Notes From Boston, May 2016

Posted on May 27, 2016 by admin

Yoga, the Fluid Body and the Dream World.

Basic things you should know and be noticing/practicing/exploring so they become integrated and intuitive. We are linking our deepening work in asana and breath with the shamanic/soul/dream practices. You have many lives to work on these so be patient! You are responsible for this life, so be diligent.

Yoga 1: meditation practice resting in the ever-present stillness. Any moment, every moment, any breath, every breath. Being in Nature is helpful.

Yoga 2: Stay awake! There are many layers and levels to discover and explore. Living in ‘unconscious habit’ inhibits creative openings.

Yoga 3: Fully inhabit the divine form of your human body. (See following suggestions (and previous blogs)). We use yoga, but any heart centered somatic practice will do.

Structure 1: Know your basic anatomy and alignment principles. Start from here and then ‘feel’ your way along.

Structure 2: Key references in structure for chakras:

1st: K1 (kidney 1 in chinese medicine) in feet, center of perineum, tip of coccyx, legs
2nd: Sacrum, SI joints, Sacral canal
3rd: kidneys, liver, crura of the diaphragm, spleen, stomach, T 9, 10,11,12
4th: point behind the heart,
5th: throat, thyroid, vocal cords, base of pharynx, soft palate
6th: inner ears, top of sinuses, 3rd ventricle
7th: your open crown
Come up with your own personal inner map.

Structure 3: Anatomy Trains Deep Front Line (see Kinesiology 2)

Kinesiology 1: Know the three basic axes of movement through the hips: Mammalian flexion/extension, ie forward and backbends; fish body or lateral flexion/extension ie trikonasana and friends; rotational/spiralic, ie twisting.

Kinesiology 2: Knit and stabilize your core. Use navel as primary reference and link to arms and legs. (see embryology section below.) Glutes and hamstrings must be toned and firing to integrate legs to core. See bridge pose below.

Kinesiology 3: Integrate arms into core through dog pose and variations into inversions.

Kinesiology 4: Differentiate anterior/posterior spine and ascending and descending currents with Bhoga blocks or another rounded support in bridge pose and variations.

Kinesiology 5: Find the fulcrum(s) of your action, (aka ‘continental divide”)

Energy Lines and Fields ‘on the mat’.
1. Radial expanding and condensing (hoberman sphere). this is first fractal in the energy world.
2. Feel the line as opposite radians moving to and from a center.

3. Feel that integration of 1 and 2 create a dynamic spiral field with pulsations.

Energetic fields in Life:
1. Relational Fields: Personal: Emotional fields, Physiological fields, embryological fields (see below) psychological fields, Spirit fields, Soul Fields (see”Dream Work” below)
2. Relational Fields: Human: partners, family, friends, co-workers, people you encounter during the day, Sangha fields, all of humanity. (Note: Some of the most articulate and spiritually profound work on relational fields is being done by Austrian teacher Thoman Huebl.)
3. Relational Fields Nature: Pets, other animals, plants, geography (mountains, rivers, ocean, forests etc.
4. Gravity as a Cosmic Field

Embryology 101:
1. Explore navel with imaginal umbilicus and placenta. trace the energy and feel the fields.
2. Find and explore the first emergence of the mesoderm as the fascial plane in the body dividing front from back.
3. Feel the fluidity of your being before the bones emerge. Be oceanic. Channel your inner squid. Dissolve boundaries and merge with the cosmic ocean.

More poses to use for explorations:

Bridge pose and variations: The Bhoga block, seen below, is much more effective than the traditional rectangular block shown above.

Spirals: This can be done facing sideways to the wall as well. Find the ascending and descending spirals as a balance of flexion and extension. In seated twists, balance both clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, no matter what direction the outer body is taking. Ask each chakra which way it wants to go. Feel the spirals as waves moving through the fluid body so there is no effort involved. You may be surprised at what happens.

Savasana: This is our entry point into the Imaginal World, aka Dream time. Find the state between waking and sleep and hover there. Beginners either fall asleep, or get lost in thought. Savasana is a bardo state, in between waking and deep sleep. If can learn to remain here, we can begin our explorations in the Imaginal world. This is active dreaming, which is quite different from lucid dreaming, or the dreaming we do after falling asleep.

Active Dream Explorations: In my on-line studies with Robert Moss, we are developing an ‘architecture’ of dream travel which includes suggestions and imagery that allow the deep imagination to emerge and grow. Deep imagination is the source of all creativity and in our journeying/active dreaming, we hope to unite our personal imagination with the cosmic imagination, the imagination that births the universe. In our work, we create structures, find portals and negotiate with gate-keepers as part of our imaginal journeying. It takes practice to work at this level and the more time we spend here, the easier and more familiar it becomes.

A word about the inner skeptic. We love our inner skeptic, as it plays an important role in helping us discriminate and differentiate the layers and meanings of our experiences. However, the skeptic should not be allow to interfere in the journeying, but rather surrender the floor to the imaginal, and at the end of the journey, be available for commentary. Many beginners struggle to open to the active dream world because their skeptic makes too much noise!

In Boston we explored two scenarios I have discovered in my course with Robert:
“Visiting the Library”

Lying in a comfortable position, relaxing muscles, bones and breath, drop into savasana and let the mind deepen and widen. Visualize a library. It can be one you have visited in your life, current, from childhood or college, or you can make one up. But see the building. Notice its architecture, materials, windows, and plantings. Take your time, relax and observe. When you revisit the library on future journeys, there will be some familiar sites and you can stabilize some of the basic structures.

Now see the door, observe it, open it and walk into the library. Look a round a bit. How many rooms are there? How large are they? What color are the walls? Where are the windows? When you find the front desk, you want to ask for a special book, your book, the book that has the story of your life. Once you are familiar with the layout you can go right up to the front desk. The librarian may know immediately where to send you, or may have to look it up. Walk through the library until you find the room with your book. Remember, this is the dream world, so sudden transformations, things appearing and disappearing, one library morphing into a totally different one are all part of the process. It is a very fluid layer of reality.

To find your book, you may have wander around a bit, or climb up or levitate to a top shelf to find it, or it may already be out on a table, but when you do find it, bring to a place where you can open it to a random page and see what is there for you to read. This may be the beginning of another layer of the dream where you are transported somewhere, or where you call in some help to translate or make sense of what your book is saying. Stay in the story for as long as possible. When you return to ‘waking’ consciousness, take some notes, draw pictures, reinforce the imagery. Record in your dream journal.

Visiting the Post Office

Lying in a comfortable position, relaxing muscles, bones and breath, drop into savasana and let the mind deepen and widen. Visualize a Post Office. It can be one form your home town, from a big city any where in the world, or one from your imagination. But see the building. What lets you know it is a Post Office? Notice its architecture, materials, windows, and plantings. Take your time, relax and observe. When you revisit the Post Office on future journeys, there will be some familiar sites and you can stabilize some of the basic structures.

Like the library, walk in the door and go up to the counter. You will ask for your ‘undelivered dreams’. Many dreams get sent back because they were unable to be delivered, so you may be giving a huge bin full of undelivered dreams. Take the bin to a place where you can sit and relax and pick one to open. If it is junk mail, put it aside and open another, until something of interest shows up. This begins the second stage where the now delivered dream takes you on another journey. Follow and enjoy for as long as possible. When you return to waking consciousness, take notes, draw pictures, recall the imagery. Record in your dream journal.

In future blogs, as we build the Dream time practices, I will go into more detail how to interpret our experiences. But, first and foremost, the imagery and symbolism of your dreams is unique to you, and only you can truly interpret what they are saying. This is not to say that guidance for one with experience cannot be extremely helpful. It can. And there are many archetypal images and symbols that are relatively universal. But the dream world is uniquely yours. Trust you own intuitions, and be patient.

Photos 1 – 9 courtesy of seankilmurrayphotography.com

Click on colored text for links to related pages on site or on the web.

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.

Notes From Detroit: Jan 2016 (pt 1)

Posted on February 17, 2016 by admin

Patanjali on the Energy Body:
Monitoring and Modulating the Flow of Prana in Yoga Practice

How can we learn to feel, see and act from the energy body, where the quality of the flow carries so much information? As far a bio-mechanics are concerned, specifically the action of muscles and bones, we want to, as Ken Wilbur would say, transcend and include. Working from the energy level refines the bio-mechanics because it dives into the cellular and organ support underlying the muscles and bones. We want to feel organic, in movement and stillness, not mechanical. There are three principles we can draw upon from yoga to help us find our way here.

Step 1: II – 46: sthira sukham asanam
Patanjali gives us a huge clue, one that is the foundation of all life forms, including the human. How does life balance stability with mobility? Stability without mobility is rigidity or stagnation. Mobility without stability is chaos, and although some chaotic states can be a very powerful way of shaking up stagnation, a return to some level of order is essential for life processes. When stability and mobility work as a single intelligence we have creation and the emergence and unfolding of the Universe.

What does it feel like when a body is both stable and mobile? What does it look like? Aren’t these two contradictory? As students and teachers of a somatic discipline like hatha yoga, these questions are key. We all know this intuitively, as this intelligence is already embedded in the cells, organs and blood flow, but we often forget, or get distracted from feeling directly by various thoughts, ideas and beliefs. We must learn to trust our instincts and our inner capacity to know. We must expand our capacity to perceive energy flow in the body/mind and begin to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy actions. When our organs of perception, and our intelligence are linked with the organs of action in a yoga posture or exploration, that is known as samyama, or samadhi in action.

If we watch highly skilled athletes , we can learn to see ‘sthira sukham‘ in action. This trains the eyes as well as our mirror neurons. Athletes have to be able to move, sometimes suddenly, and often in complex ways. They have to be able to change direction fluidly while tracking the world around them, and still maintain balance and control of the body. Their actions have to be integral to the changing environment that surrounds them, as well as the changing internal environment of the body. In endeavors like surfing or skiing, the body is relaxed and responsive to the flow of the wave or slope. In others, you are responding the the movement of a ball and opponents. In all of these, transitions, where one type of stability shifts to another, determine the quality of the flow. If you lack stability, you lose you balance. If you lack mobility you get stuck. Your transitions are awkward or non-existent.

The term ‘stability’ here refers to the capacity of the body/mind to retain it’s integrity while undergoing constant change. Integrity, the state of being integral, means operating as a single whole individual, even while arms and legs and torso may be required to move differently. In yoga it is the buddhi, the ‘organ’ of intelligence. (The buddhi is an ‘energy body organ’, not a physical body organ, although neurons are certainly involved.)

How does this relate to hatha yoga ?

Step 2: We add another clue from Patanjali, the gunas, discussed in the Sadhana Pada . These are the three qualities of energy know as tamas, rajas and sattva. Tamas is the tendency to remain the same, or Isaac Newton’s inertia of rest. Rajas is the tendency to keep moving, Newton’s inertia of motion, and sattva is the state of perfect balance, where movement and stability support each other, rather than conflict with each other. This the fundamental balance of the universe at all levels. When tamas is not in balance, stability becomes stagnation or dullness. When rajas is out of balance, mobility becomes instability or chaos. But when these are in balance, there is harmony. This is our goal in yoga. To facilitate harmony in mind and body, spirit and soul, movement and stillness.

The automobile is a useful metaphor for this. Tamas / stability think brake pedal. Rajas / movement think gas pedal. If we need to stop, we smoothly (sattva) release the gas and add the brake. If we need to accelerate, we smoothly release the brake and add gas. It is a dance between the two possibilities. The Taoists call this the balance of yin and yang.

In time, we begin to recognize the difference between an organic state of stability (desirable!) and rigidity (the brake is locked on and won’t let go), or stagnation (the engine is turned off and won’t respond): (undesirable!!) We begin to recognize the smooth use of both pedals, speeding up or backing off to respond the the environment (desirable!) versus the sudden starts and stops that create a jerky feeling. This is true in both movement and stillness.

Patanjali’s very first two practices, given in I-12, abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah, teaches about monitoring and modulating how we utilize our innate energies at all levels of our existence. Abhyasa is the conscious and deliberate movement of energy into actions that are desirable for health and awakening. It is continuously stabilizing our integrity as we grow and learn, enabling us to move through the next levels of the awakening without getting lost. Vairagyam involves consciously and deliberately removing or withdrawing energy from habits and patterns that are either no longer effective, or downright harmful. These practices work together as a single process of the intelligence, the buddhi. This true in all aspects of life.

Step 3: Now, to bring it into a fully embodied experience, we discover that what may appear to be opposite actions can actually be felt and experienced as a single ongoing flow. Patanjali says in II- 48, tato dvandvaanabhi-ghaatah; then the pairs of opposites resolve into wholeness. In asana, we discover this at the fulcrum or balance point between two movements or structures. Here in ardha chandrasana, the left of standing leg creates a center line of support from which the back leg extending through the foot, exactly balances the torso extending in the opposite direction. Also her left arm balances the action of the right arm, the tail balances the head etc. To come out of the pose, a major transition, she will begin by grounding a bit more of her energy through her left leg and foot (abhyasa), begin bending her knee just a bit to extend the energy forward and then from the top of the fulcrum in the pelvis balance by reaching back and down with the leg and foot while the torso moves forward and up. She can transition to trikonasana or, even more fun, a one leg tadasana with the back leg bending into the chest.

In this variation of supported bridge pose, the block provides a fulcrum to balance the weight and action of the legs with that of the torso and arms. At a more subtle level, each finger and toe can change the energy field, and then we can add kidneys, liver, bladder, heart and more as organizing centers of perception and action. Where in the organic field of the body, in the living matrix of fluid and connective tissue, is there freedom, vibrancy, aliveness, harmony, balance, bliss? Where is there dullness, unconsciousness, thickness, denseness? Where is there aggression, overacting, overly gripping the muscles? Can I move the energies around, through actions of feet, legs, kidneys, liver, arms, fingers, eyes, ears, tongue, skin, integrated through intelligence, to build more harmony (sattva) and less dullness, less aggression.

Sliding and Gliding: Option 1
In standing poses, we need to feel that we are in balance, moving in, moving out, or sustaining the pose. As in ardha chandrasana above, there is usually one leg that carries more weight and more grounding energy than the other. They may have to shift. Here is a simple way to play with this. Start on one leg with the other knee bent into the chest. Sitting into the standing leg to ground more completely, begin the extend the bent leg sideways, downward and slightly backward, with a slight internal rotation to keep the DFL (Deep Front Line) engaged. When the leg lands, balance the weight evenly between the two feet. From here you can either shift the weight back to the first leg, or shift to the landing leg and bring the original standing leg to the chest. Reverse.

Option 2: Starting from the same position, extend the leg but do not land, and bring the leg right back to position 1. The weight stays grounded through the same leg all the time. Feel elastic as the legs move.
Option 3: Same as option 2, only alternate legs, so the return leg doesn’t come back to the chest, but becomes the new grounding leg. The legs are probably quite different in their capacities to move and support you.

Refining the Articulation of the Arms: Here we play with the dvandvas, the opposite actions to further differentiate the various bones of the hands, arms and shoulders. This will help refine both action and perception throughout the area. There are many steps, but the basic action remains the same all the way through.

To start, find the tips of the fingers, the bones furthest away from the body, as they press the wall. Keep them pressing the wall as all the other bones including torso release away from the wall. From this double action, feel the first set of joints joints opening as perception, as space. Next, add the next set of phalanges. From the second joints, extend into the wall, and release all other bones away from the wall. Feel the spaces opening. 3: Third set of phalanges now join all phalanges to press the wall, all others away. 4. Add metacarpals. 5. Add first row of carpals. 6. Add second row of carpals. 7. Add radius, but not ulna! Radius and all other bones of hand to wall, ulna and all others away. 8. Add ulna, open elbow. 9. Add humerus, open shoulder joint. 10. Add scapula to open AC joint. 11. Add collar bone to open sterno-clavicular joint. 12 Add sternum to awaken ribs. 13. Add ribs to find lungs and heart. This whole process will take 10 minutes or more, especially in the beginning, when it is all new. And that is just one side! After some practice, you will be able to open all the gates more quickly.

Before you do you second side, take time to feel how different the two sides are. Notice quality as well as quantity of sensation/perception and insight. Again, before you do your second side, try dog pose and follow the connections throughout the body.

In part 2, we will look at energy from the big or cosmic perspective by exploring balance from the seven sacred directions, North, South, East and West, Above, Below and the Center.