Notes From St. John, 2016, Part I

Posted on March 29, 2016 by admin

Inhabiting a Multidimensional Universe

The recurring theme of the week was the embodied exploration of the seven sacred directions, using asana and movement, to: 1. expand the world we inhabit: 2. discover shadows, ie, the unconscious or unresolved areas of our psychic, as well as physical and physiological space: 3. bring our expanding awareness into the world around us, integrating with Nature, and our relationships: 4: discover the Soul and its primary urges for us in this lifetime. Remember the seven directions begin with the Heart center and include three pairs of complementary directions/energies. Our goal is to integrate these within the pair, and within the whole. Capitalization indicates referral to a sacred direction.

The Seven Sacred Directions

One: The Heart: Discover, feel and open your heart. The heart is the center, the intersection point of all the other directions. Let your personal heart expand into and merge with the Cosmic Heart and rest in the infinite stillness revealed there. Your heart knows how to do this. Your mind probably does not. This is our ‘natural state’, the ‘drashtuh svarupe” of the Yoga Sutras. This practice is 24/7/365.

Two: Earth: Find gravity and what we call down. We are in a body, on Mother Earth. When sitting or standing, feel the vertical line passing through your heart, through your core, down into Mother Earth and feel you heart merging with the heart of the Divine Mother. Feel your whole body responding to weight and grounding. Release and awaken your first or root chakra. Imagine the core line, or chakra line, open so all chakras connect through the root chakra into ground. Feel the stability, what Patanjali calls ‘sthira’. You cannot fall off the planet. You will not float away!

This direction also represents the underworld, the collective energetic experience of the whole 4.5 billion year old history of Mother Earth, the “Sacred Feminine”, with powers, information and support available to us through soul work, dream and shamanic studies. The western world long ago equated the underworld with hell, so it has become a collective region of pathology, fear and terror. We, as individuals, cultures and the planet as a whole, need to spend a lot of time in serious healing here. Step three will be necessary for this.

Three: Heaven: Find levity and lightness as you orient to up, to the sky. From the earth and heart, open your crown chakra and extend the core chakra line upward into the heavens. Feel the levity or lightness in your cells and bones, the expanding upwards of your energy without losing ground. Feel the weight and lightness in balance from the heart as you sit or stand ‘suspended’ or floating between heaven and earth. All chakras turned on and glowing gently, quietly. Feel your chakra line like the center axis of a gyroscope, stabilizing. The heavenly realms are also so home of the angels, devas, Buddhas and other teachers of ascendent and transcendent wisdom. Lots of support for our soul and social journey resides here. Integration of Heaven and Earth gives us our vertical axis, the core of the fundamental ‘posture’ of the human, and completes the first stage in preparation for asana or any embodied exploration.

Four: East or Front: Discover your front body. Face the east, and all subsequent directions will assume this as our base position. Obviously, we will equate the east direction with the front body, as Iyengar demonstrates in ‘purvottanasana’, the intense stretch to the east (side of the body) pose. Notice your eyes naturally face forward from the front and therefore we tend to be much more conscious of the front body, as we can see it best. From an embryological perspective, the front represents the gut body or endoderm, including throat, lungs, intestines, liver and stomach and bladder. It is soft and vulnerable. From the perspective of our psychic body, the east represents sunrise in the daily cycle and the season of springtime. We find new beginnings and the joy and innocence of youth, with lightheartedness combined with a subtle wisdom that is simultaneously both very old and very new. It is not wisdom of culture or education, but of the heart. The front also represents the future and our future selves yet to be revealed. In asana, the front body is opened and explored in depth through the element fire in back-bending poses, either supported or dynamic.

Five: West or Back: The complementary direction to the front is the back, the west side of the body as shown in ‘paschimottanasana‘, the intense stretch of the west side. West is where the sun sets, so the west represents endings and letting go. The season is fall. In contrast to the East, he Western psychic space is weighty and dark, and is the direction through which we discover the underground and the soul. The back body, as West, represents the past, in its collective wisdom, but also in the karma of our unconscious, unresolved issues, from this lifetime, and previous ones. Thomas Hübl calls this our ‘backpack’ of burdens we carry around in life. As we ’empty’ this backpack though therapy, soul work and inner reflection, we free up energy for our future selves and make the present moment much lighter. In asana, forward bending poses lengthen, soften and relax the back body. In embryology, the back body is the endoderm or nervous system which is soothed, softened and opened in asana practice, by the element water and forward bending postures.

The pose of balance between the front and back bodies is of course tadasana, or sirsanasa. The tissue layer of balance is the mesoderm, or middle layer. In kinesiology, mammalian flexion and extension involve waves traveling back and forth between front and back bodies, so healthy movements are integrating. We will come back to this very important layer a little bit later in this article. This completes stage two.

Six: South or Right: As we face east, the right side of the body points to the south. The right is the solar, yang or masculine side of the yoga energy channels. The south, halfway between east and west, represents noon or mid-day, when the light is the brightest and youthful energy is at its peak. It’s energy is wild, liberated and exuberant. The season is summer. The psychic space is full of eros, the celebration of aliveness and the fullness of Nature’s bounty.

Seven: North or Left: The left side correspondingly faces the north, the season of winter, the time of day, midnight. The lunar nadi is the left, the feminine, yin or cooling side. The psychic sphere is the realm of the wise elders, guides, teachers and parents. This balances the youthful enthusiasm of the south. Without the north, the wildness of the south energy can get out of hand and become destructive. Without the youthful south to balance, the old age of the north can become cold, dry and fossilized. All pairs balance each other, and to integrate is to realize how to bring the pairs together as wholeness.

In Embryology, right and left emerge out of the middle layer, the mesoderm where a single energy channel becomes seven, three right, three left, and the center, giving birth to the spinal vertebrae, heart, kidneys and limbs, as well as other connective tissue structures. We explore this median plane and its relationship to right and left in the lateral standing poses such as trikonasana, parsvakonasana and half moon, as well as anantasana and variations. Right and left complete stage three, and we now have our seven sacred directions, the heart as center, and three pairs of complementary energy fields that, when working together, give us a fully embodied, three dimensional field of perception, action and intelligence, from cell to skin ans skin to cell. This is of course, samyama in asana.

Explorations:

Step Eight: As we are in the Caribbean, with the amazing reefs of St. John all around us, we can take this 7 directional field of intelligence into the water, especially snorkeling or scuba diving. When swimming, notice our chakra line is no longer oriented to heaven and earth, but parallel to the earth, along our N-E-S-W compass lines. The front body face down to the earth, back body the heavens. This is a very different orientation, and a very rich one for humans to explore. Also, the buoyancy of the water takes much of the effort out of the muscles, so we can literally float in the water. This too is a hugely fertile field of sensations and movement explorations play with. Rather than just the mechanics of swimming, play with the buoyancy changes the energy fields of the seven directions.

Step Nine: Now, moving your intelligence field and your mirror neuronal sytem out into the water, begin to embody, or imagine what it feels like to be a: sting ray: turtle: reef fish like a tang: a parrotfish; a sea anemone or sea fan, etc. What do you ‘feel’ when you allow the energy of your chosen being to fill your inner world? What new shapes in your field can you give birth to ?

Step Ten: Afternnoon breathing sessions: Our omni-directional intelligence also expands and condenses radially, like the movements of the hoberman spheres, and this offers us another pair of energies to explore and integrate. (tato dvandva anabhigatah, PYS II-48). We can also relate these movements to the Prana vayus, the yogic model of physiological activity.

The prana vayu governs what we take in. It is the expanding, centrifugal energy of getting larger as we fill up. The prana vayu is centered in the chest to help draw breath into the lungs as inhalation, and blood back to the heart. So we want the chest cavity to really feel its expandability, its capacity to open and increase its volume. However, this is not accomplished by using the spinal muscles, or contracting in any way. Inhalation requires getting out of the way and allowing the natural opening to emerge. When possible, use a bolster or rolled up blanket to lift the chest slightly.

The apana vayu governs what we let go of, what we eliminate, and involves a squeezing or condensing centered in the belly and pelvic areas. We take in one direction, through the mouth and nostrils and down into lungs and stomach. But we squeeze out in two directions, down for solid and liquid wastes, but up for exhaling the breath. So the energy of the apana has to be very intelligent and alert to make sure both directions are operating as desired.

The Practice:
Part 1: either seated or lying down, keep the spine long and relaxed. On the inhalation, without any force or tension, invite the in breath to be primarily driven by the sideways expansion of the ribs, allowing the inter-costal muscles to open. On the exhalation, with minimal tension, allow the exhalation to come from the squeezing of the abdominal wall and not a dropping of the chest. This will help stretch out the diaphragm. Later, we will integrate the ribs with the exhalation, but not before the diaphragm has really opened up. Continue to breathe this way, gradually expanding the chest wall, lifting and opening the dome of the diaphragm, and strengthening the abdominal wall. Notice the squeezing of this is from the back and sides to the center and not a shortening like in a sit-up.

Part 2: Morning Asana: In tadasana find your navel. Imagine your original navel as a portal entering from the front and flowing back towards the spine. As the energy draws your navel to the spine, feel the back of the mesentery, behind the intestines, widening and spreading right and left. Next, imagine or feel this spreading tissue, when it reaches the outer sides of the body, begin to wrap around toward the front. Now let the two ends meet in the middle front body and knit together. Back, Widen, Wrap and Knit. This tones the core, like a mild uddiyana bandha. Feel it down inside the pelvis, and up under the ribs around and below the diaphragm. Keep this toned as you breathe in and out. Exhalation will increase the tone. Try not to collapse the tone on the in-breath. Connect this feeling to your legs as well.

Explore what happens to this tone when you go from tadasana into uttanasana and back. Same in any of the standing poses.

More Detroit Notes: 7 Sacred Directions

Posted on February 25, 2016 by admin

Balance and Energy Flow through the Seven Sacred Directions

The gyroscope offers a model to help get us started in our exploration of our embodied energy fields. We have a vertical axis, a radiant horizontal plane, and a center point where they meet. Feel this dynamic spiraling energy in your body so we can locate, inhabit and awaken the seven sacred directions of the cosmos. We will find a center and three pairs or polarities of energies that interact with each other to guide us home to the wholeness of the Sacred Universe, our true nature, or drashtuh svarupe.

In our bodies, our heart is the Center, the place of balance, of home. This is the first direction, the primary direction and organizing center, and is represented by the energies of expanding and condensing as shown in the Hoberman spheres. Energies fills the heart from the other six directions, and the heart radiates energy out to the world through the other directions. The other six directions all find expression of their qualities through the heart as variations of Love

The vertical axis gives us the first of the three pairs of sacred directions and is our connection to the ‘unseen’ or hidden realms of existence, (unseen to our ordinary senses and modes of attention!)

The second direction is Down, through our root chakra, the muladhara, into Mother Earth, into the deep feminine, the dark underworld of the unconscious, of life at its primal level, unconditioned by social rules and repressions; into the shamanic world of fairies, elves, djinns and nymphs; of plant and animal guides and an ageless wisdom waiting to be rediscovered. We might call this the realm of the “Soul”. Patriarchal cultures are terrified of this realm and have demonized it for millennia. Still happening today, sad to day. If you believe yoga is about gaining controol of the body/mind, than your soul is needing serious nourishment! Fortunately there is a vast movement diving into ‘Soul”, ‘waking down’, rapidly making its way though many dimensions of modern culture into the world. To dive into the soul in a healthy way, we need the support of all seven directions.

The polar opposite direction, Up, connects us through our crown chakra to the heavenly realms of angels, Buddhas, and no longer embodied enlightened beings and teachers, to the intelligences of other stars and galaxies yet to be noticed on our planet. Traditional, ie patriarchal, forms of spirituality have place ascending, (getting to heaven, kaivalya) as primary or only way of spiritual growth. We are now moving toward an integral approach to spiritual practice that honors, and requires, all directions.

The horizontal plane has the final four directions, two more pairs, also known as the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West. These represent the ‘seen world’, (as opposed the the unseen of the vertical axis) taken in by our five senses. These directions can be seen as references for pairs of skills and talents, life situations and challenges available for us to be cultivated and healed during our time here on the planet. This is a cross cultural model with different attributes and imagery associated with each of the four. They may represent: the four seasons of summer, fall winter and spring; the four cardinal moments of the day: sunrise, noon, sunset and midnight; the four basic elements of earth, water, fire and air. Native Americans use the four directions of the ‘Medicine Wheel’ as map for the sacred journey of life. For our purposes here we will draw upon observations from Bill Plotkin’s Wild Mind” mentioned in a previous blog, as well as a more traditional yoga perspective and poses, as we embody these possibilities.

East: Sunrise, the front of the body, purva, as in purvottanasana, beginnings and rebirth, springtime. From “Wild Mind” we find the combination of innocence and wisdom leading to simplicity and joyousness, curiosity and a sense of adventure in life. When East is lacking or repressed, we can get dark and heavy, weighted down by West’s connection to death and dying and the challenges of ‘soul’ work.

West: Sunset, autumn, the back of the body, paschimottanasana, endings, letting go, completions, introspection. ‘Wild Mind’: A connection to death and transformation, the underworld, the ‘soul’, to romance that is utterly and darkly mysterious, to our muse that flows from our deep imagination. When West is repressed or lacking, we can become very superficial or trivial as East’s lightness loses the grounding provided by West. This is common in spiritual communities with a charismatic leader with a dark shadow. If we are looking for the ‘light’ but refuse also to see and acknowledge the dark shadowy side that we all, including spiritual teachers, have, we repress our own unconscious pain and confusion. We pretend to be ‘light’ because we believe that is what spirituality is supposed to be about, but our souls suffer deeply when ignored.

North: Midnight, winter, the elders, keepers of the ancient wisdom, the left side of the body. “Wild Mind”: the nurturing adult, the healer, leader; the source of compassion and connection, of belonging. When North is repressed or ignored, we can become selfish and hedonistic as ‘wild youth’ of South loses its way in the world without the guidance of the adults and elders. Modern culture lives with North repressed as most of the ‘leaders’ in politics and business these are terminal self centered adolescents.

South: Noon, summer, the right side of the body, youth. “Wild Mind”: wild and indigenous, totally home as an embodied being, erotic, instinctually alive and connected to all of the natural world, flowering, traveling, celebrating aliveness. When South is neglected or repressed, we can become overly serious and frozen in our beliefs and attitudes as the adult side loses its wild and youthful balance. The future becomes terrifying and we long for the ‘good old days’ when things were ‘done the right way’.

The Embodied Practice:

Start with any centering pose, sitting or standing. From your heart, open root and crown chakras to open center channel, balance front body with back body, right side with left. Feel centered and alive. Rest in the stillness at the root of the heart. In all poses keep returning here again and again.

Balancing North and South, aka Right and Left. Many standing poses are designed to balance right and left. By doing each side with awareness of center channel and front/back balance, the imbalances can be seen explored, and balanced, as best possible. Go beyond the structure and feel Right/South and Left/North qualities awakening and growing. Find poses where you can stay long enough to take all this in. In all poses, balance right and left. (Notice that hatha yoga is a very ‘South nurturing’ practice.)

Balancing East and West, aka Front and Back. Forward bending and back bending poses are obvious. Go beyond the structure to add the qualities of East and West in your explorations. Mild back bends like salabhasana or sphynx and simple standing forward bends are great ways to play with layers beyond the physical. Keep your back muscles relaxed to feel the West/mystery behind you. It is a scary place so we all tend to hold on, unconsciously. Of course, in all poses, balance front and back.

Balancing Heaven and Earth, head and tail. Inversions, supported when necessary offer an obvious way to balance above and below. But any and all poses allow the sense of up and down, into the earth and up the the sky, weight and lightness.

Integration: The Spiral: Feel how twisting poses allow you to play with all directions simultaneously. Be the gyroscope, and feel how you can spiral up, down or both. How you can turn right, left or both, in any twist. Spin out to the horizon line and back into to your center. Expand your horizons beyond the body, and what you think are your limitations. These poses are really fun.

Returning to the Source: Savasana: Back into the center, into the stillness, into the mystery.

Moving Out into the World

When ready, bring all of your qualities, all seven directions, your Whole Self, into the world and live the good life in all of its delightful and challenging aspects.

The Role of the Soul

Posted on February 1, 2016 by admin

As our unfolding continues on through the mystery, clues keep arriving to help orient to wholeness and facilitate the emergence of the next levels of consciousness necessary to help navigate our historical moment. Through a very typical Ojai convergence, I have just come across the work of Bill Plotkin, author of ‘Soul Craft” , “Nature and the Soul”, and his most recent book, “Wild Mind”. As a fellow soul traveler with strong links to Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, Bill’s unique perspective strongly resonates with me and I hope you can find great inspiration from his vision as well

As a psychotherapist, Bill has a deep curiosity about mind, conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious, and has a great vocabulary to help map and flesh out the psychic and psychological terrain we are all exploring. He is familiar with Internal Family Systems and Voice Dialogue, and has developed his own model and language for the mature and immature parts, based in part on the Native American ‘medicine wheel’ and the four cardinal directions, north, east, south and west, as seen here. Bill also adds in Greek mythology, Jungian psychology, archetypal imagery, and more, but also allows you to find metaphors and language that speak to your own unique self.

From the four cardinal directions, which we can imagine as a horizontal plane, we add three more directions: above, or towards the heavens and celestial realms, which we call ‘Spirit’; below, down into the earth and the heart of mother nature which we call ‘Soul’; and finally into the center of all, which I call the ‘Ego’. We all begin at the center and maturing brings an integration of all seven directions, which I call the ‘Self’. Integration does not imply that every aspect and possibility has matured and completed its unfolding. Just that all seven directions are included in our basic ‘self sense’, and some maturity has begun to deepen the way in which the seven nurture and support each other in their emergence and deepening maturity. Wholeness is our natural state, but we forget, and the ego begins to act from the parts and sub-personalities that are cut off from the others. In “Wild Mind”, Bill goes into great depth about the seven directions and I highly recommend this to you.

***(an important note on language; words are, as the Buddhists say, are fingers pointing at something, but definitely not the object or experience they are pointing to. Spirit and Soul are words pointing to the same experience as the Sanskrit terms Purusha (timelessness, unboundedness, stillness: the masculine expression of divinity) and Prakriti (creation, mother Nature, impermanence, the feminine expression of Divinity. Bill and I agree in this, whereas Adyashanti reverses the words, using Spirit for the feminine and Soul for the masculine. But then Bill Plotkin uses Ego and Self opposite to the way I do. He uses the expression 3-D Ego to describe what I call the Self. He has a more Western based perspective, myself more Eastern. But the principles are exactly the same.)

Bill’s other passion is wilderness and uses wilderness expeditions for vision quests, soul searching, and other means to break out of the shell of a ‘civilized’ ego. Our self sense has become so limited, stunted and deformed by modern society that we have developed a major cultural psycho-pathology that is destroying the planet. Wilderness experience, going one on one, alone with nature, with some guidance, allows a major shift that can open repressed skills and means of knowing that are essential to our growth and survival, as individuals, and as a species.

As somanauts, our encounter with nature can also be an inner voyage to the cells, organs, meridians, nadis, energy channels and fields that comprise our bio-spiritually embodied selves. This is level one soul work. The role of the soul is to help us fully embody our divinity, inwardly and outwardly. In yoga, we explore the seven directions spatially, through movement, imagination and perception, in postures, to shift consciousness from the everyday routine to a communion state with the soul. We become one with earth, water, fire and air, we feel their gifts, their presence, their power, so when we are out in nature, we already are deeply connected through the elements. The deeper dimensions of the soul can then begin to reveal themselves as we meet the birds, bees, flowers and trees, oceans, waves, winds and rain as dimensions of our own deep soul. We no longer observe nature from a distance, but dissolve into the mystery of the unfolding moment. The soul is not about control, but surrender into Creation at the most primary level.

Grad student homework: (This may take a while, or it may come quickly!)

Find your own chakra totem, one animal/plant being for each chakra, one through seven. Find the gift/feel/flow of each of these and how they relate to the other six. You may find only one to begin, but this can be a very rich exploration in and of itself. This is a soul meditation. These are some possible starting points. You may find others as well. Good luck!

Who is my root support?
Who awakens my feeling of flow?
Who empowers me?Who offers my heart roots and wings?
Who liberates my voice?
Who helps me see all?
Who is my primary celestial guide?

Take what arises onto the mat, and out into Nature and the world around you. Be open to surprise.