Note: For the complete lessons, with additions, see the AYP Easy Lessons for Ecstatic Living Books.

Lesson 207 - Q&A – Left or right side imbalances

From: Yogani
Date: Sun Jun 6, 2004 10:48pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"


Q: Three weeks ago I had an intuitive flash while meditating. I was in the attic of a very large and luxurious house. I had been cleaning this house from top to bottom until it was immaculately clean. It sparkled! It was perfect. Then when I reached the attic I found a door. When I opened the door I discovered that there was an entire wing of the house that I had not know about. It was in horrible disarray. Everything was covered with an inch of dust. Wood rot, water damage, mildew, broken windows... It was bad! I just wanted to close the door and forget what I had just seen.

The house is me and the attic in my third eye. At that moment I realized that the right side of my body is very energetically strong but my left side is thin, weak and blocked. I was floored!!! The magnitude of this was like looking in the mirror for the first time and realizing that I have been walking around for the past 30 years with an elephant strapped to my back! How could I have missed this? For the next few days I felt as if I was two different people joined together at the center of my body.

With effort I have been able to direct energy to the left side of my body, at first with great physical pain on the left side of my third eye. I can tell that this balance from right to left is going to take some time.

What does this indicate?


A: The obstructions in the nervous system can take nearly any form and sometimes can be skewed to the left or right side of the body. It is difficult to know how it got that way, but yoga practices can gradually dissolve it all at its source, and bring us back into balance. The fact that you are seeing these things more clearly now is an indicator of purification going on from your practices, particularly in the third eye. The thing to do is continue with your practices as you have been doing them and let the process carry forward naturally.

Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to try and direct the purification process in a specific direction outside the third eye to root spinal nerve, or the well-rounded (global) effects of deep meditation and samyama. We just can't know intellectually what the natural order of purification will be, whereas, inner silence and our ecstatic energies will find the purification channels of least resistance. How the purification happens will depend on so many karmic factors unique to each person. It can all be taken care of in a balanced way by eliciting the natural processes of purification from within with our advanced yoga practices.

If we think we have an imbalance on the left side and focus attention on fixing that, we could cause more imbalances. Better to use meditation, spinal breathing, mudras and bandhas, yoni mudra, spinal bastrika, chin pump, and so on. All these work up and down the central nerve and will not lead to left or right side imbalances, which can be destabilizing. If you have a left or right side imbalance, the best way to resolve it is to do practices in the middle. That is the focus in the lessons. If you go the middle way with spinal breathing, meditation, and the other practices, you will find increasing balance from top to bottom and from left to right. The spinal nerve (sushumna) between the third eye and root is the master key. All is balanced by purifying that.

The practices that have brought you to this level of seeing are the same ones that can safely clear out the obstructions that are becoming more visible.

Remember the guideline on visions – if we see something, we do not try and push it out or become overly attached to it by engaging in it excessively. We just easily go back to the practice we are doing and continue the purification process.

By staying with a twice-daily routine of advanced yoga practices, balanced with an active life in line with our interests, we will be moving steadily toward enlightenment.

The guru is in you.

Note: For detailed instructions on building a balanced daily practice routine with self-pacing, see the Eight Limbs of Yoga Book.

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