The Five Skandhas

Posted on September 27, 2018 by admin

In the previous post I covered various perspectives on the often negative inner dialogue running on in morphing loops through the human psyche. Amazingly enough, in my almost 50 years of spiritual inquiry, I had never encountered the Buddhist notion of the skandhas, which clearly describe the emergence and development of the egoic mental states and structures. Until now! Timing is everything, of course.

The revelation comes from the enlightened writing of Reggie Ray in his new book, “Pure Awareness”. Reggie comes from the Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism as taught by Chogyam Trungpa, and what I love about Reggie’s approach is that it is all in the body, or soma. Meditation as an embodied spiritual practice is radical, as most traditions still teach it ‘top-down’, ie , use the mind/psyche to calm the body/soma. Reggie’s Vajrayana approach is to: go to the core of the soma to discover the origins of the egoic structures: see them from the body’s perspective; notice the suffering and unhappiness they unconsciously manifest; and transform them into healthy expressions of human possibility.

What is most fascinating is that this was my primary take-home message in the ‘Embodying the Embryological Foundations of Movement” workshop I attended with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen last month. A brief summary includes: 1. that the earliest stages of embryological development take place before the brain emerges; 2. the foundational intelligence of the body is ‘original (infinite) space plus movement; and 3. the body can ‘know itself’ independent of any act of mind.

In Bonnie’s ‘hot off the presses’ book, “Basic Neurocellular Patterns” she describes what she calls ‘The Embodiment Process’, which is also how she was presenting the material during the workshop.

” The process of embodiment is a being process, not a doing process; it is an awareness process in which the guide and witness dissolve into cellular consciousness.” (I’ll link this to the skandhas shortly!!) She list three processes leading to embodiment.

“1. Visualization: the process by which the brain imagines (visualizes) aspects of the body and informs the body that it (the body) exists. (We had anatomical drawings of the various stages of embryological development that we color coded. (Like being in 2nd grade again!)

2. Somatization: the process by which the kinesthetic (movement) and tactile (touch) sensory systems inform the body that it (the body) exists. In this process there is a witness – an inner awareness of the process. (Many hours exploring: solo, with a partner/guide, or in a larger group, using any means you desired. Yoga- centric ones used postures and yoga flow primarily, dancers moved, and everyone received hands on support whenever needed. (There were 30 assistants!)

3. Embodiment: the awareness of the cells themselves. It is a direct experience. There are no intermediate steps or translations. There is no guide. There is no witness. There is the fully known consciousness of the experienced moment initiated from the cells themselves. In this instance, the brain is the last to know. There is a complete knowing and peaceful comprehension. Out of this embodiment process emerges feeling, thinking, witnessing and understanding. The source of this process is love.”

This last paragraph is a good a description of fully embodied, non-dual, ‘Pure Awareness’ as you will ever see. And it is the ‘goal’, if we can call it that, of the Pure Awareness meditation process as described by Reggie in his book. This convergence of visionary beings in the present is a tremendous gift to us.

So what are the skandhas? Reggie uses the Greek word ‘soma‘, so I will use the Greek word psyche to describe the neuro-biological processes and dynamic structures that we might call thought, feeling and emotion that combine to give us a self sense, (the ahamkara is said to do this in Yoga Philosophy), and there are many more attributes we can find. (Modern Western Psychology calls these components of the psyche “parts” (Internal Family Systems) or “voices” (Voice Dialogue).

From an evolutionary perspective, ‘soma’ emerged from the depths of timeless mystery through the evolution our planet, Mother Earth, 4 billion years ago with the first primitive single cellular organisms. This soma, as a cellular intelligence continued to evolve over the next 4 billion years, and, still embedded in mystery, continues to evolve moment to moment, here and now. What we are calling psyche, in its human form, emerged within the soma somewhere within the last 2 million years or so, and continues its own unfolding into the present.

Somewhere along the line of evolution, the psyche developed the possibility of forgetting its origins in Ultimate Mystery and the primal cellular ‘soma’. When this forgetting happens, the psyche begins to create a separate ‘me’ and then feels an existential terror at being a tiny ‘me’ in a world where ‘dissolving into infinite mystery’ means the end of ‘me’. A bit of a Catch-22 here. In other terms, this is the eviction from the Garden of Eden.

This recoiling in horror at the vision of Ultimate Mystery is actually the first skandha, known as the ignorance of the nature of form, or just form. The ‘Truth’ of form is that ‘forms’ (Prakriti in the Yoga Sutras) are continually arising from and dissolving into ‘Emptiness’. The psyche, itself a form, being horrified by its own impermanence, starts to create all sorts of problems. My own personal experience with PTSD and panic attacks, in retrospect, was this first skandha in action. Yes, there was stored trauma in the body and psyche, but ultimately the resolution was to let the body heal itself by staying present. For the Yoga Sutras students, this is also the first klesha, avidya, as described in II-3 to II-5. Also, Arjuna, in chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita, gets a very abrupt, full on introduction to this skandha. Some aspects are shattering, but fortunately he has Krishna as his guide and Krishna helps him return to a state of inner peace before his skandhas get too scrambled.

Of course the psyche is highly unlikely to say to itself “Oh, my bad. We’re all cool with impermanence, emptiness and unbounded mystery. Lets ‘let-go’ and enjoy the ride.” It almost always desperately looks for something to grasp onto for security, something tangible to feel, so it (the psyche) can be reassured of its own ‘solidity. It begins to divide the infinite world of forms into ‘things I absolutely need’ and ‘things I absolutely need to avoid or get rid of. This is the second skandha, known as vedana, or feeling”, where the pain of craving is born. The ego starts to gain in solidity. In the Yoga Sutras, II-7 and II-8, these are described as two more kleshas.

The third skandha, perception/impulse, is the playing field of spiritual practice. Once craving arises the psyche begins to develop strategies to deal with this craving by manipulating its personal world. The three primary strategies are passion, aggression and indifference. Passion is the energy that drives us to acquire what we desire; aggression provides the energy to fight off what we are afraid of: indifference allow us to numb any other unpleasant or unresolvable feelings. In this skandha, our life energies are conscripted to pursue the endless cycle of passion and aggression, or the numbness of indifference leads to depression. Our primary self-sense is that we are ‘lacking’ or ‘wanting’ and there is never a resolution. As we will see later, impulse is our entry point into the skandhas and the one place we can begin to make changes.

The psyche, its its own clever way, needs to now validate all this impulsive 3rd skandha activity, so it begins to categorize, label and organize its behavior and observations. The fourth skandha conceptualizes and names, and is thus known as the skandha of ‘Intellect or Concept’. This leads to memories and habits, or what are called samskaras in Sanskrit, and karma. Think of samskaras as the immediate response to an impulse, and karma as your full history of all responses. Thus the full personality structure or ego is almost complete. (See Sutra I-43 where Patanjali describes the healing of this skandha.)

Finally, we need something to integrate impulse and intellect and the Sanskrit word given to the fifth skandha is Vijnana, or Consciousness. The ego is now a fully valid, conscious entity. Chogyam Trungpa, Reggie Ray’s teacher describes this skandha eloquently:

“Consciousness consists of emotions and irregular thought patterns, all of which taken together form the different fantasy worlds with which we occupy ourselves. These fantasy worlds are referred to in the scriptures as the “six realms”. The emotions are the highlights of ego, the generals of ego’s army; subconscious thought, day-dreams and other thoughts connect one highlight to another. So thoughts form ego’s army and are constantly in motion, constantly busy. Our thoughts are neurotic in the sense that they irregular, changing direction all the time and overlapping one another. We continually jump from one thought to the next, from spiritual thoughts to sexual fantasies to money matters to domestic thoughts and so on. The whole development of the five skandhas–ignorance/form, feeling, impulse/perception, concept and consciousness–is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality.”

The Five Skandhas:
(Ignorance of the true nature of) Form – Feeling – Impulse – Intellect – Conscious

In our somatic exploration/meditation practice, because we have trained our attention to stay in the immediate somatic experience (dharana, dhyana, samadhi, or Samyama) we are able to feel the level of impulse, skandha 3. Because the body, the soma, is both fully present and effortlessly embedded in Ultimate Mystery, totally comfortable with impermanence, our capacity to stay here gives us a non-grasping anchor resisting the winds of impulse. When, as Bonnie describes, the body becomes ‘conscious’, or awake, the infinite space is just there, present, luminous and alive. This is ‘embodiment‘. When an impulse arises, we can choose not to respond and just stay present in the soma. This, by the way, is the meaning of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra I-2 and I-3; yogash citta vritti nirodha; tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam. “Yoga is not responding to impulse, but remaining stably in the infinite (illumination reflected in the soma.) Or “The Drashtuh Abides”.

What Bonnie taught me this past month was to stay embodied and be in the world at the same time. That was the primary lesson for me, and it took her catching me in the exact moment of losing the soma to really get it. We were exploring some new inner spaces and feelings while staying aware of presence and the outer world simultaneously and I got distracted by some new exciting revelation. She was tracking me and immediately snapped her fingers. At first I thought she was signaling the class, but when I looked at her, I realized that she was calling me back into the soma/infinite that she was holding effortlessly, while being present to all, inner and outer. The whole workshop was captured in that moment. Sustaining this is not easy, but that is why we practice. (see Sutras I-12 – I-16). This is the transformation of the skandhas.

This practice goes on forever, of course, as impulses arise from all over the field of human consciousness, wanting to take us back careening into ignorance and delusion. Especially as we engage dynamically with the world. It is one thing to be in a monastery on a remote mountain top where the outer world is no longer present. You still have your own inner world to deal with, back back on the street, back in society, many many more triggers are activated. Less time and more need to practice. A bit ironic.

By the Way, in Pure Awakening, Reggie has some deep insights into the relationship between technology/social media, the near total disembodiedness of much of our youth, and the sheer terror they feel at actually having to face their own unpleasant feelings. Without the support of the body/soma, the option is to try to avoid anything uncomfortable and blame someone/anyone else for causing this. Big skandha problems here. The ‘adults’ in Congress and the business world don’t seem to be much better at dealing with reality than the youth, so it makes our own urgency to build a strong embodied field of love and compassion that much stronger. The skandhas can be transformed. We need their healthy expression to fully function, as individuals, but also as a society. Our culture has its own skandhas.

So how can we train ourselves to abide in the stillness while simultaneously being engaged in the world? Got to your mat and find out.

Choose a pose: (easiest in a sitting posture of course to go all the way with this.)
Find flowing connection to yin/ground/weight and yang/lightness/sky.
Find your center channel, (chong mai) feel it open at the crown into heaven and root into earth;
Relax and open your heart to find center.
Connect root and crown with small orbit meditation, completing the circle in both directions to open and relax the larger energy field that connects and integrates inner and outer worlds, yin (cv or ren mai) and yang (gv or du mai).
Add the girdle vessel (dai mai) for horizontal stability.
Let your breath further awaken the lower dantien, broadening and spreading your base to deepen the rooting in the soma, away from the psyche.
Open even more deeply to Mother Earth.
Let your breath fill the inner space effortlessly on the in breath and let it dissolve into emptiness on the out breath.
In that dissolving feel the infinite space that receives the breath and illumines the body. Rest in that luminous emptiness for a (second .. few seconds– minute…)
and then return to any of the steps above and begin again.

When you find yourself lost, retrace your way back through the skandhas. Impulse – intellect – ego story. Drop the story. Bring your attention back to the soma as a felt sense of weight, breath, volume, whatever works for you. When you feel the impulse, resist. Practice nirodha. Open back into the infinite space and the aliveness of the soma. Over time, the habits/impulses begin to lose energy because we are no longer feeding them with our attention. Our fears begin to subside as we feel the fullness that the soma provides. Our concepts and conscious choices begin to reflect a deepening sense of well being that is actually our ‘True Nature.” What a surprise! Continue for the rest of your life in this body. Be a radiant presence embracing your own very real and very human failings.

Healing, Meaning-Making and Story

Posted on July 27, 2018 by admin

In the last post, I included a link to an article on Non-dual Chinese Medicine and the Chong Mai or thrusting vessel, as there were many aspects raised by the author that intrigued me. One that struck home was his comment on the existential angst ‘fundamental to Western consciousness’. Given the state of the world these days, a certain amount of anxiety is impossible to avoid if you are paying attention. But author Michael Greenberg is referring to something more subtle, and more deeply embedded in the psyche.

Adyashanti, one of my major mentors in the field of awakening has been exploring this Western angst, as he sees it in many of his students (and probably himself earlier on) and has developed a home study course on what he is calling ‘Redemptive Love.’ Adhya gets right to the point: “Unworthiness is the pandemic of Western Culture.” I love this quote as it points to a serious barrier to truly deep awakening. Many years ago I heard of the Dalai Lama responding to a question from a Western student about low self esteem and having no idea what that was. He was puzzled !!! I’m not. I have heard parts of Adya’s course, but now need to really absorb it more deeply as I my own personal angst is demanding attention. This angst can be seen as continually re-occurring disturbances or dissonance in our bio- energy field, so we can make sense of their nature, we may be able to tease out and release many of these patterns.

A common source of this angst/unworthiness are the many unresolved issues of our childhood. Michael Greenberg, cited above, has a book on healing journeys called ‘Braving the Void’, and in the chapter entitled ‘Childhood Terrors’, he states: “While the average adult can control or mask unresolved childhood traumas, as we reach old age these mechanisms can weaken, allowing the hurt of fearful child to reappear. I believe this is why we so often see older people regressing to childhood behaviors and behaving irrationally. It makes sense then to try to come to terms with these fears at a time of life where we have the energy and will to integrate our various contradictory feelings.” My recent PTSD experiences are clearly coming from this dimension.

A more insidious example of childhood trauma is shame. Tara Brach, in her extraordinary book ‘Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of the Buddha” offers this commentary on the same Dalai Lama story I mentioned above. “While all humans feel ashamed of weakness and afraid of rejection, our Western culture is a breeding ground for the kind of shame and self-hatred the Dalai Lama could not comprehend.” This quote comes from the very first chapter, entitled ‘The Trance of Unworthiness”.

From another perspective, this angst can also be fed by a flawed story embedded in the ancestral field through the DNA field our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc. Their belief systems around religion, personal value, cultural values and parenting all impact our personal energy fields in the present moment. In Classical Chinese Medicine, the ‘jing’, one of the three treasures is the carrier of our ancestral karma and learning how to nurture the jing can lead to more healing and transformation.

This involves the epigenetic fields and cell biologist Bruce Lipton is a great source for studies and practices. Epigenetics is where we learn about how changing environments, internally and externally, changes the ways in which the genes and DNA are activated. By healing ourselves, we are also healing our lineage/ancestors ‘now’ through the epigenetic DNA fields, and our planet needs lots of healing. We can also employ active dreaming and shamanic journeying to work with the ancestral karma.

Belief systems also manifest in our movements through what we can call ‘meaning making structures. I first encountered the idea of meaning-making as a self-organizing component of our biology in “How Life Moves” by Kevin Frank and Caryn McHose where they describe four structures that underlie how we move through life, and how life moves through us. These include the physical structure of muscles, bones, connective tissue; the perceptual structure where we store patterns of attention that determine how we perceive the world, inwardly and outwardly; the co-ordinating structure where we store learned patterns of movements, small and large that the body can call upon, and use in combinations, when movement is required; and finally, the meaning making structure, where we create stories/ideas/beliefs about ‘what things mean’, and embody those meaning in patterns of movement and also inhibition, where certain movements are ‘not allowed’.

As a simple personal example of these four structures, in my ongoing sax education, the physical structures of my whole body have to engage to facilitate new subtle movements in my fingers, wrists, throat, jaws and diaphragm. The co-ordinative structures have to keep evolving when new note combinations and different fingerings are required. The perceptual structures are being challenged by my sax guru Karl to hear nuances in pitch, rhythm, note lengths and chord harmonies. These are relatively straight forward. But when my meaning making structure is dominated by the inner critic embedded in the ‘story of unworthiness’, which probably extends back generations, there is no joy or delight possible when challenged.

If my primary interpretation of a challenging situation is that ‘obviously my being is flawed or ‘I am fundamentally unworthy of being whole’, my cellular capacity to respond from its own deep intelligence is compromised. What fascinates me is that I get the absurdity of this belief system intellectually, but that understanding is not penetrating into the biology. In fact, as I dive more deeply into the cellular/biologically driven sub-conscious and unconscious in my embodied practice, more of these strange energy fields are being released into my conscious awareness. My current ‘meaning-making’ model of the flaw in the core ‘meaning-making’ structure is that I am awakening in the DNA field of my Irish Catholic ancestors (with some English pathology as well) and ancestral healing is being requested.

This idea of inherited story opens lots of portals into fun explorations. First of all, it gets us into Dan Siegel’s work on ‘narrative integration, (see The Mindful Brain), where we need a healthy and ever evolving capacity to tell our ‘self-story’ by organizing all of our personal experiences and integrating them into our behavior. Religion and spirituality, and in fact all aspects of culture are transmitted through story. My mentor Thomas Berry, along with Cosmologist Brian Swimme, co-wrote ‘The Universe Story” as a primary story for all humanity in the 21st century, orienting them to the magnificence of creation as everyone’s personal story. I’ve been studying Vedanta for almost 50 years, and Vedanta is all story based. The Bhagavad Gita, a mini story, is embedded in the 1.8 million word “Mahabharata’ one of the greatest epic stories in human history. The Katha Upanishad tells the tale of a young boy calmly confronting Lord Yama, god of death. Vedanta’s overall perspective is that this angst arises because we ‘forget’ our inherent wholeness, or ‘basic goodness’ and just need to be reminded, through teaching.

The Tao’ists believe that the human at birth is placed in the center of the creation process, providing a link between yin and yang, making them naturally connected and relevant. Like the Vedantans, the Taoist view is that our humanity is always an expression of the whole, the macrocosm, the Universe, but because we inhabit a world of constant change, we need to continually ‘re-tune’ ourselves through practice. going out of tune, experiencing imperfections, confusion and doubt are all par for the human course. We just need to learn some skillful means (upayas) to navigate our lives and fully participate in the unfolding of our soul’s journey here on Mother Earth in the early years of the 21st century. We all have a unique contribution to add to the story of our time and place. Discover it and live it fully.

Trauma, Neuroscience and the Microcosmic Orbit

Posted on July 3, 2018 by admin

The microcosmic orbit encompasses two of the eight extraordinary vessels recognized in Chinese Medicine; the yin Ren Mai or Conception Vessel, and the yang Du Mai or Governing Vessel. These two complete a balanced circuit linking both front and back, and inner and outer bodies, and also hold energy in support of the traditional twelve organ channels commonly used in acupuncture. (These include the six yin organ channels: lungs, spleen, heart, kidneys, liver, and heart protector (pericardium); and the six yang channels; large intestine, stomach, small intestine, bladder, triple heater (sanjiao) and gall bladder.)

The microcosmic orbit meditation awakens the flow of Qi in the two vessels, but can also point out blockages in the circuit. And these circuits and blockages have layers and levels. One of my first awakenings when I began exploring this was the amount of glue I felt along the back or Governing Vessel. Using the clock image below, my key areas of tension are around 2 o’clock behind my heart, and around 4 o’clock, or the region of my kidneys.

To no surprise, this tension is manifesting as an elevation of my blood pressure. And there are similar regions of tension on my front, along the Conception Vessel, between 8 and 10, up into the 5th chakra.

When my PTSD was activated in January, after the fire, the primary locus was on the front, near CV-12, the center of centers, (nine o’clock above). My yin blocked up and the yang tightened even more, preventing me from sleeping normally and doing a number on my nervous system (yang) and psyche. It took about a month, with lots of help from friends and various therapies, for my sleep pattern to settle back to some sort of equilibrium. It has been re-triggered twice since then, once in May and then again last week, and on both occasions, the initiating factor was acupuncture needling at CV-12.

PTSD activation is a very unpleasant experience filled with fear-based, chaotic energies disrupting my moment to moment experience. Fortunately, my process is mutating, the energy is finally moving, and my overall capacity to make sense of the process and hold it in open awareness is evolving. I am grateful for the Somatic Experiencing work I did years ago with Caryn McHose. This therapy, first articulated by Peter Levine, requires building strong ‘resources’, or regions of somatic strength and stability, that can anchor you during the release of the trauma. Other key principles in SE include not releasing more trauma than you can handle with your resources, and finding the support and guidance of an SE practitioner who can hold the space of open awareness and presence, help you track the sensations, and recognize that they are memories from the past that you are feeling in the present with some spaciousness.

I’ve been my own SE support this time around, which is challenging, but there is progress and it is my on-going sitting meditation practice that is my primary resource. Resting in Pure Awareness, even as the mind/body are doing their dance, requires a lot of trust, because most of the ‘time’, the practice doesn’t seem very ‘silent’. The mind field is a busy place. But the silence is ever -present, independent of what is arising, and this trust/faith that you are being held by the Divine, called shraddha by Patanjali (sutra I-20), is your most important strong resource. As a meditator, this begins as a ‘non-judgmental witnessing consciousness’

As Swami Dayananda taught me years ago, our moment to moment experience, observed formally in meditation, has two components. The first is Awareness, aka Pure Awareness, Purusha, Ground of Being, Luminous Emptiness, Stillness, or Witnessing, etc. The second is ‘What is arising in Awareness’. This includes all the transitory phenomena of sensation, perception, action and thought, or what we call ‘reality’. If we can sustain some dimension of the witnessing, then what arises doesn’t fully take over the mind field, but can be held and examined by the intelligence, known as buddhi in Sanskrit.

‘What arises’ has layers and levels and this is where the suffering and/or liberation takes place. Awareness is always free and unbounded. The first level of ‘what is arising’ is pure sensation, a triggering of the sensory nervous system by an impulse of energy. At the reflexive level of the nervous system, this sensation may immediately trigger an an action, as when a doctor taps your knee to check on your ‘mono-synaptic’ response. The knee-jerk tells the doctor your spinal nerves are working.

A fun piece of trivia I’ve retained from my MIT biology days is that frogs have a neuron in the retina that only fires when a black dot moves horizontally across the visual field. If triggered, a muscle at the root of the tongue fires and the tongue extends out to ‘capture’ the dot. No interpretation or deliberation is required. More primitive creatures have mostly reflexive nervous systems. Not a lot of thinking or analyzing goes on in the lower brain.

As evolution expanded the brain, a new type of brain cell, the inter-neuron, appeared, allowing the possibility of pausing, deliberating and/or analyzing the sensation before acting. This allows learning, and more and more nuanced responses to take place. Humans have lots of inter-neurons, and this scientific reality is what allows us to get lost inside our own heads. Our attention is drawn to the various loops of non-stop thoughts, beliefs and confusion flowing through neurons not directly connected to our moment to moment experience and this inner dialogue become our day-to day reality. This is the monkey-mind noticed by mediators. What is actually arising moment to moment is totally missed. When the PTSD kicks in, the mind reels in desperate attempts to escape, and the practice is to just notice the actual sensations, in the moment, however, wherever. The body wants to process and return to balance, but staying present to its information allows the body to reveal its innate intelligence

Any mindfulness practice will help develop the capacity to stay present so matter what by directing the attention to the sensations of the body as they arise, before interpretation kicks in. B. K. S. Iyengar did his best to teach me this. His constant lesson to me: Stop thinking about what was supposed to be happening in a yoga pose, or how it felt yesterday. Start actually feeling the sensations and tracking them and let them dictate the action of the pose. That did not happen over night for me! (A full articulation of his teaching on this is included in the 2 part ‘Samyama in Asana’ posting. Part1 and Part 2.)

Our use of the micro-cosmic orbit is a great way to organize and train our attentional field to lock into the flow of energy (qi or prana) and track it in and through regions of the human energy field. This practice builds stability of the mind (abhyassa) and frees up the organic field to improve not only health, but spiritual sensitivity through cosmic resonance with the life forms and energy field of Mother Earth and the celestial realms of the sun moon, stars and galaxies. To the Taoists, the micro-cosmic field is an immediate and conscious expression of the macro-cosmic field including all layers and levels of creation.

What other resources can we find within the micro-cosmic orbit? In previous posts we have explored the whole circuit, with the lower dantien as the root of our practice. We want to continue to deepen the connection to the lower dantien by breathing with the 4 points on the diagram below, CV-1, GV-4, CV-12 and CV-6, as if this is a small circle, and then expand into a dynamic sphere. Feel your tail and lower limbs being embraced by this to strengthen the grounding. You can do this as a meditation or breathing practice, or even add it to any asana you may be exploring. We are working with 3 dimensional volumes here!

Next, join the lower dantien with the middle dantien in your breathing practice. You can do this in two sections like this: inhale lower 1-2-3, upper 4-5; exhale lower 1-2-3, upper 4-5. Feel the diaphragm softening as it is supported above and below. Try other combinations until you find something that feels right for you. Upper dantien stays quiet, like in any breathing practice.

A more challenging, but fascinating option is to have three sections/parts, like Viloma Pranayama. Section 1 is the lower burner, or the bottom 2/3rds of the lower dantien; section 2 is the middle burner which is the liver/stomach/spleen/pancreas, or the abdominal organs inside the lower ribs. Section three is the area of the chest above the diaphragm, heart and lungs etc. Keep the primary in the lower. Inhale lower 1-2-3, pause middle 4-5, pause upper 6; exhale lower 1-2-3, pause, middle 4-5, pause upper 6. Or something like that. Like the shape of a snowman, only no head, three torso sections.

Working in Segments:
Another option is to use the circuit to look more closely at various segments or arcs to see the where obstructions manifest in our embodied energy field. If we imagine the circle as a clock face, we can use the numbers to define some of these regions. Looking from the left side as above, 9 is the front and 3, its complement at the back, passing right through the third chakra, or more specifically, CV-12, the ‘center of centers’ directly connecting with the middle burner. What has worked best for me is to by-pass CV-12. When I can link GV-9 to GV-4 and GV-1 ( not shown but at the tip of the coccyx) and through to CV-1, my back softens and opens somewhat. As a down the back inhalation, I can feel the kidneys grasping the qi as GV-4 and GV-9 work together to ground the breath at the root.

Similarly, if I can link CV-17 with CV-6 and CV-1 in a down the front action and link this to GV-1, I can feel a stabilizing of my front body to help support the softening back body. This ‘abdominal tone’ that arises from this circuit gives a presence to your sitting posture that is yin (internal and front body) which helps allow the witness to rest in stillness. Too much use of the back muscles keeps a yang inner state, a bit less conducive to quietness.

And please add any and all of these suggestions, plus your own that arise when you practice, to any pose, any time, when on the mat, sitting at your computer typing, in your car, walking about. Make it part of your moment to moment awareness. This is the neuro-plasticity that really is the core of the practice we do as awakening humans embedded in the cultural, relational fields. We can change how are brains are wired and this changes the field of the whole, as we are the field.

And, a question for all to ponder, How can we continue to speak-out and protest the stupidity, ignorance and violence being perpetuated by our government and segments of society without demonizing anyone??? This is no simple answer to this, but we have to use our intelligence and spiritual insight to find other options. The demonization of others is the primary problem of our times and the cause of all the suffering. We have political leadership that uses this ‘demonization of others’ to rally its base. As long as ‘liberals’ get sucked into the same insanity by ‘demonizing the demonizers’, there is zero chance of moving into a more progressive society. The first principle of Taoism, and Buddhism, and Vedanta is wholeness. There is no other;ther is only us. And we, the collective are seriously out of balance. The wisdom of the body knows this, and that is why embodied spiritual practice is so crucial to our times.

Keep practicing !!!!!