The newborn enters the world separate from the mother. It exhales, and then inhales a first breath. Breathing begins with an exhalation and the last breath at death is an inhalation. With that first breath cycle, the new being draws life force into the body as an individual for the first time. This is the moment of the beginning of life. The spirit enters the body. Before the now sentient being was a complex growth within the mother’s body. At the moment of life, with that first breath cycle, the circulation of blood in the infant’s body reverses direction. The heart pumps in the opposite direction and the blood that was being pushed through the veins out through the circulatory system is pushed through the arteries and returns to the heart through the veins. A soul has entered the little body, having picked the perfect set of parents, in the perfect set of circumstances, to give it an opportunity to experience what’s necessary for this cycle of spiritual growth. Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus — page 60.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
MEDITATION II
The natural result of the meditation suggested with this teaching is that the total being comes into a healthy balance and obstructions to the flow of life force energy are cleared. As a result, the body is able to correct irregularities such as excess weight, as it is no longer obstructed from its optimum expression.
weight loss through yoga
When this happens, the natural result is spiritual growth. There are no distinct borders where the body ends and the mind starts, the mind ends and the spirit begins. For the approach to work, it must be holistic, working at all levels at the same time.
PARALLEL UNIVERSE STUDY
The Universe (capitalized to signify the greater Multiverse, small case for our universe) can be imagined being created as the result of a just prior to creation of our universe event, an implosion. The resulting reaction, the Big Bang, has things moving outward. Based on observation, Alan Guth, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposes a parallel universe theory called the Inflationary Theory of Cosmology. Professor Guth envisions that when the universe began, rather than things being pulled together by gravity, things were pulled apart by a kind of anti-gravity. As this force weakened, this reverse gravity that created a “false vacuum” (causing constant expansion) collapsed just before the Big Bang. Decay formed the particles which began our universe—the Universe is much bigger and our little universe is a bubble created by this collapse. Innumerable bubbles form the Universe, each a little universe.
Could these universes all have the same law of physics and the same properties because of their common origin, or are their numbers so vast, every possible combination of principles? Or both? This allows for parallel universes with the possibility a person can exist at the same time in one or more places. Options are virtually limitless in a Multiverse.
Quantum Jumping:
The ability to move from one universe to another is done through thought transference. To change location (where you are in the Universe) you merely need to change your thought pattern or frequencies.
ARTICLE INTERVIEWING THE AUTHOR — JAMES DONAVON BOTHELL
DON BOTHELL — INTERVIEWED BY FRAN GALLO
YOGA MEDITATION III
Awareness is amplified. Meditation allows us to bathe in the growing awareness. It allows us to relax enough to feel the body, to
yoga meditation — weight loss through yoga
observe the workings of the mind, and be aware of the increasing joy immersing our spirit. The opportunity to meditate should be anticipated with gladness. It is a chance to place everything in proper perspective. Not only is the chatter of the mind stilled, the issues which capture your attention are appreciated for their real significance. It is like reshuffling a deck of cards to deal yourself the perfect hand.
YOGA AND BOUNDLESS EXPRESSION
Your yoga practice reveals the aura permeating this highest level of chakra consciousness as an electric neon violet purple.
A violet-purple hue permeates this highest chakra
Focus on the hue, listen to the prevailing tone and bask in the Divine. Feel total love and acceptance, knowing this is a perfect universe that is so vast, with so many dimensions, that we can only begin to perceive a most minute portion. It is terribly egocentric to think somehow we, humans are the peak of evolution. In the vastness of the universe, worlds innumerable support what life forms? The diversity on this small planet is so huge, and existence is so varied and miraculous.
Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus page 158
BIKRAM YOGA
Bikram Yoga is a style of Hatha Yoga imported to the United States by Bikram Choudhury in the middle 1970’s. It is the forerunner of the ‘hot yoga’ becoming broadly popular. High heat is used to limber the muscles. Bikram Yoga is practiced in studios heated in excess of 110 degrees F.
The exact same twenty-six postures are performed in the same order, for the same length of time, each ninety minute class session; starting and closing with a breathing exercise, and finishing with ‘deadman posture.’ Instructors are taught a dialogue that is repeated almost verbatim. Mirrors are surrounding the participant, so they can observe their performance.
I will discuss some of the benefits of the practice, having participated in four to five sessions a week, while still doing more conventional Hatha practice in addition, for over a dozen years. Entering the studio, at times, your first impression is you’ve entered a too hot sauna — the heat does limber the body at a very deep level. When practicing Bikram, you should be cautious performing the same postures without the heat. You can harm yourself because of reduced flexability. Doing the same postures, in the same order, for the same duration, while under exacting instruction, it is easy to observe and appraise your performance. The postures have unique subtle differences from conventional Hatha practice, and are very effective. They are sequenced in a very logical and complementary order. The high heat causes sweating, the skin being our largest organ, this can get rid of toxins, is purifying and good for the skin.
Bikram instructors have been known to tout the very one dimensional ‘physical’ nature of the practice. “This ain’t no incense, candles, and chanting–gazing at your navel yoga.” No mention or claims of spiritually are made. Because it is yoga, and because of the nature of yoga—a Bikram practice can be very spiritual. Its demanding nature forces the participant to explore their relationship with themselves, pushing through great exertion and exhaustion. The ‘sameness’ of the session frees the mind from thought. It’s a common to experience altered states through extreme exertion, what athletes call entering a ‘zone’. Think of the altered consciousness sought by swirling dervishes. During practice you are encouraged to focus on a spot between the brows on your image reflected in the mirror. It’s easy to lose subjective awareness and meld with the field. Exerting the will to accomplish a very difficult arduous task, one moment at a time, can be very educational and gratifying. It can be possible to have a glimpse of our more than human nature.
Some aspirants can’t take the heat and a person should know some yoga and be in pretty good shape, with a well hydrated body, before attempting a class. In all the thousands of classes I participated, only once did I see an ambulance have to cart someone away. Bikram Yoga’s greatest detractor is Bikram Choudhury himself. Why his guru, who developed the sequence, chose Bikram to bring the teaching to America is interesting to speculate on. Bikram projects a public persona of arrested development at around twelve years of age. He flaunts his narcissism and materialism. His ego appears to have no consideration for the feelings of others. Maybe there is a lesson here too. We’re all human and with fault— learn to look beyond the messenger and evaluate the message on its own merits?
Feel the Heat – WALKING STICK
SEX AND YOGA
The lessons we are learning on the physical plane are the reasons for our existence on this plane. Those lessons can only be learned here. Our physical form is the utility for the necessary experiences. We are divided into gender, male and female. Sex shouldn’t be treated as a hindrance to enlightenment or spiritual wholeness, but recognized as a microcosmic expression of the macrocosmic duality that animates our universe. The relationship represented by the yin yang symbol shows the ‘one’ being made aware of its self through interaction with the ‘other’, forming the whole.
The word for sex in Sanskrit is ‘kama’, as in Kama Sutra, the classic seventh century manual on lovemaking. Kama translates as ‘love-sex together’. Sex and love are entwined in one concept. Kama is also the name of the Hindu goddess of love. The early appeal of yoga in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was imbued with sexual titillation. Generally modern followers of Hinduism in India are even more sexually repressed than most Westerners. That’s saying a lot, since many of us live in a state of frustrated sexual over-stimulation. The sacred is perverted to the carnal and our unfulfilled natural desires are subverted to marketing tools.
Sexual frustration is an expression of imbalance that the mind often attempts to correct with the intake of food. The fallacy of this is obvious when recognized. The love-sex expressed by ‘kama’, as opposed to rutting, has that most important of all elements—love. Touch, as an expression of love, is so important to our being, that infants can wither and die without it. Studies in nursing homes have discovered that even the touch of a pet can foster healthier wellbeing. We live in a wasteland of disconnection. Prakriti, everything but the divine, is always in a state of change. Through yoga, we can give positive direction to that change.
VIBRATION
The fundamental sound is ‘OM.
Everything is vibration. When you chant “OM,” your voice resonates across the universe like the ripples created when a stone is dropped into a pond. This goes on forever.
Each octave of vibration (comparable to do re mi fa so la ti do) flows out of the preceding octave and into the following one: each octave (including both the ‘do’ notes) has half the frequency of the octave above it, and twice the frequency of the octave below it. This too is a continuum, stretching beyond the limits of hearing and finally beyond the limits of measure. All is a progression along infinite scales. Frequency determines the mode of existence — the manifestation of all phenomena.
Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus page 67
YOGA AND GRACE
SEVENTH (DIMENSION) CHAKRA
Ultraviolet floods consciousness — Seventh Chakra
Yoga thinks of this seventh dimension as an alter where spiritual energy, processed up through the chakras, is offered to the Divine and accepted with unqualified love.The intensity of that acceptance, or love, further stimulates the spiritual oscillations, further refining them, causing their ascent. Imagine love so great, our concept of love does’t begin to approach it: Completeness, understanding, beauty and joy so transcendent, it surpasses our cognition.
Weight Loss Through Yoga, Jewel in the Lotus page 157
