|
|
 |
|
| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
wgamer
India
8 Posts |
 Posted - Apr 02 2010 : 06:14:04 AM
|
| Hi, I read in a book by Swami Sivananda that persons doing kechari mudra have difficulty in relating to the world and should be done under guidance of an expert guru only. I dont exactly know what he means by that. Will it be suitable for a married person? Is there any married person here who is practising kechari? What has been your experience? Does it mean losing interest in family and work? |
|
|
Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Apr 02 2010 : 08:54:19 AM
|
Hi Wgamer,
Welcome to the AYP forums. 
Can you tell us what you practice? What is your practice routine?
Here at AYP, kechari is not done as a stand alone practice. It is done in conjunction with deep meditation, Spinal breathing pranayama and other mudras and bandhas. We have a concept of self pacing practices and grounding, so as to have a gradual opening of our nervous system through which the divine flows.
Kechari is a powerful practice for someone who has been meditating and working toward inner silence and inner energies. However, it is not something that will make people want to give up everything and become a sanyasi. In AYP... we do our practices twice a day and then go out and live our lives. This integrates the stillness and ecstasy we cultivate during our practices, with action during the day so as to become the divine flow.
So Kechari as a stand alone practice may not be very effective. When done in conjunction with meditation and pranayama, it is a powerful practice, but with a structured practice it is not something that will lead to you to getting overloaded and out of balance.
And yes, many people here, who practice kechari are married... and I don't think anyone (married or not) is planning on leaving their worldly lives... in fact as a result of practices, they are more in tune with the world around them. True karma yogis.
|
 |
|
|
wgamer
India
8 Posts |
Posted - Apr 06 2010 : 06:58:54 AM
|
| shantiji, right now i am doing spinal breathing, mahabandha and trataka (total of an hour) and wish to add kechari too. thanks for the assurance. |
|
|
|
Shanti
USA
4854 Posts |
Posted - Apr 06 2010 : 10:53:26 AM
|
Have you tried deep meditation?
In AYP trataka is practiced more as a shatkarma.
Here is Yogani's lesson on trataka:
http://www.aypsite.org/316.html
Trataka
Trataka means steady gazing. It involves fixing the gaze on an object and leaving it there for a period of time. It purifies the inner machinery of attention, which in most of us comes out through the eyes for most of our waking hours. Fixing the gaze helps to loosen the grip of external experiences on the attention.
In many traditions, trataka, or some form of it, is used as a preparation for sitting practices. In some systems of practice, it is used as a primary meditation technique – the legendary practices of candle gazing, or staring at a wall.
In the AYP system of practices, we do not stare at a candle or a wall, at least not as a primary practice. Instead, we gently train the attention in inward ways to attend to the two primary processes of spiritual transformation that occur naturally in the human nervous system.
--The cultivation of inner silence, which is consciousness itself, before it has been focused as attention on any object. This is accomplished through deep meditation, and additional methods.
--The cultivation of ecstatic conductivity, which is the dynamic energetic aspect of our nature. This is accomplished with spinal breathing pranayama, and additional methods.
Both spinal breathing pranayama and deep meditation involve the use of attention – more sophisticated forms of steady gazing, we could say. In each case the primary technique is easy favoring a procedure utilizing attention with eyes closed, similar to how we would favor the object of our gazing with eyes open in trataka. Each time we wander off, we just easily bring the attention back. We are doing this with the simple procedures of spinal breathing pranayama and deep meditation. For the predetermined times of practice, they become our object of gazing, so to speak.
It might seem like a stretch to say that spinal breathing pranayama and deep meditation are forms of trataka. In fact, they are expansions on the principle, much in the way that spinal bastrika pranayama is an expansion on the principle of kapalbhati. It is taking basic principles and incorporating them into broader methods of practices, which are simple, yet far more global in their effects.
In AYP we use a simple form of trataka to aid in the development of sambhavi mudra during our spinal breathing pranayama, where the physical position of the eyes is separated from the movement of attention up and down the spinal nerve during inhalation and exhalation (see Lesson 131). In sambhavi, the eyes are raised and centered slightly, with an imperceptible furrowing of the center brow. This raising and centering of the eyes while they are closed is done during spinal breathing, while the attention is favoring cycling up and down the spinal nerve (center of the spinal column) between root and brow during inhalation and exhalation.
It takes some practice to learn to maintain sambhavi during spinal breathing, and a simple trataka exercise can help with this. It is done by keeping the eyes open and keeping a steady gaze on an external object while tracing the spinal nerve with the attention while breathing easily. This is neither spinal breathing pranayama, nor sambhavi mudra, but a preparation for doing sambhavi during spinal breathing. A little trataka like that will go a long way toward stabilizing our inner sambhavi practice (eyes closed) while we are doing spinal breathing pranayama, and a range of other yoga practices.
So, trataka can be a preparation for other practices by revealing to us the relationship of attention and the positioning of our eyes, and helping us develop better versatility with our attention in relation to the full range of practices we are doing. The principle of trataka (the favoring of an object or yoga procedure with attention) can be found in many practices. |
|
|
|
wgamer
India
8 Posts |
Posted - Apr 09 2010 : 12:39:36 AM
|
| tnx for the info, Shantiji |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
| AYP Public Forum |
© Contributing Authors (opinions and advice belong to the respective authors) |
|
|
|
|
question about post-kechari experience
