yamas are thus seen as the action component of shauca. In this way, the yamas and niyamas work together, in this case shauca providing a motive for the yamas to function and bring about a clearer space.

            Why should we have a clean house? Vyasa, the first major commentator to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, tells us in his first sutra commentary that there are five states of mind/body. These five states of mind in turn are based around three qualities of the gunas, described above. To state again, Sattva guna is clarity, openness. Rajas guna is activity. Tamas guna is inertness. When we relate these 3 qualities in different ways to the mind, Vyasa tells us we come up with five combinations. These are called mudha or torporous, kshipta or frenetic/distracted, vikshipta or mildly distracted, ekagra or one-pointed, and niruddha or resolved. The mudha state is one in which the mind is mostly tamasic in nature. The kshipta state is one in which the mind is mostly rajasic. The vikshipta is a mixed state. The mind only becomes one pointed or ekagra when it is mostly sattvic in nature. The last state is transcendent of the gunas and we will discuss this later.

             Shauca is a commitment to balance one’s gunas and come to a more sattvic or clear place in one’s life. Recognizing that the mind and body are not separate, if we seek to improve the clarity of the body, the mind will come into line. So the commitment to cleanliness and clarity of our environment, both external and internal will bring clarity to the mind, which will bring about the deeper result of yoga - one pointedness. 

Questions about Shambhavi Mudra

2 questions came to me today regarding Shambhavi mudra.

"1. Please write on whether shambhavi mudra leads to a awakening of the Ajna chakra, on whether trataka combined with shambhavi leads to quicker opening of the ajna chakra ?
2. is it correct to awaken the ajna chakra before you awaken the muladhara chakra in your kundalini awakening progress ? "

1. I would say that yes, Shambhavi mudra does lead to an awakening of the Ajna cakra. Trataka for those of you who are not familiar is a process or kriya that involves staring at a candle flame or other small object without blinking until the tears are shed. Then one closes the eyes and follows the inner image that is now "burned" into the eye until it disappears. I would say that trataka is also good for awakening the Ajna cakra. Shambhavi is superior in my opinion but if one did do both practices, yes the Ajna would open "quicker". What is important in the Shambhavi mudra is to follow the deep feeling of clarity, which leads one through the blockages which are felt at the midbrow and frontal brain region. Relaxing these blockages actually creates the clarity we are seeking with the Shambhavi mudra. Eventually one is able to relax and release this center without Shambhavi mudra as one learns to feel it out. The same blockages will be felt in the practice of trataka. This brings up an important point that in the beginning of practice the chakric centers are felt more as granthi or knots. This isn't a bad thing but is a good basis to place our awareness and learn to relax and release these deep centers. By following the pathways of blockage, we are led to deep mental/emotional holding patterns that have to be addressed and resolved before the respective center can open up. Maybe I will write more on this at some point.

Awakening the Ajna cakra is in my opinion necessary before the stabilization of the concentration practices can fully be realized.

2. According to the tradition of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, author of Kundalini Tantra, and according to my Guru's tradition, yes, the Ajna cakra is very helpful to awaken before muladhara. In the tantric cakra nyasa practice from my Guru's lineage which I will eventually post on this website, we always work first with the ajna before the muladhara. This helps to open the doors of deep level discernment before undertaking the work through the elemental centers leading through the central column.

Hope these answers help!

Nadi Yoga Part 7 - Preliminaries - Asteya

 Asteya – non stealing of the life force, proper boundary

            This next yama is a little unusual but very important. At its grossest level it involves not stealing. Most yogis are not thieves of gross things but of course it is possible to steal on many levels. With nadi yoga, we have to take a closer deeper examination of how it is that not only we steal from others but how others steal from us. This brings up the importance of proper energetic boundaries and the idea of boundary is vital in the understanding of this level of asteya.

            When we understand how our boundaries function healthily through brahmacarya and aparigraha, we recognize more clearly how our system is meant to be when it is functioning in a healthy way. The next place we have to examine is how we function with these boundaries in our relationships with others. To have healthy relationship with others, there must be equal give and take. You choose consciously what you give to others and you choose consciously what you take from others.

            Many relationships in our modern world are parasitic and even vampiric. In other words we take from others psychically and energetically, most of the time completely unconsciously. This builds psychic and energetic dependence on others. It can go both ways: we can take from others and they can take from us. It is one thing if this exchange is a gift, another if it is unconscious and/or trying to fulfill some lack within oneself.

            There are a couple things to consider when we first examine whether or not we are feeding vampires in our life. The first is to remember the old phrase which tells us that vampires cannot come into our house unless we first invite them in. Second, we have to do something about the vampires that are already in our house. The first thing is most important. It reminds us that we are in charge of who we let in. It is important to see where we do let others in, where we give our power away. The second is more difficult and may involve some hard choices regarding family, friends, and co-workers or bosses. We have to understand that we are not going to be really free unless all of the vampires are out of our house.

            It gets even more complicated when we consider that this problem extends beyond the grave. We can be and most of us are affected by our ancestry. Our ancestral “curses” rob and deplete us psychically and energetically, most frequently beneath our radar. This work is even more tricky to negotiate but can be done with specific practices of the tantra and deep inner process work. How many of us are “haunted” by the shades of the past? 

           In addition to seeing where we are giving our life blood to the vampires, we have to see where it is that we are vampiric with others. Are we truly dependent on others like children, parents, friends, co-workers, and bosses for praise, fulfillment, “love”, and other things? This will be very difficult for some to face as they work to get farther along the road of self dependence. This work forces us to get out of “other’s houses” and to learn to truly feed ourselves.

             It is important to recognize with this and other yamas that we are in charge of our lives. Unless we come to terms with this, and find freedom and independence and security with ourselves, we will allow ourselves to be violated and allow ourselves to violate out of insecurity, the need to please, fear, guilt, and a whole host of other negative energies. It is important to learn to first see these qualities in ourselves. Then we can ask our different selves what it is that they truly are needing in an attempt to heal them and to heal our own internal relationships. Then we will find the external relationships and our boundaries changing in response.
            For more on this topic of internal relationships see the blog - Union and Internal Alchemy. Also see the 2 blogs on Kavaca/Armour for techniques on dealing with the Psychic Vampires.

Nadi Yoga Part 6 - Preliminaries - Aparigraha

Aparigraha – non hoarding / proper flow of the life force

            This next yama is given slightly out of sequence with the traditional order as I consider it to go hand in hand with brahmacarya from the energetic nadi perspective. Aparigraha is traditionally translated and interpreted as non-hoarding. There is that aspect of it, not to hoard or keep possessions, to live a simpler life. However, there is a more profound aspect to this yama, and that is to not hoard internally. Hoarding implies storing and keeping things, many of which we do not need. When we look at ourselves with the light of satya/truth in a very sincere way, we see all of those dark areas of ourselves where we have been holding things. Holding some past secret, some dark memory. We hold traumas, tensions, things that have been stored for years, even decades.

            The lack of aparigraha is even more than just hoarding. It implies that when something came in, we did not process it completely or fully. We did not digest it fully. We just stored it away somewhere for later. How many times do we take in food, media, sensory experiences out of some greed or desire, not even taking the time to process it before we are on to the next thing? This is how modern society functions, getting drunk on experience which leaves it only hungry for more. We are obese not only with food but with sensory overload, with sex, with media, with thrill seeking.

            The symptoms of lack of aparigraha are lethargy, anxiety, depression, and more. Aparigraha involves not only hoarding but the desire to fill something in ourselves that cannot be sated. The inability to fulfill this constant desire leads to suffering. And because the wheel of desire moves us so rapidly in this attempt at fulfillment we only store more and more and don’t know how to let go of what we have taken in.

What are we seeking? What hunger are we trying to fill? To understand our desire and why we have it is a very important topic and one we will come to later on. Even beginning to take a look at these questions however will cause us to start to have some understanding though at how we violate ourself through the lack of aparigraha.

Taken together, brahmacarya and aparigraha deal with the boundary of the nadis. They deal with the interface between ourself and the external world. Brahmacarya checks what goes out. Aparigraha checks what comes in. If we have a proper balance with these two yamas we will have more balance in our energetic life. If too much goes out we are depleted. If too much stays in, we become full and energetically unstable. Like any system in life, there needs to be balance. These two yamas help us to find that balance and need to work hand in hand. The yama of satya helps us to discern what is required here. Satya also helps us to slow down if needed, properly digest what comes in, to not take in more than we need. To not expend more than we should. Balance is ultimately what is required to keep these inititial yamas in check.

Nadi Yoga Part 5 - Preliminaries - Brahmacarya

Brahmacarya – Containment of the Energy Body



The next 3 yamas are related to each other and have to do with energy flow in and out of our body/mind systems and how well this flow of in and out is occurring. The principle of ahimsa guides us in these principles as if there is not a proper balance of in and out with the flow of life then we violate ourself, either through too much containment or not enough. Or the boundaries that help with this flow are skewed.

Brahmacarya literally means “to move in Brahman”. It is oftentimes translated as celibacy or sexual restraint. However the sexual nadi or flow corridor is only one of the 10 major nadis. To just blindly restrain this corridor and not the others is not enough. And to just restrain without understanding is also equally problematic.

There are many different interpretations of how to work with this yama. In the terms of Nadi Yoga, brahmacarya is learning to control how much of us “goes out”. This not only concerns the sexual force but also all of the senses.

The sense gateways that are the nadis are labeled as problematic in many of the ancient traditions, not just the Indian traditions but also the western traditions. This problem goes way back to the beginnings of patriarchal society where there was a split between heaven and earth, between the mother and father god. This was a time of the beginning of the idea that somehow spirit was superior to the body. That the body was even to be reviled and the world discarded in favor of a higher heaven. This topic is a long one but suffice it to say that the Nadi Yoga favors the approach of tantra, which regards heaven and earth on equal terms, the body as an expression of spirit, the male equal in power to the female principle.

In this way, as the Yoga Vasistha tells us, the senses themselves are not problematic. Vasistha says in his work on Yoga that it is the mind, interfering and polluting the senses that is the problem. If this is so, why do we “throw out the baby with the bath water” and reject the senses? Does restraint of the senses really involve the retreat of the senses themselves? Or does it involve something deeper?

In this work of nadi yoga, it is vital to separate the senses from the mind. What does this mean? What it means is separating the instrumental level of consciousness from the objective level of consciousness. More will be explained on this later as we explore the process called mudra.

Coming back to the topic of brahmacarya, we have to look at where it is that we lose energy through the senses. The mind and its objective layer obsessions contaminates the raw experience of the senses and in effect takes energy from us, causing us to “leak” through the 10 sense doors. This doesn’t just happen with sex. It happens through our eyes when we desire different forms and activities. It happens through our ears when we let ourselves become entangled in conversation, in music, in sound. It happens with food, when our mind becomes habituated to certain foods. It happens through our hands when we become over controlling or obsessive with things like work, when we grasp at things. It happens through our feet when we are constantly moving forward, unable to stop going and going. In this way, we have many “leaks” in our energy body, in our nadi structure. Are we aware of how we spend energy? How do we feel? Are we depleted? Are we continually tired? Why is it that we are tired? Where do we leak?

Like all things, there is a balance. Brahmacarya is not the principle of telling us to contain and contain and not let go. That leads to the problem of hoarding, discussed later. This is another problem energetically. Brahmacarya is about containment yes, but containment tempered with discernment about how much we can comfortably contain without depleting ourself. Like a car, we need a certain amount of fuel, but with too much fuel we also run a risk of violation.

What does the proper amount of containment feel like? This is something you will have to discover for yourself. There is a certain glow, a certain buzz, that comes with proper containment. Proper containment is like storing “juice” in your body, healthy juice that feeds you and causes you to grow. It gives you energy. It feeds your life. If you don’t have enough of this juice, you feel depleted. Something is off and you constantly try to get the juice back, oftentimes by violating through another nadi corridor. For example, you may have excessive sex, which will deplete the body and then try to get the juice back through food, further unbalancing the system. After a hard long, overextended day at work, you may seek balance through visual media with the tv. There are many examples. Living a life of constantly spending and trying to make up for it through other corridors is a game we play. We take money out of the bank and try to put it back in in another way. The savings account never gets anywhere and we are constantly putting ourselves in the red. Living life like this is stressful and how much of modern society lives. The yama of satya helps us with this, to understand clearly what we are doing to ourselves.

Brahmacarya is vital as a preliminary practice as it causes us to conserve, to build our energetic savings account. As we start to store life energy, we start to recognize it more clearly and we have energy to proceed. Patanjali tells us very clearly in sutra 1.20 that virya or energy is necessary to have to build us up for the higher stages of yoga. Brahmacarya is how we build that virya or energy.

Nadi Yoga Part 4 - Preliminaries - Satya

Satya - Truth

Satya is the next Yama. Satya is truth. Truth is much more than just speaking truth. It is living truth. Living the truth that our life demands if we are to grow as individuals, if we are to truly live. Satya is Dharma, the alignment with our highest truth. Truth requires courage, requires willingness to truly see, to truly take stock of our life and see what it is that we truly need, what we truly need to do in order to live life to our fullest potential.

If we have the courage to follow the yama of satya, of truth, we will be able to more clearly see where it is that we do violate ourselves (referring to the first yama of ahimsa). Truth requires light to come in to all of the dark, hidden corners of our selves. We cannot hide in the light of truth. We cannot escape our selves and our games any longer.  We are forced to pick up the rugs and sweep out the dust. We are forced to clean out the closets, long ago packed with things long forgotten.

Truth can be bitter in the beginning when we first start to look, just as it is painful to clean the house when we have long let it go. However, we will get nowhere on this path of Nadi Yoga unless we have this willingness to take a look at everything in our life. There can be no stone unturned. There can be no closet neglected.

Truth is not about following some code of conduct and seeing where we match up and where we don’t. This can actually be a form of deep violation. Truth rather involves deep acceptance. Deep compassion and love for ourselves in our process. It may take time. It most likely will take time to do this work. It will not happen all at once. Even after one layer gets peeled back, there will be more.

This is a process that we will constantly be working on. In this way it is important to look at the gross things in our life first. What is our relationship like? What is our job like? What is our infrastructure like? Are we doing too much with our time? Do we have time for our selves and our process? Are we taking care of ourselves and our families? These and others are all the most important questions to look at first. When the gross gets taken care of, we can then look towards the subtler ways that we sabotage and harm our selves.

As the layers get peeled back more and more we may realize we have not dealt with certain things for many years and that certain themes keep reoccurring in our life. We may find that even our practices, even our "spirituality" has only been a front, an escape, a bypass of the real truth that has been hiding underneath all along. It is important to examine ourselves and our process deeply and thoroughly and honestly.

In this way, satya/truth goes hand in hand with ahimsa/non-violation. Ahimsa is the agreement with our selves not to violate our life force. Satya is the willingness to see clearly the truth of where we do violate ourselves. At the deepest level, satya is the truth of our existence itself and the willingness to be witness to this. So in a practical way if we can truly learn to see where we do not have the first yama of ahimsa, we will be shown clearly the truth of where we need to go, what we need to do, how we have to act, to bring our life more into balance with our dharma.

Only when we have satya will our energy be truly liberated to flow naturally and in balance with our life. It is here in the light of truth that our blockages start to release, our physical and mental problems start to dissolve, and our pathways become clear. In truth we have freedom to move in unlimited directions without the binding of conditioning.

These first two principles are the foundational guideline that steer the rest of the 8 yamas and niyamas.

Tantra Part 1 - Introduction

In addition to the Nadi Yoga articles I will be writing a new series of articles on the practice of Sri Vidya tantra. It is my hope to eventually bring both subjects into book form for the benefit of practitioners worldwide.

Not all will resonate with this work so if not, please just skip these tantra articles! If you are connected to this work, feel free to read and explore it.

These articles on tantra are not meant to be a scholarly examination from the standpoint of theory but are designed to get one dirty very quickly with the practice.

Introduction to Tantra

What is tantra? Tantra is expansion. Tantra is empowerment. Tantra is freedom from limitation and the breaking down of the view that we are anything other than God.

It is my goal with this new series of articles on tantra to share age old traditions to a new age of practitioners. It is my goal to strip away the limitations that have been previously put upon these age old disciplines and make them available to everyone, without regard to sex, gender, age, culture, caste, and station. This is the way that my Guru has been bringing the teachings to the modern age and he has given me his blessing to share these teachings with all. Some may balk at the sharing of these ancient "secret" teachings. All I can do is to bless these folks and hope that they can find it in their hearts to understand that as my guru says "Sri Vidya is for everyone".

What is Sri Vidya?  Tantra has had many different forms and manifestations over the last 5 to 10 thousand years (yes many believe it goes back that far...). Sri Vidya is a form of tantra that works with the Goddess principle. Sri means auspicious and is also a word that designates the Devi or Goddess. Vidya is knowledge. So Sri Vidya is the "auspicious knowledge" or the "knowledge of the Goddess". My lineage through Guruji Sri Amritanandanatha of Devipuram India, is connected with the Dattatreya line which works with the Goddess Lalitha Tripurasundari as the highest expression of the divine. It may seem strange to some, especially those brought up in Western systems of spirituality to focus on the feminine aspect of the divine but if you look deeper into the Western streams you will find that the feminine has only been hidden from view.

According to Tantra, the world from the highest to the lowest manifestations can be broken up into 36 tattvas or categories. At the highest level, what we call Paramasiva, reality is completely one. Division occurs, breaking reality apparently into two. These two primal realities are called Siva and Sakti. Siva, the traditional "male" principle is also called Prakasha or the innate light or awareness aspect of being. Sakti, or the traditional "female" principle is also called Vimarsha or the reflective, manifest blissful aspect of being. You find this same primal splitting in many other spiritual traditions across the world from the Chinese to the ancient Hebrews. From one perspective the Goddess represents one side of the polarity. From a higher perspective, the Goddess is Paramasiva herself, in other words, she is the sum total representation of everything. Take it as you will. As one of the 1000 names of Lalitha suggests, Lalitha is ever in union with her lover Siva.

Many traditions over time have focused their attention more on the awareness/luminous aspect of this primal splitting, emphasizing one side of the expansion over the other. By focusing on that aspect which our traditions have ignored for so long we strive to bring balance back to the work. Ultimately divinity and our true nature is neither one nor the other. Balance is required in the work to understand the primal polarities within ourselves.

Theory is good only in so far as it helps us to establish a framework for practice and so wherever necessary I will bring it in. Otherwise, there are many books out there which you will find if you feel you need to research such matters. There is a saying in the modern field of neurolinguisic programming that “the map is not the territory”. There is nothing that will compare to actual practice because it is only with practice that you will realize the benefits of tantra.

Reality is. In other words, we can philosophize and theorize all we want to but Reality itself will always be, just as it is. The tools of tantra only help to break down our limiting views and beliefs to bring us to a deeper recognition of the inherent ok-ness of this. Tantra is a “bringing down” of that recognition, so that we learn to see that inherent purity in our minds, our feelings, and our bodies.

I am basing these series of articles on the traditional teachings of the Parasurama Kalpa Sutras, an ancient treatise on the work of tantra given by the sage Parasurama. Secondly, I am also basing them on the classical instructions handed down by my Guru who follows this tradition. Thirdly, I am  basing these teachings on the results and experiences given me by my own practice and the material that has "manifested" through the doorway of the powerful lineage to which I belong. I do not claim mastery in this practice and only share it out of my love of the work and my strong belief in its power, evidenced over my own serious personal transformation of the last few years.

More important than the tools of the tantra are the empowerments themselves that the tools bring. More important than the techniques are the alignments that occur with the techniques. Given that, we will still employ tools. Powerful age old tools that have been handed down through the centuries. Through some of the upcoming posts we will also explore newer tools, tools only discovered in the last century by my guru and even more recently by myself. If it works for you use it, if not feel free to discard it and discover your own. There is no right way.

We are Consciousness and Bliss itself, God and Goddess. There is nothing which is separate from this. Whatever we think, feel, say, or do is all the expression of God. There is no impurity. Division is only a thought, a feeling, one that upon investigation will reveal itself to only be like a dream.

It is my prayer that through this work or other, that all will recognize their true nature and feel completely and utterly free to step into their own power as children of God and begin to act to create and shape this world as God intended, with love and presence and creativity.