In yoga the breath can channel energy through the body. It’s can be a challenge to let go of thoughts and focus on the breath, I suddenly realized that Kundalini (the flow of energy itself) was a flow in itself. It’s possible to follow the flow, and feel overall more calm.

My firsthand taste of this flow made me realize that for hatha yogis who have experienced energy moving through the body, Kundalini meditation may be the most accessible form of meditation there is.

Energy flow

The word kundalini refers to the energy that resides at the base of the spine and that, once awakened, rises up the spine. By focusing on the feeling that the breath creates on the inhalation and exhalation, you naturally develop a greater awareness of the flow of energy within and between your body’s energy centers. As your sensitivity to that inner flow expands, an understanding may occur.

Kundalini is carried from the base of the spine throughout the body by way of three primary nadis, or channels. These are the shushumna, which runs alongside and parallel to the spinal cord, and the ida and the pingala, which weave back and forth along the spine.

The points where these channels intersect make up the seven major chakras: The first is muladhara, the root chakra located at the base of the spine. Svadisthana, the second chakra, representing sex, is at the genitals. Manipura, the third chakra, is located two fingers below the navel. At the heart center, you’ll find the fourth chakra, anahata, and at the throat you’ll find the fifth, called visuddha. Between the eyes is the sixth chakra, known as ajna, or third eye. And finally, the sahasrara, or crown chakra, is located at the top of the head. Once you get a sense of the seven points, then you can start to connect them and feel a more continuous flow of energy moving through you.

Most of us want to live on a happy green planet. But often we act in ways that undermine our opportunity to enjoy life on this planet.

Some say that yoga teaches us to be better observers to notice the effect of our breath. With luck this may translates the planet into the ability to notice things that we didn’t think about before, like the effect of our mood on a friend or of our consumer habits on the planet.

Adi Carter used the power of observation to notice how much trash I was creating—and to create less by being mindful of what I consumed. Inspired by the actions of four fellow AcroYoga teachers, she challenged herself to collect her own trash. For three months, she  carried everything with her that I she normally throw away or recycle. Her rubbish would travel with her everywhere she went. It would function as a visual aid to educate people about sustainability issues in a fundraiser for the Cambodian Children’s Fund. Called the Mindfulness Challenge, with proceeds going to help Cambodian children living in extreme poverty in rubbish dumps. She had to think ahead about everything she bought and ate cooking meals the night before, packing them in reusable stainless steel containers.

Apparently the average Brit generates four pounds of rubbish a day. By being mindful, Adi created a fraction of that. In three months, she had less than 10 pounds of rubbish and half of that was junk mail, it fit a large shoulder bag. Adi enthused “The trash tour was a brilliant learning experience. It’s easy for trash to be out sight, out of mind’ once we throw it away. But when we are faced with the aftermath our consumption every day, we can’t help but notice how our actions affect the planet. noticed the effects on myself, too. Buying foods without packaging, like produce and bulk grains, meant that I was eating fresh foods, rich in prana (life force) and nutrients. By planning and cooking my own meals, I felt healthier and happier.”

How can you help?

To get foods minus the packaging.

shop at farmers’ markets (for fresh produce) and stores with bulk bins (for staples like flour, cereal, beans, and grains).

Bring your own plastic and canvas bags.

Call catalog companies and ask to be taken off their mailing lists.

Pay your bills electronically instead of using paper.

Avoid single-use paper products, Substitute hand towels for paper towels, hankies for tissues, cloth napkins for paper.

Carry your own stain- less steel or glass water bottle. Carry your food in stainless steel containers.

What are Chakras?

Inside every human being there is a network of nerves and sensory organs that interprets the outside physical world. At the same time, within us resides a subtle system of channels (nadis) and centers of energy (chakras) which look after our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual being.

There are seven chakras, or energy centers, in the body that become blocked by longheld tension and low self-esteem. But practicing poses that correspond to each chakra can release these blocks. Together in a central column from the crown of your head to the base of your spine, when we open the centres and align them, we allow our vital energy (also known as Ki or Prana) to flow freely.

These centres can be instrumental in our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energies - relating and working with them. The purpose of working with these energies is to integrate all aspects of your life to create a more holistic being. 

The chakra system provides a theoretical base for fine-tuning our yoga practice to suit our unique personality and circumstances. Traditionally, Indians saw the body as containing seven main chakras, arranged vertically from the base of the spine to the top of the head. Chakra is the Sanskrit word for wheel, and these "wheels" were thought of as spinning vortexes of energy.

Each chakra is associated with particular functions within the body and with specific life issues and the way we handle them, both inside ourselves and in our interactions with the world. As centers of force, chakras can be thought of as sites where we receive, absorb, and distribute life energies. Through external situations and internal habits, such as long-held physical tension and limiting self-concepts, a chakra can become either deficient or excessive—and therefore imbalanced.

These imbalances may develop temporarily with situational challenges, or they may be chronic. A chronic imbalance can come from childhood experiences, past pain or stress, and internalized cultural values. For instance, a child whose family moves every year to a different state may not learn what it’s like to feel rooted in a location, and she can grow up with a deficient first chakra.

A deficient chakra neither receives appropriate energy nor easily manifests that chakra’s energy in the world. There’s a sense of being physically and emotionally closed down in the area of a deficient chakra. Think of the slumped shoulders of someone who is depressed and lonely, their heart chakra receding into their chest. The deficient chakra needs to open.

When a chakra is excessive, it is too overloaded to operate in a healthy way and becomes a dominating force in a person’s life. Someone with an excessive fifth (throat) chakra, for example, might talk too much and be unable to listen well. If the chakra were deficient, she might experience restraint and difficulty when communicating.

Half Moon Pose

(are-dah chan-DRAHS-anna)
ardha = half
candra = moo

The moon has a symbolic significance in yoga mythology. In hatha yoga, for example, the sun and the moon represent the two energies of the body. This is a balancing asana so you might be a wee bit wobbly on your feet at first. Just remember that yoga is to be taken one day at a time.

Step by Step

Perform Utthita Trikonasana to the right side, with your left hand resting on the left hip. Inhale, bend your right knee, and slide your left foot about 6 to 12 inches forward along the floor. At the same time, reach your right hand forward, beyond the little-toe side of the right foot, at least 12 inches.

Exhale, press your right hand and right heel firmly into the floor, and straighten your right leg, simultaneously lifting the left leg parallel (or a little above parallel) to the floor. Extend actively through the left heel to keep the raised leg strong. Be careful not to lock (and so hyperextend) the standing knee: make sure the kneecap is aligned straight forward and isn’t turned inward.

Rotate your upper torso to the left, but keep the left hip moving slightly forward. Most beginners should keep the left hand on the left hip and the head in a neutral position, gazing forward.

Bear the body’s weight mostly on the standing leg. Press the lower hand lightly to the floor, using it to intelligently regulate your balance. Lift the inner ankle of the standing foot strongly upward, as if drawing energy from the floor into the standing groin. Press the sacrum and scapulas firmly against the back torso, and lengthen the coccyx toward the raised heel.

Stay in this position for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Then lower the raised leg to the floor with an exhalation, and return to Trikonasana. Then perform the pose to the left for the same length of time.

Medical science is finally validating what yogis have known for thousands of years.

People that are new to yoga often talk about finding a sense of well-being and health. Practitioners also credit yoga for alleviating back problems, arthritis, or chronic pain they once thought would limit their lives. These anecdotes are real but do they translate into quantifiable health improvements or the kind of scientific research that members of the medical world accept?

Many yoga students, trusting their own experiences, may not know or even care if the medical establishment believes in yoga as a valid therapy for specific diseases or conditions. But there are definitely practical reasons for encouraging scientific research into yoga’s benefits. Insurance companies, just beginning to honor yoga and other alternative therapies as legitimate healing practices, are more likely to embrace yoga and reimburse ailing students for its costs if research documents its effectiveness.

Still, it may take some time to develop a significant body of research, "The research is mostly being done in India, and the studies are being published in noted journals with a lot of credibility." Brandeis a board-certified gynecologist.Brandeis believes that it comes down to money; funding for research tends to go into ventures more likely to result in big profits. "Compared to a drug which can be prescribed and sold worldwide, yoga just doesn’t make money," Brandeis says. He’s optimistic, though, that as more and more people turn to alternative and complementary medicine, this situation will change; he notes that classes at one yoga centre in Los Angeles are now being covered by Blue Cross/Blue Shield. "Insurance companies are recognizing the fact that yoga is a less expensive and more efficient method of rehabilitation," he says.

With the establishment of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) in 1992, and the subsequent establishment of the OAM’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1998, government-funded research about yoga and other mind-body practices is gaining momentum. As part of the National Institutes of Health, which calls itself one of the world’s foremost biomedical research institutions, the NCCAM mandates at least some funding for research in alternative healing therapies. Though these funds don’t compare to public and private funding for conventional medicine, the existence of the OAM acknowledges the growing importance of natural and traditional methods of healing, and the roles they may play in today’s changing medical climate.

Scientists and medical doctors pursuing yoga-related research are focusing on its ability to help prevent, heal, or alleviate specific conditions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, carpal tunnel syndrome, asthma, diabetes, and symptoms of menopause, and its benefits as a technique for relieving stress and coping with chronic conditions or disabilities. In fact, the NCCAM itself, identifying yoga as a therapy worth pursuing in the research arena, says that, "During the past 80 years, health professionals in India and the West have begun to investigate the therapeutic potential of yoga. To date, thousands of research studies have been undertaken and have shown that with the practice of yoga a person can, indeed, learn to control such physiologic parameters as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory function, metabolic rate, skin resistance, brain waves, body temperature, and many other bodily functions."

Relieving stress and anxiety is, of course, hard to quantify except by noting physiological changes, which presents a challenge to researchers. And yoga’s most ephemeral benefits, such as the opening of energy channels, are even more difficult to define and evaluate in a research setting. Dr. Brandeis believes it will take more scientists with a much greater experiential knowledge of yoga to begin measuring what might be classified as energetic changes. "Probably in the future [research will] try to translate energetic effects into concrete medicine, but right now there aren’t enough practitioners with enough knowledge to generate that kind of interest," he says. James S. Gordon, M.D., director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., also sees energetic changes in yoga practitioners. "Stress relief is certainly part of it, but there’s much more to it than that," Gordon says. "I don’t think that’s the whole story." Gordon suspects that yoga asanas activate different parts of the body in ways similar to the stimulation of the body’s meridians in Chinese acupuncture.

Whether yoga is studied as a method for preventing or treating disease, as a way of coping with difficult-to-treat or chronic illnesses, or as a way of altering the energy state of the body, it’s important to remember that yoga is a way of living and not an isolated technique, say the experts. "While many doctors and patients demand proof that yoga really can help certain medical conditions, they risk overlooking yoga’s far-reaching benefits," says Elliott S. Dacher, M.D., author of Whole Healing: A Step-b\y-Step Program to Reclaim Your Power to Heal (Plume, 1997). As researchers build a body of studies and trials confirming what yoga practitioners know, it’s a positive step for the yoga world.

Deva Premal is a classically trained musician and specialises in Bhakti yoga. She grew up singing mantras in her German home. Her albums, The Essence, Love Is Space, Embrace and Dakshina have become popular in yoga studios and healing centers throughout the world. Her latest album, The Moola Mantra, features a 50 minute extended presentation of a mantra received while on a meditation retreat with Miten at the Oneness University in Chennai, India.

Her new album Mantra for Precarious Times offers a selection of seven mantras. Each mantra is chanted an entire mala. For 108 times. According to the Vedic scriptures, our bodies contain 72,000 energy channels these are called Nadis. There are 108 nadis in total.

By chanting a mantra 108 times, the energy permeates the entire body. Each track is about 7-9 minutes in length, which is short enough to try and fit into our daily lives and long enough to feel the effects of the mantra.

If any of you are interested in taking a look at this CD, then take a peek - Deva Premal Sings the Moola Mantra