Nodes, Networks and Some Breathing

Posted on August 9, 2017 by admin

Nodes or nodal points were introduced in the previous post on Indra’s Net, and, as we are all nodes in the great cosmic network, I would like to expand a bit on this crucial concept. (Network = Grid = Web) A node is an organizing center where multiple streams of energy and information converge, are processed and redistributed. LAX, the Los Angeles International Airport is a major transportation node that allows people and products to move about the planet. Facebook is a major social network node facilitating the flow of information about people, businesses and community services to anyone with access to a computer. (Except if you live in China, where you may be blocked by the government!) Each participant is also a node. The more followers you have, the larger the node.

As beings awakening to the multi layered web that is Creation, we need to know how we ourselves are embodied expressions of nested layers of nodes, as well as a primary node embedded in a social network, a planetary network and the macro-cosmic network. A healthy social grid is crucial to our own personal health as well as that of society and the planet. If we can awaken and activate the deep cellular intelligence of our inner grid, bringing forth wisdom gleaned from our evolutionary and embryological journeys and plug this into the social grid, the planetary healing can be greatly enhanced.

Now the embodied nodes linking the social grid are almost totally unconscious, and the ‘intellectual’ if I may dare use that term, social nodes are running on over drive. If all we know about the world comes through the media node of Fox News or Twitter, we will have a rather limited understanding of our historical moment. The same could be said, of course, if our only news source is NPR. Even if we can access the wisdom of many other nodes available through the social network system, it is only when this wisdom is awake and vibrating in the embodied social field, and not just floating around as ideas, that the necessary healing can begin to bubble up into the culture. And when you are actually embodying wisdom, it flows into the embodied social web, from the inside, bypassing the media driven drivel and dysfunctionality that passes for contemporary cultural exchange.

This blog is a node in the social grid, (and you have to be embodying this, as best you can to fully digest the info) and I have two amazing nodes for you to integrate into your own web of connections. The first is a ‘book as node’ and the second is the amazing array of youtube offerings from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

The health and organization of the human body is dependent upon healthy network of nodes and the Tao’ists have always had a deep appreciation and understanding of how health is an expresssion of the inter-connectedness of life and the Universe. My TCM node and shiatsu master John Hickey just turned me on to a book integrating three of my major passions in life. “The Spark in the Machine”, (terrible name… but, whatever !) by Dr. Daniel Keown, is a treasure trove for somatic exploration. He uses fascial planes and spaces between them to link the energy flows and principles of embryology, acupuncture and Chinese Medicine with some aspects of Western Medicine. And he talks about nodes!!! Here, the author is describing the primary embryological miracle.

“In order to grow, the embryo needs organization more than any other feature… In nine months the single cell will multiply until it is ten trillion cells,… approaching 1 septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible lines of communication. It’s a ridiculously large number and quite clearly impossible to manage. The body, though is no different to any intelligent and well run organization – it creates chains of command. These chains of command drastically simplify the organizational system and consists of nodes around which the body organizes itself. … In the body a node is an embryological point that controls growth, an organizing center (OC)…. as the embryo gets bigger, other OCs will have to arise … In fact the body is a teeming mass of organizing centers all cooperating and competing with each other for control of the cells of the body.”

For those coming to my workshops in the coming year, much of what we will cover will be drawing upon material from this delightful book, and here are some breathing practices to get you started.

Yin Yang Breathing

In any relaxed position, feel your breath as an expression of yin and yang, diaphragm and ribs, inhalation and exhalation, expanding and condensing, however you may feel and find this. Remember, yin and yang are never separated, always communicating, always oscillating. When healthy we know this feel this and embody this. When dis-eased, we forget, are confused, and act unconsciously, often resisting or restraining the natural inner rhythms.

As a tangible image to help with feeling this, try doing some elbow curls holding a light weight like a small book in your hand. You can flex the elbow in two ways; suddenly, or slowly and deliberately. Same with extending the elbow. When moving suddenly, the flexors and extensors (yin and yang) are not listening to each other or supporting each other. You can feel this! When moving slowly you can also feel both possibilities working together. In flexion, the triceps slowly yields in balance with the biceps slowly shortening. In extension, the biceps slowly yields in harmony with the triceps shortening. As this pattern becomes more deeply embodied, you will be able to speed up without losing the integration.

Now feel this in the ribs. As they expand on the in-breath, feel the subtle resistance that slows the action down. On the exhalation, as the ribs begin the condensing action, feel the expansion offering enough resistance to slow the action down. On every breath, feel how both actions are always present. As one waxes, the other wanes. Then a pause and the process reverses.

Blood Breathing and Qi Breathing

Blood and Qi in Chinese Medicine are ‘the yin and yang of ordinary life activity’. Ted Kaptchuk describes it thusly. ” Qi activates, blood relaxes. Qi quickens, Blood softens. Qi is tense and tight; Blood is smooth and languid. Qi embodies effort, blood is effortless. Qi is becoming, Blood is being.” Also, Blood is the Mother of the Qi, that is, it nourishes it. And Qi is the commander of the Blood, that is the Qi moves the Blood. You can and will discover the sensations, qualities and feelings described as you dive into your practice and notice.

Simple Qi Breathing: Sitting comfortably, let your inhalations fill the pelvis and abdominal areas. Feel the lower diamond region in the diagram below, CV-1, CV-6 CV-12 and GV-4 expanding in all directions. On the exhalation, release with a subtle opposite tension, so there is not a sudden collapse but a slow easy release of the breath. If you are working on grounding and rooting, imagine the exhalation traveling down through the pelvic floor and CV-1 into Mother Earth. You are strengthening the Qi in the lower energy center while helping to quiet the mind. A lot of Qi is wasted in dysfunctional mental activity taking place in the brain. In this practice, the Qi moves down to bring stability (sthira) and quietness. another option is to let the exhalation rise up to stretch the diaphragm and nourish the heart.

Blood Breathing: This practice came to me after reading about the lungs in ‘The Spark in the Machine’. Introduction: With every inhalation, the chest expands, creating a negative pressure that pulls air into the lungs from the outside. This negative pressure also pulls blood into the heart. The lungs are essentially blood and air, not much physical matter. Also, the lungs are the only organ to receive all of the output form the heart on every beat. Thus the lungs have a major role in cleansing, filtering and purifying the blood, removing small clots and bubbles in addition to the carbon dioxide and carbolic acid. In Chinese medicine, the lungs are said to transform ‘Dampness’, which is essentially an accumulation of stagnant fluid.

The Practice: (It helps to have an open flexible chest that comes from supported backbends or other yoga practices.) In any comfortable posture, relax, quiet the mind and begin to inhale by expanding the chest. Keep the spine, sense organs and brain relaxed. Open the ribs, activate the diaphragm and create some elasticity. When ready, instead of imagining the lungs filling with air, feel the lungs filling with blood, as if the lungs/chest walls are a vacuum that pulls blood from the heart into the lungs. On the exhalation, release the blood gently back to the heart and imagine it traveling out through the body.

As you get stronger/slower, feel the chest/lungs drawing the blood from the liver and kidneys straight through the heart and on into the lungs, releasing slowly and gently. During the inhalation, you can squeeze the liver like you would a sponge to help drain the mid body. Now feel the lymphatics in the whole abdominal/pelvic area being drained by the vaccuum of the lungs. Feel the whole body replenished on the out-breath by healthy vibrant Blood. Add the legs, all the way to your feet, and the arms as well. Visualize this as a single circuit. This, by the way is the Vyana Vayu in action, in yoga terminology. When you are done, relax and feel the inner glow. I have been playing with this while swimming, much easier on my snorkel (no arms) stroke than the crawl.

The second node on our amazing web of embodied wisdom comes through Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and the Body Mind Centering Community that helps produce these amazing video clips. There are many available, all small tastes from her vast video series. But each is worth a week or month or more of practice. Here is a link to one on the dynamic possibilities of the pelvic floor, using a diamond with four quadrants as an image. Take this new awareness into the breathing practices above, as well as all of your daily activities (like sitting and reading this!)

Once you find one of her youtube offerings, many more will line up. And of course, if you are deeply intrigued and have never worked with Bonnie before, buy one of the videos and get the full story. The extent of her embodied wisdom is off the charts vast and much is available through her video series.

Bonnie on the Pelvic Floor (and the perineal body as the seat of the yin)

Review: Our Foundation Practice is the Microcosmic Orbit Meditation. With focal attention, imagination, patience and perception, feel the circle of energy connecting crown and root chakras (seat of yang and seat of yin). You can trace a point moving around a circle, like a gondola seat moving around a Ferris Wheel. Or, you can move your attention from point to point, like the tip of the minute hand of a clock moving from number to number, seat of yang at 12, seat of yin at 6. Remember to explore both directions! In the beginning, you can stay down in the lower body, as in the Qi breathing practice above. No need to engage too many points at any one time. this is a life long practice and we are just beginning, so no hurry, no worries.

One thing to note in your asana practice is the volume you can feel when this expands to three dimensions.

In any pose, make sure you sustain the fullness inside and do not collapse. In a forward bend, it is easy to close down the front half of the circle. In trikonasana, the same collapse can occur on the side circle. In any part of the body you can lose the ‘girdle’ space (latitude circles). Imagine the sphere as a node and feel the other spheres around you, especially the sun and moon. This is a universal shape.

Indra’s Web and You

Posted on July 24, 2017 by admin

Indra’s Web (or Net) is a metaphorical description of the structure of the Cosmos as an interconnected web of pearls extending in all directions and dimensions, where each of the pearls is both unique, and a microcosmic expression of the whole web. The pearls, or nodal points, receive and transmit energy and information throughout the whole net, adding and offering their own unique experience, and receiving that from others. Thus the whole process is alive, growing, learning and recreating itself moment to moment.

The ‘Fireworks Galaxy” (ngc 6946) above offers an entry point for the imagination to play with this fabulous vision. This galaxy, a nodal point in the web, is one of an estimated (as of January 2017) two trillion galaxies in the ‘known universe’. Our own ‘average size’ Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to have 200 to 250 billion stars, which gives us a rough approximation of 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Don’t try to wrap your mind around that number. Rather let your mind go, so it’s free to rest in infinity.

Now, imagine that each of these stars is also a nodal point in Indra’s web, a web within a web, radiant, vibrating, linked through the web to all the other stars, sending light energy throughout the cosmos. Our sun is one of those nodal points, providing the crucial life energy for Mother Earth, but as a node in the web, it is also transmitting information from all the other stars as well.

Lets add the cells in your body, all 35,000,000,000 of them, another web within a web. By the way, 80% of these are red blood cells, by number; by weight, because they are quite small as cells go, only 4%. More nodes in the web, all vibrating, communicating with the environment and the web as a whole. If you add in the 35,000,000,000 bacterial cells inhibiting your body, you have 70 trillion vibrating nodes of cellular consciousness in your somasphere. The bacterial cells are quite small, maybe 200 grams worth, or .3% of your mass, but crucial to your happiness.

Now, imagine the atoms in your body also as nodal points in Indra’s Web. There are 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them roughly, arranged in differing patterns like the DNA molecule, each vibrating with its own unique note, creating chords with other atoms to make molecules. And also vibrating, through and throughout the web, with the fundamental pulse of the Cosmos.

So we have the web within, the web without and now we add ourselves. Each of us, as a soul being, is also a node in the great web, connected to the whole, and transmitting energy in all directions. This is one of the great realizations of a yoga practice, as Patanjali states in the Samadhi Pada:

I-40 paramaanu-parama-mahattvaanto’sya vashikaarah
Mastery (of one who has refined the mind) extends from the smallest particle to the totality of creation

Patanjali the physicist describes how the mind of one who is fully stabilized extends from the sub-atomic realms of the quantum field all the way to the galaxies and beyond. The universe is the mahat, the great mind that is the mind of the yogi.

Feel this. Imagine this. Feel this. Let the primary frequency of your energy be love and compassion, as best you can as a human being. Find new connections, new relationships, new sources of learning and growth. Be a mentor, a mentee. From the depths of your soul ask what you need for healing and go for it. Ask where you creativity wants to take you and go for it. Be patient. Find a support system and take advantage of it. Cultivate your imagination more and more.

As nodal points in Indra’s Net, we have an amazing opportunity to learn and grow by using and refining our imagination and our external and internal sensitivity. External sensitivity involves opening to the relational fields of both human interaction and Mother Nature. By stepping outside, or beyond the confines of our skin, we open to all the ways in which the universe is informing us of wholeness, love, coherence, cooperation, and the infinite challenges involved in working as a community of cosmic nodes. My internal sensitivity takes me inside my skin, into the world of Qi and blood, of breath, emotions and thought, of imagination, dreams and deep stillness, where 4 billion years of evolutionary learning have primed me to awaken to the depths of the present moment, through my cells, senses and imagination.

There is no pose that takes you there, but every pose has the possibility. There is no special place that helps awaken you, but every place is a node in the web, if we can just learn to see. This is not something that will come in the future, but is always available now, in this moment, the only moment. You are the web, you are embedded in the web, and the web is embedded in you.

Upayas for Sacred Somatic Journeying

Posted on July 12, 2017 by admin

Upaya is a lovely Sanskrit word referring to a sacred skill or practice, sacred in the sense of helping to move toward a deeper realization of the non-dual nature of Self, infinite stillness and effortless flow. When hatha yoga is an upaya, that is, not just physical exercise, or something that lays the groundwork for more ‘spiritual practices’, what eventually emerges is the realization that asana practice is profound vehicle for somatic sacred journeying. Here, the soul travels to realms of existence radically different from the every day world, expanding our sense of what is real, meeting teachers and guides on other planes, gathering clues about our own personal life adventure, and returning with gifts and lessons from these other realms to help foster the deep healing and awakening desperately needed on this planet, right now.
Patanjali offers a hint of some of the possibilities in sutra
I-40: paramaanu-parama-mahattvaanto’sya vashikaarah
Mastery (of one who has refined the mind) extends from the smallest particle to the totality of creation.

My introduction to somatic sacred journeying came in 1979 when I discovered Itzhak Bentov’s book ‘Stalking the Wild Pendulum’, an amazing exploration of science and consciousness. Bentov was a bio-medical engineer, a meditator, and, although I did not realize it at the time, a serious shaman. Bentov, who died in a plane crash in 1979, had been journeying through non-local reality for years. He discovered that he could enter the hynogogic state between waking and sleep by lying in a bath tub filled with very hot water, and first used this to help solve engineering challenges. Then other surprises came to him.

He left extensive notes which were edited and published by his wife Mirtala as “A Cosmic Book” in 1988. SWP was written ‘sort of seriously’, as Ben was trying to speak to the scientific community about meditative experiences. In “A Cosmic Book’, originally imagined as a comic book, he went ‘all in’, describing the adventures of a soul traveling through higher and higher octaves of creation, meeting devas and angels, all with an amazing lightness and sense of humor. As as we are in a kidney phase, I have to include this quote:

“Suppose we could project our consciousness into our kidney and strike up a conversation with single kidney cell. We would ask the kidney cell, “Would you tell me please, what do you do here?” The kidney cell, a very simple little fellow, will probably mumble something to the effect, “Look mister, I just work here. Why don’t you ask the boss?” We go to the boss who is the kidney itself. It is the consciousness of all the kidney cells put together. The kidney right away rattles off all the good things the kidney does for the body. It tells you how it cleans the blood of harmful substances and how it regulates the components of the blood to achieve a balance among them. It is not ashamed to throw in a bit of propaganda, just in case, saying that without the kidney we wouldn’t last very long. We are very impressed with the performance, offer our thanks for the explanation and turn to the liver. The same thing happens: the single cell turns out to be relatively ignorant, while the composite consciousness of all the cells in the liver is an intelligent being and an expert in its field.”

Many years later, today, my own inner vision is finally opening to Bentov’s insights, as my explorations in asana, Continuum and BMC, the Tao’st micro-cosmic orbit meditation, active dreaming and sacred geometry and more are converging in my practice and teachings. In order to help as many people as possible join me on these cosmic adventures, I am offering some simple upayas that can be very helpful to any and all interested in the art of somatic sacred journeying.

First: Cultivate ‘Mindfulness’ so you can fully inhabit the present moment. The past is always available, as are the many possible futures, but do not ‘get lost’ in them. There is a sense of spaciousness that arises when consciously mindful, and this spaciousness is our playground.

Second: Become very familiar with what Bonnie calls ‘cellular breathing’. Simply put, it is feeling the radial expanding and condensing of our energy, like the action of the Hoberman sphere. Feel this as your whole body breathing, and then practice bringing this image/feeling anywhere in the body you wish to explore. This is the beginning of tracking energy flow in the body. Have this available, in the background, every moment, every day. Bring it to the front when needed.

Third: Discover and embody tubularity. From a single cell, we embryologically emerge into tubes, with a head and tail, top and bottom. This gives us a very specific orientation in the human upright posture, head to the heavens, tail to the earth. To the radial cellular breathing, we now can track energy flows up and down the main axis. This can structurally include the gut body, the spinal column and the spinal canal, and energetically, the thrusting vessel/chakra line. Also, our limbs are tubes, as are blood vessels and the interiors of the long bones. Tubes everywhere. ‘Climbing the Wall’ is a great way to explore the vertical axis.

Metaphorically, the cosmic tubular being is Adhishesa, the coiled and resting cobra (yin) that can rise upward (yang). Also known as Ananta, the serpent of infinity is invoked by Patanjali in his second sutra on asana, II-47: pra-yatna shaithilyaananta sam-aa-pattibhyaam. With the release of effort and absorption in the limitless (posture is mastered).

Fourth: Learn to track the quality energy flow in your body. Begin with clearly recognizing when you are over-working, felt as a contracting/tightening, and learn to back off. In a overly yang culture, overworking is often encouraged as a ‘good’ thing, and its all about the muscles, so this is not an easy habit to overcome. You will probably find that the same muscles overwork over and over, even in different poses.

Then feel when there is collapse or dullness. As you become more sensitive, you will find much of the dullness comes from the more yin organs. (Organs have both yin and yang qualities, in varying degrees, but in general, muscles are yang and organs yin.) Both Infants and young children are very alive in their organs, and this gives their movements a lightness and effortlessness. Unfortunately, the effects of socialization gradually override their inner vibrancy and the organ energy gets lost.

Fifth: Learn to work with ‘Container and Contents’: When there is neither overworking or dullness, you have vibrancy and you will begin to feel that you have an inside and an outside, a container, and contents. Both are dynamic and alive, flexible, and yet stable. Begin to ‘snorkel’ through your ‘contents’, the inner ocean. Swim in, around and through your organs, blood vessels and whatever other surprises you may encounter. This is ‘somatic meditation’. Like the fish and kelp, also be moved by the inner currents and tides. Be as receptive as possible. Take this feeling into your explorations on a block, floating, rather than doing. This is the ‘yin’ to the more dynamic, actively swimming ‘yang’.

Sixth: recognize and play with the ‘fractal nature’ of life. A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself at all levels of existence. The sphere is the first and easiest to recognize. But container and contents is another. Within the contents of the outer container (skin maybe) there are more containers (organs), with more contents (cells, fluids), and the cells are containers that hold nucleii, mitochondria, etc.. And your home is a container that holds you, as is your community of friends, Mother Earth, The Solar System, and so on. Bentov was a real master of navigating this spectrum of being. (You have to read “A Cosmic Book”, again)

Seventh: Awaken to you dream life: Keep a journal and take notes, even if they are just fragments. Invite your dream world to come more into view. Journeying involves becoming more and more familiar with the nature of dream.

Eighth: Strengthen your imagination. This is the beginning of the micro-cosmic orbit meditation, where you imagine energy traveling in a circle and you imagine the energy traveling between various key points along the circuit. In time, there will be sensation in the energy field and tissues and you will be able to ‘feel’ the field, just as you can feel the energy between two magnets.

Also, create a sacred garden or any sort of sacred space, in the imaginal realm, and work with it. Active practice engaging this important ‘vrtti’, invoking all your senses. What can you hear? What do you want to smell and see? Add to it, modify it. Notice when it begins to take on a life of its own. Visit it often.

Another aspect of imaginal practice is shape shifting. The asana tradition includes imitating the postures of living beings, from birds and dogs, to locusts, turtles and frogs, to trees and lotuses (lotii ?). In the imaginal realm, rather than changing the shape of the structural body, allow the spirit of the being to infuse your subtle energy bodies. You can do this in any pose. I am particularly fond of bird and dolphin energy, as they are becoming my guides. It is always good to travel with guides and a support team. And you have to learn to do trees, because they are very powerful doorways to both the lower and upper realms.

This is a discipline that requires practice. Visualization is used in the Tibetan tantric tradition to ultimately discover the non-dual reality that there is no other, no outside, and all forms are of the imaginal realm, impermanent, transient, but also teeming with divine presence. We all inhabit a cosmic playground. The trick is to realize this and then do what you can to make are tiny corner of the cosmos a safe, loving and creative space for all to awaken and enjoy.