A Little Joy Of It's Own

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A casual acquaintance with whom I have some things in common with sent me a link about yoga. Yoga is something I'd like to have in common with many more people. I'm a big fan. I practiced hatha yoga daily for decades. Then, I had an automobile accident that resulted in a ruptured disc that set my practice back for years. With the advent of a worsening of the rheumatoid arthritis that I was born with I can't do much stretching like I used to, but because of the arthritis I was never as limber as many of the people I did yoga with in the past.

I guess it might be proper to say that I practice raja yoga now more than anything physical. The Royal Yoga seems to be all about controlling one's breath. Even after the disc operation relieved me of the pain from the wreck I was limited in some physical movements. It doesn't hurt, but after the operation I just couldn't go back to where I was with hatha yoga no matter how much I stretched. Doing breath work was about all I had to respect myself with. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the Hindu form of breath work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama

It describes the general ideas about breath control that I awkwardly followed to get where I am with what I do. Formal voice lessons is also about controlling the breath, but it's basically about how to do it while singing. I had a few years of private lessons and I sang in several choirs and glee clubs. I like to sing. Singing is not only about breath control, but about where one "places" the breath as they intone the sounds. I don't strictly follow the Hindu pranayama techniques nor have I had much formal training in this regard. The soul don't care what it's called as long as the breath calls it into being.

There is one important point about what happens that negates the validity of formal training in breath work. That irrefutable point is that there is an absolutely correct way to work the breath for any and everybody who breathes. The important point is that if you find what works for you, either accidentally or on purpose, no more tutoring is necessary. When it happens for you it's practically impossible to mistake it for something else, and you know forever what to do.

You might not recognize that what you are doing when you practice breathing at first or even for a long time that the body and soul are separate, and the breath is with the soul. Mind is what you coordinate the body and soul's efforts to unite with. It's a state of being one can "fall" into. You might not recognize the ambiance of your existence has changed during the transition itself. Many times I recognize the sigh I exhale to let it be.

When I reach this state of being in which I'm fully aware that the breath is "of the soul", and that my body and soul are separate even when I'm not consciously aware of it, and my recognition of this state of being invokes mindfulness of one to the other, one of the conditions I can notice inside the state is all of what are called the chakra points are naturally doing what I trained them separately to do to get where I'm at.

I've been at this for a long time. Around fifty years. That's how it is with the self-taught. That's how it is with the self-starters. That's how it is when you're a self-made man. Clumsy as hell beside a formally-trained artist. A Grandma Moses beside a Rembrandt. Both fetch high prices from different kinds of people.

When I first got to this place of my own volition I was in my mid-twenties and lived with my first wife in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was determined to practice this technique I read about in a meditation book. The fact that I got it right away with very little effort was surprising, and then absolutely shocking. This specific incident was when I learned that in this state of being I could stop breathing completely, and thereafter stop my heart from beating also, and then, I could crank them up again.

This breathing technique that I read about in a book requested that I notice how, during my regular breathing through my nose, the incoming air felt at the very entrance to my nostrils (nares). The technique was to feel the incoming air touch just inside my nares where there is always hairs of some length and breadth to filter the incoming air, and to taste it with my sense of smell.

To do this, to sample the incoming air, to feel for it's specific temperature, to smell for ambient odors that might be airborne, to feel for how much humidity is in the air. To "see" my surroundings through my nose. Synesthesia at it finest.

How could I not realize by how much water is in the air whether or not I'm sitting in a desert or a rainforest? How could I know from the taste and feel and smell of the moisture in the air that even though my eyes are closed that the sun is shining? That's just on the inhaling portion of the breathing cycle. The air that I exhale from my lungs gets the same inspection. How better to tell about the condition my condition is in than to filter my exhales for fumes that might indicate malfeasance?

Part of this meditation exercise I read about in a book and stumbled across it's most hoped for results required me to feel the sensations produced by inhaling and exhaling through my nose. At first I was to feel how it felt to inhale and exhale around the entrance to my nostrils, and once I established a lingering sensation near the entrance to my nostrils, then I had to deliberately move that established sensation up deeper into my nares incrementally, until I was feeling for how the sensation created with my noticed breathing moved upward until I'm feeling for when the air reaches the top of my nares and turns down toward my trachea and then my lungs.
In many people this happens in near proximity to the brow chakra.

The third eye. This exercise is how one reaches for the "third eye" from the inside out. The sensation one deliberately creates by observing how the inhales and exhales possess sensory qualities as they pass through the outer entrance of the nostrils can be moved incrementally upward toward the brow chakra until the generated sensation reaches the highest point in the nares to where it then turns downward toward the lungs.

That's what you deliberately create the physical sensation for. To use it as a guide for finding the absolute sensate place where the air turns downward. Not just in a general sense, but specific for each person. Look at all the various shapes noses appear on humans. It doesn't matter if it's different one to the other. It only matters that you locate that specific spot in your own haid. Nobody can do it for you.

At this location when the breathe turns downward, either toward the lungs or toward the openings of the nostrils, to personally know that location in your own body is key to a lotta occult shit, man. I don't remember this spot from one session to the next. If it can be done, then there are humans who have done it. Each time I meditate or practice breathing I have to create it all over again. It's only real when I make it real for me.

It's an easy jump from there to the third eye. It's not real or permanent either in my opinion. It could be for someone more gifted than me. Por mio, however, it's a daily thing I have to do if I want to get the results I sit for. Many times I can just act like it's there from previous encounters and proceed as if unopposed.

The third eye is not the last stop nor the one after it. Once I get to the third eye I start using my breathing as if a bellows, and I direct my breath to drag it across a rippled area at the top of my nares. I can't describe that so well, yet, but a familiarity with that spot will reveal this very real rippled area, and I alter my breathe to flow evenly and specifically over those ripples.

This work moves the originally generated physical sensation I brought up from the entrance to my nostrils through my third eye to the top of my skull and into what's called the crown chakra. This can be very distracting to a newbie because it's rather spectacular show, but there is more work to be done.

By using the same bellows technique I just described for moving the self-generated spot of sensation from the third eye to the crown chakra it can be lifted through the skull and out of the body to it's apparent, appointed place of radiation.

Since all I'm doing when I write is to attempt to use words to describe drifting thoughts, the order in which I do that can get discombobulated. A few paragraphs ago I stated that the process I mastered to bring one chakra up to par has to evince itself in all the chakras simultaneously. To make this entry seem logical I should have started describing from the root chakra, because using the breath as a bellows to move from one chakra to the next is pretty much the sum of how it's done. It doesn't have to be done in any particular order, but all the chakras have to be doing right at the same ti-me.

If I serendipitously fall into this state of being I can go to any of the chakras and they'll each be doing their optimal stuff. I'll be breathing just right for all of them. There is a correct way for them all to be acting, and once you get to state you can easily notice that. It only takes getting the breathing right for one of them for them to all join in. The breathing and the body have their own way, and if you can lead them in over their heads and baptize by fully immersing them in the world of the soul, then the mind gets to have a little joy of it's own.
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