The Practice
THE BASICS
What is the chakra system?
Inside everyone is a system of energy centers called chakras. These centers are connected with all the key aspects of our lives—thought, emotion, communication, material reality, and sexual energy. This internal system of “spiritual muscles” is as much a part of our makeup as the digestive system. For this reason, the body-mind connection can be strengthened, healed, and cultivated with yogic breath practices.
The chakra system contains the energetic imprint of all our earthly experience. We're birthed into the world with these energy centers open, receptive, loving, and vitally connected to spirit. During our infancy the tensions of worldly life begin to accumulate, shutting down the chakra system, depleting or misdirecting our primal life energies in an unbalanced way. This depletion can impair a person’s ability to process mental and emotional tension, which can lead to chronic anxiety, creative inertia, and physical ailment. Unaddressed, the residual imprints of emotions, memories, and thought forms can keep us trapped in past traumas and behaviors.
The chakra system is also a person’s potential lifeline to advanced consciousness. It is our natural, inborn "wiring" designed to receive and process cosmic energy. It's the system that was recognized centuries ago by ancient doctors, mystics, and spiritual practitioners in many cultures, each of which have their own unique names and practices for cultivating primal life force energy.
What is Kundalini?
Kundalini is the primal life force energy that permeates every living thing. As a rule, most healthy babies are born brimming with this energy. As the essence of life energy, Kundalini remains active to some degree in everyone. Still, as soon as we enter the world the stressors and conditioning of earthly life begin eroding the chakra system's generative flow. Without training, its full potential remains dormant until consciously cultivated with some form of breathing practice.
In rare cases, spontaneous mystical experiences can trigger an intense Kundalini awakening. When the Kundalini force is ignited within a human being, it can jump-start the process of a deep spiritual awakening. However, this energy can easily dissipate unless it is harnessed into a consistent formal discipline, transmitted by an ethical and caring teacher who has developed an in-depth understanding of this powerful, naturally-occurring dimension of existence. Over many centuries, several traditions have evolved to develop the chakra system through breath— yoga asana, nasal pranayama, Qi Gong, and various martial and healing arts. Kundalini Mahayoga is within the panoply of such practices.
What is Kundalini Mahayoga?
Kundalini Mahayoga is a unique open-eyed meditation practice; its main breathing exercise opens the chakra system and awakens the Kundalini force within the spine. This practice also activates a direct exchange of energy between teacher and student—called shaktipat in classical yogic traditions. Mahayoga shaktipat is experienced differently by each person, but is commonly felt as a subtle charge that helps the student to focus and cultivate their own consistent energy flow within. This flow effectively recycles emotional, mental, physical and psychic blocks into an evolving holistic awareness. Over time, the practice effectively quiets the mind, opens the heart, and generates a deepening sense of balance, insight, and compassion. Properly taught and conscientiously used, Kundalini Mayahoga galvanizes the chakra system’s function as a powerful instrument of self-transformation.
The principal philosophy of this work is that every life situation embodies a person’s potential for inner growth. We all want and need to grow. We all have a vast potential to be creatively fulfilled through conscious spiritual development. When the Kundalini force is active inside a person, his or her creative resources can be tapped at ever-deepening levels of experience. This touches everything in life with awareness, from the smallest action to the most complex undertaking.
Breath is the exquisite tool of transformation. It penetrates layers of the ego’s resistance to pure consciousness, and frees a person’s natural capacity for deeper spiritual awareness in the moments of daily life. Creative use of the breath cuts through blocked strata of fear, trauma, rage, and loneliness, and helps a person to reconnect with her or his natural inner sense of grace, belonging, and wellbeing. By taking in spiritual nourishment through the breath, it’s possible to integrate the subtle, and often divided elements, within the Self and directly experience the meaning of yoga—the union of opposites within the Self.
