The Celtic calendar sets November 1(May 1 in the southern hemisphere) as the new year. They see going into the dark as the necessary first step to creation, like the child in the dark womb, the seed in the dark earth, the dark just before dawn.

This year we also shift into a new era with the ending of the Mayan long calendar on December 21 2012.

Additionally, February 10 is our shift from last year’s Water Dragon year to this year’s Black Water Snake year in the Chinese calendar.

Whenever it is that we set our sights to start transformation, we need willpower to make the start and we need commitment to continue from that start.

Manipura – the lustrous gem set in the navel centre of the human body – is our first masculine step in the ascension of the chakras.

We rise out of the receptive and feminine earth and water realms of the first and second chakras, to take action in the world.

As a word, willpower shows us this transition:

• Will comes from wish, pleasure, desire (Latin voluptas), qualities we discover in Svadisthana, the 2nd chakra meaning ‘ones’ own sweetness or abode.’
• Power comes from crutch, support or potent, and means to be able to. Willpower then is to be able to do or act on one’s own desire or pleasure.

Moving from the support and security of the first chakra, Muladhara (base/root support), into feeling and going with the flow in the second chakra, we now stand on our own two feet, and make manifest that which we desire by firing up the navel centre, Manipura.

Starting at the Navel Centre

Some say the path to wisdom begins at the navel. This is where we plugged into the source of nourishment, the mother, while being created in the womb. Once that cord was severed, we learned to breathe on our own. Eventually we also learn to feed ourselves by plugging into the right sources of energy.

Kundalini Yoga recommends doing Stretch Pose (an intense abdominal exercise) before even getting out of bed in the morning, as a way of plugging your navel centre into the universal energy bank, or Source. That may sound tough if you’re not accustomed to it, but if our plan is a larger scale Waking Up, then plugging into Source is a worthy sacrifice of comfort for awake-ness.

The word sacrifice comes from to make – faciō – holy or sacred – sacer – and is related to the words sacred and sacrum.

In the Vedas and Hindu mythology, Agni is the god of fire, sun and lightning; the acceptor of sacrifices and the messenger between humanity and the gods. In Ayurveda, agni is the digestive fire, residing in the belly.

A sacrifice is then something we do for the sake of the greater aim to which we have made a personal commitment; it’s a message sent from our present truth to our higher Truth.

In order to make the connection to that which we deem holy – in order to be whole and healthy in ourselves and with the world – we must “burn” through the waste of our lives and release ourselves from the weight of that which is no longer nutritive (literally, in the body, get rid of the shit!).

Stimulating the naval centre, from which our limbs radiate like the rays of light and heat from the sun, not only gives us strength at our core, it literally sparks the digestive fires in the belly so we can draw energy and power from the raw materials we consume, and pass on the dross.

• When this belly fire is over-activated, or rajasic, we may experience acid reflux or ulcers.
• When under-stimulated, or tamasic, we may be sluggish and develop such conditions as candidaisis or chronic fatigue.

Emotionally, fire energy that is not given an outlet turns inwards, like an ulcer chewing away at the delicate innards, and can be seen in anger, even rage, or shame. The shadow, or inadequately expressed potential of an energy centre, shadows us until we turn and face it, and then direct that energy to a healing/whole purpose.

Anger is strong energy and strong medicine – when balanced with the compassion of the heart and the right relationship of the hips.

Svadhyaya, or self-study, helps us here to look inwards; vision or sight is the sense associated with Manipura. We use clear-seeing to clarify what fires are burning us down, and re-set those fires so they help to burn up our self-destructive tendencies. This process of em-powa-ment requires commitment and discipline.

And I use powa here deliberately as a Native American Powhatan word meaning energy, power and connection that is all-encompassing. Powa relates to healing and the intensive growth of humans, other animals and the planet as a whole.

Powa-full words

It seems to me that a number of the words connected with this energy centre have gained a bad reputation in our modern exploitative society — power, control, commitment and discipline.

How many of us have experienced power over, control over, or commitment or discipline that have enslaved instead of empowered?

That last one – discipline – is one of the first words with which I developed a new relationship. I love etymology, the root source of words, and I find looking back at where the word came from helps me to reclaim and transform its meaning (snake medicine in action).

For example, inherent in discipline is disciple. Both of these words, her-story-call-y, had me cringing, but for different reasons.

Discipline irked me because my step-father insisted I develop it, and I rebelled against the idea of something I should have, remembering what my mom would often say,

“Quit should-in on yourself!”

And then disciple made me nervous because it also meant a subservience, a should, that someone else ordained. When my mom read me something about it meaning ‘to be a disciple to your higher Self,’ I was able to shift my perspective.

It became clear to me that committing to a practice and controlling or guiding my desires in order to develop discipline for the evolution of my higher self and the power/powa inherent there, was a worthy and valuable endeavour.

Instead of discipline or disciple-ship being imposed from the outside-in, it was emerging from the inside-out.

And it was ultimately only via this disciple-ship to my higher purpose/self that I was able to tap into and develop my powa.

I learned about commitment from a Capricorn partner. (Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, the god of time, commitment and responsibility).

This Capricorn was so committed to each goal he took on that you could see it in his feet which literally pointed inwards, making an arrowhead of aim towards the target he’d chosen.

When he was tired and at the end of a hike or a day or a project, he put his head down and went faster to get done sooner. He taught me how to see farther than tomorrow. Before him I couldn’t imagine ten years from now.

Sight, such as this, is the sense associated with the third chakra.

With focus in Manipura, we learn where and how we direct our sights habitually, and how to create and hold in sight both the chosen target and the present circumstances we’re working from to get us there.

For example, we have an idea, a vision, of how Triangle pose can look and yet we start in the pose with what is true for us right now. Day by day we build more strength, flexibility, familiarity and also the willingness to stay, to hold, with what is while inching towards the target image of a fuller expression of Triangle.

In this way we actualize the root meaning of the word commitment – from Latin committere, to unite, connect, combine; to bring together (from com- “together”  + mittere “to put, send“).

We are literally bringing together the past – where we’ve come from and what’s created our bodies as they are now – and the future, where we imagine ourselves to be, by embracing the present with all the fire in the belly we can muster.

As well as commitment and discipline, we use self-control to hone our powa, another word that perked my hackles up.

“Control yourself!”

I could hear some vague, adopted authority figure admonish me. But we can reclaim this word too. It seems that while control does currently mean to exert authority, check, verify, regulate, it derives from Old French conteroller - to regulate, from contrerolle duplicate register, system of checking.

So control is an accounting term that means we have a system in place to check that what is said and with what is true. I don’t have a problem with that; in fact it sounds wise. How do I check I’m still on track with mySelf? By reconnecting in the present circumstances with my intention or commitment, that was made in the past, and then having the discipline to not give up when the “going gets tough.”

Poison into Potion—Why forty days of yoga is alchemy of the soul

The dogged energy that we need to stay the course is tapas (Sanskrit for heat, glow, austerity), the heat or fire to burn through our resistances, our blocks. It’s this energy that the sprout uses to break through the surface of the earth and emerge into the wide unknown world.

We do the same when we stay in a pose so long and so true that we can literally feel the muscle burning. It’s exactly at that moment of wanting to pull out and give up that we can learn so much about ourselves if we release the tension, stay longer, breathe deeper and maybe even inch into the posture a little farther.

In this way, we can experience how commitment is not a one-time statement or intention; rather it is a consistent reiteration of the original intention, particularly through the doubt, denial and intense sensations that arise.

Stepping into the Chinese New Year of Snake, we are invited to shed skins, to release what no longer serves.

Or, as Anais Nin wrote,

“Anything I cannot transform into something marvellous, I let go.”

Which leads us into the First Nation way of understanding snake’s medicine of transmutation, or turning poison into potion. This one body we have in this life — this vehicle or home — is the container or crucible for the alchemical work of transforming raw material to energy and power, for transmuting lead to gold.

It’s vital that we strengthen this container, our body. If our systems are weakened, the long lines of our bodies are kinked, and our potential is dampened by insufficient support or connection to Source, we suffer. In order to strengthen, we face ourSelves honestly each day for forty days.

Why forty days?

Apparently the liver regenerates in forty days and not only is the liver part of the navel centre it’s also etymologically clear how important it is to our life – live-r.

It reflects to us how much we pollute ourselves or how well we live and support our systems in their inherent functions of supporting us. In the Bible, forty days were spent in fasting, praying, clearing and connecting to Spirit. Rumi writes:

“A new moon teaches gradualness and deliberation, and how one gives birth to oneself slowly. Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe. What nine months of attention does for an embryo, forty early mornings alone will do for your gradually growing wholeness.”

In Kundalini Yoga they say forty days carries us through one and a half moon cycles and through the changing moon phases we can see our own patterns unfold.

My experience of doing forty day practices and of holding the forty day sadhanas in the MYOGA Seasonal Structure for the past three years is that we start out gung-ho, charging forward for the first fifteen or twenty days and then at about day twenty or so the demons emerge — fatigue, hopelessness, illness, boredom, resistance, anger, grief — and we falter or even drop out of our commitment to practice.

This is the magic moment of transmutation. Whatever arises is the lead to be turned to gold.

If we back out, it remains lead. If we find some way to continue — it may even mean softening the intensity in order to serve the greater commitment to show up on the mat — we stay in the container with the reactive elements and watch as the pyrotechnics of our souls light up and burn through the demons, transmuting them to daemons, to dynamos.

And the true meaning of Manipura emerges as the dust settles — the lustrous gem of our Being is uncovered, polished and given place and right to shine like the sun.

So go on – I double-dog dare you! – uncover the brilliance and sturdiness that you’re truly made of! Make a Forty Day Yoga commitment.

The post From poison into potion: Why forty days of yoga is alchemy of the soul appeared first on MYOGA.

In practicing this great leap of Hanuman, we learn to engage actively and consciously, while releasing actively, consciously and bravely.  AT THE SAME TIME!

Which brings me into two chakras – Muladhara, root support and Svadisthana, one’s own sweetness or abode/home.

These two nest within one another.  They are physically very close together, as well as energetically inter-dependent.

Muladhara, first chakra, is our right to exist.

Our Right to exist?  But we exist, so why do we need to bother with our right to exist?

Let’s backtrack to the last article in the Ear2Earth series on Sahasrara, the seventh chakra. Located at the crown of the head, it seems so far away from this base existential foundation in Muladhara, located at the coccyx (tailbone).

They mirror each other, though in a psychedelic way. Through Muladhara we connect to our ancestors, the roots of our own being, rooted in our family tree.  Out of the many arises the One.

Through Sahasrara, we connect to our progeny and far-flung descendants, and we connect beyond our literal family in linear time to the family of all life in simultaneous time.

Out of the one, arises the many, which is the One.

Sahasrara is often translated as thousand-fold, meaning the lotus of (at least) a thousand petals, yet the samadhi  experiences here of bliss beyond words, beyond description, are usually of an ecstatic experience of oneness with all-that-is.

We visualize a thousand petals or more and yet experience unity – no separation between “petals”.

Muladhara is not only at the base of our energetic system, but also generally considered base in its energy.

Yet its paltry four petals all relate to types of bliss.  Most consider the Kundalini potential of uncoiling, spiraling up, and expanding out, to lie latent here at the base of the energetic body.  So contacting the earth and feeling secure in our right to be here, to be part of this unfolding life in this vehicle we call the body, Is Bliss.

Which brings me to a poem I wrote recently:

Dare 2 Dance your yoga,

your life,

your love of the earth.

Make it known,

make it sexy,

to be thrilled—no, in love with

being alive.

This is Bliss.

This is It.

The body

feeling its way around

& through

& to

Into (k)new,

in a vulnerable dance of un-do.

Despite the bliss of connecting to our roots through our body, culturally we have made the body dirty.

We have made ‘letting go’ a bad thing, or at least an embarrassing thing worthy of childish names like poo, potty, number two.

Let’s let go of the crap and recognize our shit for what it’s worth – what no longer serves us internally, but enables all sorts of things to grow if we let it go/drop it.

My father died of rectal/anal cancer. After a lifetime of holding on to stories that kept him stuck in the past, he was incapable of letting go of the shitty experiences in his life until his body forced him to. Instead of using them as manure to grow himSelf, he was literally eaten alive by his own shit.

In the last article I recommended pranayam as an effective and quick means of connecting to spirit. Prana comes in on the in-breath, especially when done consciously.

At the other end, Apana goes out when we stimulate below the diaphragm – all the digestive and excretory organs release what is no longer nutritive and what no longer serves.

Regulating your release of shit (for example, with Malasana, or squat, which translates as “shitting pose,” a posture Westerners tend to struggle with), is my recommendation for connecting to earth, the base from which we rise to heaven. Apana descends through Muladhara.

How much are you holding onto that could be re-leased – physically, energetically, metaphorically – in your life?

How much as humans on this planet could we do the same spring cleaning?

What do we no longer need that we cling to?

Muladhara is our root support, our foundation. It’s our feet, legs and tailbone, our physical roots. It’s how we ‘stand up for ourselves.’

Imbalanced, we hold tight to, and over-emphasize, material security and tend to be anal-retentive.

How does this relate to our second chakra, Svadisthana?

Svadisthana, the second chakra is the area of (pro)creation, sexuality, flow and feeling-into.

It translates to mean “one’s own sweetness or abode” which makes me think of a coconut. So much water and sweetness inside that hard shell AND all the information for it to sprout out from itself, to drop roots down and shoot shoots up and create itself anew.

Muladhara may be Chakra #1 (where our number 2’s drop from!), but it’s from Chakra #2 that our roots originate. It’s here in the pelvis, hips and sex-organs that we crack open and begin to contact the world through our downward-grounding roots and our upward-reaching stem (Manipura, the power house at the navel, our third chakra).

Sex and security are hand in glove, which we know don’t we? Muladhara and Svadisthana nestle into each other.

When we feel secure in ourselves – grounded in a sense of where we come from, how we feel now and where we’d like to go – we can let go so much more ecstatically. We can merge with the identity of another. We can marry in sexual union.

I see Svadisthana’s imbalance in traffic jams and the yoga community.

In the first instance, humans struggle to merge. Unless it’s an accident, most traffic is caused by an inability to “merge like a zip” in a seamless, non-egoic way. It’s absurd to see how determinedly humans speed ahead in their cars with an energy verging on anger, only to have to merge somewhere down the line and possibly, possibly arrive at their destination a full two minutes ahead of you.

Why, oh why, are we competing with each other? Are we not the same species?

Do we not realize that likely our only chance of survival (Muladhara) on planet earth (Muladhara) is to work together (Svadisthana)?

I’ve had a vision for 10+ years now of, essentially, a wellness mall called Powa Centre.  It’s an eco-community, a fractal of human life on earth in its full embodiment of all seven human energy centres: foundation, sensuality, empowerment, compassion, communication, vision & unity.

I know it will happen – visions like these are beyond my small mind and come from that greater pool of possibility we are all part of – yet my individual personality has been frustrated with the traffic jam of humanity incapable of merging smoothly.

But we have to clarify our individual roots, we have to establish our Muladhara, our individuality, before we can merge in bliss.

So each yoga teacher/school has to establish itself, its brand, its difference, before it can even consider sharing a roof.

In the US, Europe, even Australia, yoga has been around longer and become more of an industry. There are centres like Kripalu, Omega, Esalen where all styles converge and share their practices.

All those strands, those sutras or threads, weave back in time to a shared yogic well or re-source, just like most humans have feet, legs and tailbones. Yet, each thread is a different color, a variable expression of that source we call yoga.

Svaroopa is so different from Bikram, yet they share a root system.

If we want to merge without losing ourselves, we must individuate first  - we must establish what our own sweetness, our own abode is, first.

So second chakra comes first. Seed before roots. Sex before roots.

I’ve recently taken an activist stance on sexuality, particularly the right to freely express oneself as a woman.

In a creative (Svadisthana) gesture of expressing this through photos of my own body bared and through words, I wrote:

“Pornography is when we take inherent beauty and make it dirty. There is nothing dirty in the human body but what we throw on it.

As a woman of this world, of the earth, I crave to feel safe in my skin – to not feel that my fellow man is my predator. Heaven knows we’ve killed or caged most or all of our natural predators and yet we still don’t feel safe – particularly as women.

Men – take care of us. Love us and help us be true and naked in front of you without fear you will hurt us. This is my plea.”

Lately I’m aware of posters on Wellington streets saying:

“Are you Man enough to stop Violence towards Women?”

I’m aware of Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising, a hair-tingling reality-check on humanity’s widespread imbalance in Muladhara and Svadisthana.

This is a microcosmic picture of how we treat woman/mother/female as a species.

Look at the state of our planet, forever called Mother Earth, and thought to be feminine, receptive and life-giving by most cultures and peoples.

We’ve cut into it, burned it, denuded it, moved it around as we please.

My native origins weep at this. Algonquin people walked on the earth as though its surface were a living mother, meaning with care, tenderness and respect.

Some might snort with derision at the thought. What a waste of time, I can imagine you saying. From the perspective of people who have no word for time, that statement is equally as absurd.

By not being respectful of our elders in the past, the indigenous people who lived “uncivilized” for thousands and thousands of years with the world, and not respecting the the present reality of our world as we’ve denuded, burned and cut into it, we may have sacrificed our right to an easy future here.

As Anodea Judith says in her book, Waking the Global Heart, Humanity’s Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love, until we fall in love with the world again, we endanger our place in it.

Which brings us back to Svadisthana – sexiness, creativity, and the feeling flow of one’s own home or sweetness.

When human women feel safe to dance, to bare their breasts, and to feel openly, we will also revere the natural world and want to protect it and care for it, as though we were in love with life and with living.

We will be more capable of holding safely and of opening wide at the same time.

We will be capable of Hanumanasana, of bridging worlds in order to heal them.

Our hips, as one yoga teacher calls them, are the junk drawer of the body.

When we take this season of spring and clear out the cobwebs, dump the shit, and allow space within ourselves by eliminating the clutter, the structures then become more clear.

We can see the foundation that supports us, the walls and ceiling that protect us, and light can then enter more freely.

When we practice our yoga – our union with all that is – we can more clearly see and clear the clutter.

As we grow stronger in our ability to simultaneously open and support ourselves, we develop an ability to align instead of a determination to reach a finished alignment.

We can step out of the studio and practice our yoga any-and-every-where by being both sensitive to the flow of the changing moment as well as the support system for our individual place in it.

We realize the process is the practice and the posture is the vehicle or crucible for the process.

We merge with our Yoga, falling in love again with the world, and with ourSelves.

***

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