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.

‘Soul’stice Greetings

Posted on December 21, 2015 by admin

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations—
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you felt their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
though the sheets of clouds,
and their was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—-
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Solstice: from the Latin ‘sol‘ for sun and sistere, ‘to stand still’: “when the sun stands still”. The ancient observers of the heavenly bodies recognized that the points on the horizon where the sun rises and where the sun sets oscillate from north to south and back again. Two times a year, the sun stops to change directions. The day of the northern most point is known as the summer solstice, the day where the sun stops at southern most point is the winter solstice.

Soul: from the Old English ‘sawol‘, the Gothic ‘saiwal’, and the Old German ‘seula’, meaning the intrinsic animating life force in living beings extending beyond the physical plane.

Soulstice: Stopping to listen to your soul. Finding stillness and darkness where that ‘new voice’ begins to be heard, and allowing it to take you ‘deeper and deeper into the world’, where you meet life, face to face, in its rawness and unbridled intensity, in its compassion and sensitivity, in its unconditional love; where you meet your Self.

The soul is not your personality, your thoughts or ideas, although these may be shaped by the soul. The soul is not subject to logic, reason and order, although it and of itself has no problems with those. The soul cannot be controlled as it is wild and untamable. It demands freedom, loves darkness and stillness, and speaks of unimaginable layers and levels of connections and creativity. It is unencumbered by time.

The soul is ignored in the modern world of consumerism, greed, shallow self-centeredness, fear and anxiety. Most modern religions, east and west, are so into controlling the behavior of their followers, that the soul terrifies them, and they do all they can to demonize it. Most of the modern political structures are so bereft of soul as to be not only useless, but dangerous to the world. Same with the corporate structures.

But! But but but! The time of the Soul has come. The human soul, the planetary soul, the cosmic soul is awakening. There is no turning back. Find the stillness and rest there. Tada drshtuh svarupe avasthanam. Heed that inner voice, the voice that you ‘recognize as your own’. Not the other voices around you ‘shouting their bad advice’. Be willing to be lost, confused, melancholy. Find your spirit guides, your animist helpers, your higher selves, and ‘stride deeper and deeper into the world, from atom to galaxy and beyond, all right here and now, in this sacred space, in this sacred moment.

Blessings to you all on this special day.

“The Journey” was originally published in Mary Oliver’s book “Dream Works”.
Much thanks to poet and soul guardian David Whyte for bring this poem to my attention.

How Big is Your World?

Posted on September 15, 2015 by admin

Habitat is a wonderful word, carrying layers of meaning and subtle implications. It includes the physical place where something lives, the environmental factors that support and contribute to its well being, as well as other species that may be key components of this ecosystem. From a physical point of view, most of the planet serves as a habitat for the modern human as we have been shown to be a very adaptable species when it comes to the outer environment. And now we have space stations orbiting the earth, with dreams of Mars and beyond.

But, from a psychological/mental perspective, most modern humans inhabit the tiniest of worlds; one limited by their own narrow minded thinking and fear based ideological beliefs. These self created prisons and personal hells shape our behavior, and are reeking havoc on the environment and ecosystems that support our existence. How did the human become the species that destroys its own habitat?

This was the driving question of Thomas Berry‘s life and it inspired many extraordinary books, including The Dream of the Earth, one of the most important books of the 20th century. One possible perspective is that the modern human has completely collapsed its collective soul. Whether through over-reliance of logic and reason, or just plain fear of the unknown, we no longer inhabit the soul. We some how live outside its domain, the way James Duffy, a character in James Joyce’s short story, “A Painful Case” “lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses.” In our detachment from what is real and spiritually meaningful, we have forgotten how to nurture the environment that allows the soul to thrive, and barely acknowledge its existence. Because of this, we allow others to decide how big our dreams can be. We allow others to impose limits on our spiritual freedom, never acknowledging or trusting the deep inner wisdom of our own unique soul journey. And we are devastating the planet that nurtures or existence.

Fortunately, the Soul is making a comeback. The Feminine Spirituality that nurtures soulness is returning. Spiritual liberation is upon us, if we can find the courage to plunge into the unknown. For us somanauts, our soul journey is to fully and deeply inhabit this human form we call the body, in its soul dimension, which is the whole cosmos, physical as well as psychic. In the last post there is a brief description of the triune soul, including the Celestial, Mental and Physical Souls. When we can begin to see these soul realms as inter-related habitats, with healthy and unhealthy ecologies, we can begin the process of inhabiting, healing and reconciliation, both within our own soul realms, and simultaneously within the collective soul of humanity, the planet, and the cosmos. We’ll look at the Mental Soul first, and then, for our embodied practice, dive into the Physical Soul. We’ll call upon the Celestial Soul angels to help with both!

Mental Soul

The Mental Soul is the realm of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, creativity, imagination and intelligence. It is also the home of the ego, the realm where both the pathology and the healing begin. The poor ego has become a punching bag for much of pop psychology and pop spirituality, and this misunderstanding is a major obstacle to spiritual maturity. We need a healthy ego to continue to mature. The Samkhya term ahamkara, the ‘I maker’, refers to the natural and essential psychological processes that lead to the development of a strong, wise and unique self sense.

The Mental Soul is also home to the buddhi, or intelligence, and a key role of the buddhi is to keep the ego healthy, but in check. An unhealthy ego oscillates between an over-inflated view of itself with a deflated one, runs wild with imagination and self deception, and makes decisions from these deluded perspectives. What about me me me…? Trouble begins here. A healthy ego just does its job of navigating the incarnational journey without trying to personalize anything, and leaves the key decision making to the buddhi. A strong buddhi is essential for this. To inhabit this realm in a healthy way we need to awaken and nurture this balanced relationship between ahamkara and buddhi.

Thomas Berry’s 4th principle can help us understand nature of a healthy triune soul, and the Mental Soul especially, as it is a fundamental description of Soul health. We need all three of these basic laws Thomas describes to function simultaneously. If one is missing, or dysfunctional, problems will arise.

Principle 4: “The three basic laws of the universe at all levels of reality are differentiation, subjectivity and communion. These laws identify the reality, the values and the directions in which the universe is proceeding.”

Differentiation is simple on the surface. Every form, from atoms to galaxies, are unique. The Universe never exactly repeats itself. To honor our soul, we must allow our uniqueness to awaken and flourish. Differentiation also means we can function as as independent being at all levels of reality. We do not need to be dependent upon mommy, daddy, or guru to live our lives. Ideally, parents and teachers allow us to discover our own inherent freedom. Interestingly enough, this independence is a very clear expression of ego. I am different, I am unique. The buddhi understands that independence is a cosmic law, and really ‘nothing special’, because everyone is unique. There is no need for an inflated, or deflated self sense. However, many spiritual communities, cults and fundamentalist groups cultivate the dependence of their followers as a means of maintaining power and control. We are superior, and you are inferior, but if you do what we say, you will be safe. Yikes! This is not to imply that independent beings cannot continue to learn from and evolve with others, as we will see with ‘communion’.

Subjectivity states that the soul is also the Soul. The individuated self is also the Self, Drashtuh, the Seer. This is the integration of the infinite unbounded Celestial Soul or Atman into everyday consciousness. Infants live here, but the incarnational process gradually draws them into the Physical and Mental Souls, and when these are not well integrated, the Celestial Soul is forgotten and the spiritual world collapses. A healthy buddhi also keeps the ego in check here. Grandiosity can run rampant when the ego discovers the infinite and stakes its claim. “I am a spiritually enlightened being and I can do no wrong”. Naive students can project this grandiosity onto their teacher, and if the teacher is not awake, their own egos can get sucked into believing this as well.

Communion is the reality that the Universe is a Community of Beings, inextricably intertwined within and without each other. Souls need community, and find community at every level of reality, from humans, to angels of the celestial realms, to the animal and plant spirits of the lower realms. Communion is about relationships, where we can safely dissolve egoic boundaries without losing our personal identity. The buddhi monitors and regulates this process and helps repair and restore the inevitable ruptures that take place in relationships.

We also need communities of humans that give us full support to pursue our own wholeness and not tie us down with dogma and small mindedness. We all hold a unique piece of the cosmic puzzle. It is our dharma to unfold that piece, discover how it fits in with the other pieces and share it with the world.

Studies of the attachment process, one of the great contributions of the modern west to the understanding of the developing mind, high-light the role played by emotionally mature adults in helping an infant slowly evolve the ego or “I sense” and the buddhi or intelligence, and thus continue grow to emotional adulthood, and maybe even spiritual adulthood.

The infant begins with no ego boundaries and can merge with its environment. In the idealized attachment process, the parent(s), as carrier of love in the form of nurturing and safety, merges with the infant to provide strength, security and support. The parent appears to the infant/child as all-knowing and all powerful. The mental soul of the child remains latent in the beginning. A mature parent gradually allows the baby/child/adolescent to differentiate. This involves developing its own self sense or ego, and its own ability to make decisions, awakening the mental soul level. All the while,the parents still provide the primary guidance in monitoring and modulating the emotional ups and downs of being alive. Love is constant channeled from the celestial soul, even through hard times and deep disagreements come and go.

As the physical soul matures through biology and healthy living, the intelligence of the mental soul, the buddhi, awakens, and guides the ego towards a realistic perspective on its own unique capacities. Parents own human frailties are exposed and everyone’s humanity is acknowledged. Mature parents have a strong self sense of their own and do not confuse their own needs and wants with those of the child. This leads to healthy differentiation. Healthy parenting provides clear examples of trusting surrender into relationships and freedom to be and become a unique being. This leads to healthy communion. When love is the foundation, subjectivity flourishes. Of course, the process is never as smooth as the idealized projections. Children come into the world with their own past life karma, and parents have the karma of their parents as well, so it is usually quite messy.

The Physical Soul

Inhabiting the Physical Soul requires the activation of perception, as this is the major modality through which it functions. Through perception we begin to navigate the inner world of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. In any somatic exploration, we begin with the complementary elements earth and space, also known as weight and lightness. (Please explore and inhabit these in all poses and life.)

Next we move into water and fire, another pair of complementary elements. B.K.S. Iyengar, writing in Light on Pranayama, equates ‘prana’, or our life energy, with the balance of fire and water. Fire warms the water and gets it moving. Water cools the fire and prevents overheating and burnout. Water is yin, fire is yang. In balance you have the whole spectrum of possibilities. The circulatory system is the best place to play with fire and water, so we will now move into the vyana vayu and see what appears.

My favorite pose of exploration these days is supported bridge, where weight and lightness prepare for a deeper experience of fire and water. Near the block, find the bifurcation of the aorta and inferior vena cava and open up the flow in both directions, toward the head, and toward the tail. (Blockages in my neck/throat lead to the excess redness of the face.) Trace the blood vessels as a flow up into the legs and back down as well. Next slide up under the heart and carefully lift the heart/liver so the aorta and vena cava stay long and free. No hinging of the spine! Track out to arms and hands and back to heart. Open soft palate and adjust skull on C-1 to help release neck pressure. Extra height under the shoulders may help here, as in sarvangasana. Now begin to lubricate the mesentery by lifting it up away from the blood vessels and imagining a thin layer of fluid sliding around. This begins the differentiation of the median plane of connective tissue in the body to help liberate front from back, flexion from extension, and the anterior nerve roots from the posterior.

Now, from the space surrounding the heart, feel the mediastinum, especially the posterior, and begin to imagine a linking of the mediastinum with the mesentery. To do this you have to pass through the diaphragm and liver, spreading them laterally to fill the space across the whole torso. Lubricate the ligaments and tendons so the tissue is more pliable and the organs feel more freedom of movement. When the mediastinum, posterior liver tissues and the mesentery meet, knit them together elastically, so in backbends, the whole net stretches evenly. Most students by pass the liver region, giving the table top look to backbends. B.K.S. Iyengar was a master of exploring the inner world through the elements. This is a backbend from the median plane, where fire, water and the connective tissues are in perfect harmony.

Similar action of the median plane is needed in forward flexion poses such as bakasana and uttanasana. No wrinkles in the median plane, but there is an elastic elongation of the core tissues. This keeps the organs toned and the fluids reaching into every nook and cranny of the body. Feel free to take this exploration into any of your favorite poses or sequences.

This is ‘inhabiting’ the body, and prepares us for allowing the awakened body to be a gateway to the shamanic realms, where the hidden dimensions of the soul can be liberated and healed. Next week we will look at rotations and how these poses help expand our perception of the fluids into the discs and spinal canal and how when we can inhabit the inner spine, the cosmic realms begin to appear more spontaneously.