MILANO 05.06 JUNE 2010 - SECOND YMT MEETING

KUNDALINI, THE AWAKENING IS NOW

TO UNDERSTAND THE ENERGETIC DYNAMICS

TO DEVELOP A BROADER AWARENESS

TO TRANSFORM LIFE MOMENT BY MOMENT

At the second Milanese meeting, YMT – Yoga and Meditation Training – meant to deal with a mysterious and controversial subject, the kundalinī. The workshop title was, as a matter of fact, “The Paths of Kundalinī, Breathing between science, prānāyāma and doctrines of awakening”. Our guests were Swāmī Ritavān Bharati, supervisor of our biennial Master, Giuliano Boccali, professor of Indology at Università degli Studi of Milano, with his infinite love for the poetic expression of classic India, Luciano Bernardi, associated Professor at the Internal Medicine  Department at University of Pavia, explorer of the scientific boundaries of the phenomena called “breathing”, and Doctor Roberto Mola, who always applies the neuropsychiatric  experience to the comprehension of what happens when the doctrine of Yoga becomes true experience. And then there were music, sound improvisations and the amazing vocalizations by Egildo Simeone. 

The study of  kundalinī summons all these aspects of  human expression

 At first sight, it would seem a much too wide combination of competences, however the study of  kundalinī summons all these aspects of  human expression. It’s breathing most of all, because, as  Swāmī Veda Bhāratī says “the  first knowledge of kundalinī   lies  in breathing”. From this point, the research can take two different paths: yogic prānāyāma, with its techinques of control and widening of energy-prana within the breathing dynamic, or the scientific definition of a method that allows to understand deeply the potential of the “tool” breathing. Then, come poetry, music, dance, painting, and the accurate sensation of joy and raising that we can experience by observing and enjoying an artwork: those are all signals of awakening of kundalinī, because, as Swāmī Ritavān Bharati has underlined, “she is joy, she is ecstasy”. Kundalinī  is the mysterious reaction that takes place in the human nervous system and that can be quietly experienced, awakened without trauma in the stimulated knowledge that meditation rises in the heart and mind of the practitioner. YMT – Yoga and Meditation Training is born at the crossroads of different visions, therefore we thought it was important, in proposing this second meeting, to define a picture that is, at the same time, mystic and scientific, logic and intuitive, and to put a central phenomena in the human path: the realisation of the bright potential that is within us in everyday life, in the multitude of experiences that refer to a wider conscience, of ourselves and of the world (in  the things of the world, and not  against), of our advent in an awakened  shape.  

The kundalinī experience

Swāmī Ritavān  Bharati underlined the importance of “normality” and “everyday life” in the kundalinī experience: we think about it with excessive expectations, fears and fantasies. As  Swāmī Veda Bhāratī says “We hope to touch a really alive electric current, and to receive a cosmic shock”. The Himalayan Tradition proposes a quiet relationship with the kundalinī phenomena, because “the sole technique to awaken to it is consciousness”. “Go into consciousness of yourself thoroughly, make it an unitary knowledge” says again Swāmī Veda in his book about kundalinī. At the end of this article, you will find some short quotations from this book, hoping that they will help you for a good meditation and contemplation until our next residential meeting that will take place in October in Umbria, with the best experiences and the clearest visions.  

Let’s go back to  June, 5th 2010, the opening day of our workshop dedicated to kundalinī . Swāmī Ritavān Bharati  introduced the subject with a meditation based upon the observation of breathing and directed to experience of the unitary aspect of conscience, expressed by the concept of   bindu, the original point  that  marks the return of an undivided condition, in which “the force of life lives by itself in itself” (Swāmī Veda Bhāratī). The observation of how, at the end of the meditation, the very same force flows towards the exterior through the channels of senses, is a fundamental passage to understand the connections of kundalinī  energy, breathing mechanism and actions in the material world. The mental/emotional evaluation that comes before and goes with the action, its positive quality, depends by remaining in contact with that primal energetic shape that gives the breath of life to our senses, to our thoughts, to our acts. In the words of Swāmī Ritavān “whatever you do, it’s because of kundalinī , whatever happens in life is the result of kundalinī”. During  the workshop, Swāmī Ritavān proposed Yoga-nidra and meditation sessions, and an integrated practice that utilized the techniques of  hatha-yoga  (āsana, mudrā e bandha) as basis for the comprehension of ourselves on different levels of conscience (kosha). More than all, Swamiji underlined the necessity to expand consciousness “In a way to awake what is sleeping, so that the sleeping potential can manifest itself”.  On the way of this inner pilgrimage, playing a leading role in an action that is individual  par excellance, but not excluding the other (the fellow traveller seen as kalyāna-mitra, spiritual friend), we are hence invited to discover the truth about ourselves, and to realize “how much” of kundalinī  we can put into our actions, how much potential we can free once that a full, unitary consciousness has broken the knots of karma, giving back to us our destiny. To remark how important is, in the awakening process, the experience of beauty, of harmony that becomes grace and then prayer able to brighten a feeling in the heart, Swāmī Ritavān  –  inspiring himself from the example of Swāmī Veda – started from the Paradise Canto of the Divine Comedy by Dante “What could we say more about kundalinī  if not experiencing of what Dante has described so efficaciously thanks to a revelation of infinite received during a deep mystic state?” These words were introduced by the music played by Egidio Simeone, with the air of Shānti-pātha, and music would have taken us to the next meeting with Indian classical poetry.   

The aesthetic experience

Giuliano Boccali  is not just a leading indologist, an author of many scientific books or books about Indian culture: he is as well a translator, able to restore in a finely wrought Italian some of the masterpieces of Sanskrit literature, from the “Meghadūta” by Kālidāsa to the “Shataka” by Amaruka.  His conference “Classic Indian Poetry and Illumination” described the fundamental aspects of Indian aesthetic that reached in Abhinavagupta the top of an artistic and spiritual search: from the methodologies in the sense of composition to the finalities that the literary or musical work has traditionally in India, there is a parallel process that can be found between Indian art and meditation. Reaching the rasa, or “taste”, that the artist proposes to give rise in the audience, is just the announcement of a broader possibility. Professor Boccali said that “The aesthetic experience […] is able to prefigure this condition of freedom, and therefore to attract to good, to research and to pursue the  moksha  (the liberation,  ndr)”.  Between  a  poem  and  another, whose reading has been accompanied by the music of Egidio Simeone, Professor Boccali remembered us how in the state of  rasa  there is a suspension of the limits corresponding to time, space and causation. Conscience then opens to a direct and not disturbing comprehension of human feelings; as Professor said “When we read a love poem, an epic poetry or even – for Indian people – a poem about a disgusting subject, we are able to see deeply the feeling that the poem transmits, without being involved”. Indian Poetry is built on themes and subjects accepted by tradition, it’s not interested at all in the plot (the greatest Indian poetry is inspired by some episodes of the epic poems such as Mahābhārata  and Rāmāyana, whose conclusion is well-known to everyone), devoid of a concept of extemporary “inspiration”, as in the vision of western poetry, especially the romantic one, and it is a part of a large culture of  illumination that India has always protected under the umbrella of tradition, and thanks to that, it’s still valid nowadays. At the end of the last poem there was a deep and spontaneous silence, during which Professor Boccali, as we all did, closed his eyes. The Eternal manifested itself in that absence of sounds, in that “nothing” made of everything, in that zero as wide as the gilded lap that creates worlds and that, in silence, reabsorbs them.

The experience of the  āsana  as energetic shape

 During the Hatha-yoga session of the following morning, Susi Stefanini proposed a practise finalized to the experience of the  āsana  as energetic shape. This consciousness permits to modify and expand the pranic energy, creating the preamble for the full energetic awakening that takes place during the ascension of the kundalinī. The work that was proposed aimed to re-establish the balance between polarities, first at a physical level (with a special attention to the laterality of the body) and then at a more subtle level (awakening the consciousness of the energetic flow in the nādī Ida and Pingala). A particular attention has been dedicated to the stimulation of pranic energy in Manipura-chakra  through Agnisāra-dhauti and Uddīyāna-bandha. Viparīta-karanī-mudrā and Mahā-mudrā were proposed with the aim to stimulate the unification of the opposites (in Viparīta-karanī-mudrā the solar and lunar aspects are submitted to an overturning that favours the non-dispersion of prana, whereas in Mahā-mudrā the use of mudrā and bandha allows to seal energy in the central channel). In the total immobility of the meditative posture, the nādī-shodhanam practice proposed again,  through the subtle vehicle of prāna-breath,  the experience of the fusion of the solar and lunar channel in the light of Brahma–nādī, the more internal case of Sushumna and residence par excellance of the rising of kundalinī. 

Yoga breathing techniques and the possible therapeutic applications  

During the day, we had the pleasure to have as guest  Professor Luciano Bernardi, author of many studies on the functionality of the cardio-circulatory system in extreme conditions that he carried out taking part in expeditions in Himalaya and Andes. This was the chance to come to the point about the most recent researches that focus on Yoga breathing techniques and the possible therapeutic applications (for instance, the practice of diaphragmatic breathing in patients with serious heart diseases determines a remarkable improvement of the quality of life, modifying in a significant way the curves of survival). We talked about breathing related to the repetition of mantra and prayers. Professor Bernardi is a pioneer in some studies about this subject that have at-tracted the attention of European media. The Dutch TV Channel OHM has produced a moving and beautiful documentary that describes the activity of Professor Bernardi in the Icelandic institute where he works. In the documentary the story of the researcher from Pavia is woven with the one of a special woman, Mohani Heitel, who is an Indian doctor and psychotherapist who lives in Germany; she has rediscovered the therapeutic power of mantra  learnt in her childhood thanks to her father.  

A neuro-physiological point of view of the kundalinī rising

After Professor Bernardi conference, dott. Roberto Mola proposed a neuro-physiological point of view of the kundalinī rising. Starting from the description done by Ramakrishna in “The search for God” (a great flow of nervous forces that arises in the body and reaches the head), and analyzing the sensorial way of expression of this phenomena (Ramakrishna evoked different images: “ants in a row”, “jumping frog”, “zigzag snake”) Roberto Mola asked why the description of such a basic phenomena can be so  heterogeneous, and he proposed an explanation (partial, as he admitted) starting from the  neuro-physiological  perspective. Ancient symbologies connected to the image of the snake, the vision by C.G. Jung and his analysis of the Chakra system, the contributes of traditional and modern medicine, had led the conference, that started from the analysis of what happens at a marginal level in the stretching of muscular districts, with the production of spike trains that start form the neuromuscular fuses and go towards the spinal cord and the encephalon. Doctor Mola remembered that it’s necessary to support the neurophysiological aspect of the kundalinī  awakening with the full consciousness of the path that a yogin or a yogini is covering. That is to say, an existential, philosophic, eschatological and  total adherence, to give direction to a phenomena that cannot be just a physical data. 

A wider consciousness

With this, we go back to the words of Swāmī Veda Bhāratī about the necessity to promote in ourselves a wider consciousness, broad and unitary as a fundament for the  kundalinī  awakening.  

Stirred or Stilled, How would you  like your Kundalinī  served?

 From Stirred or Stilled, How would you  like your Kundalinī  served?, by Swāmī Veda Bhāratī: 

 “Kundalinī is not distant. It is an integral part of what you are”.  “You are not apart from Kundalinī; you do not have Kundalinī; you are Kundalinī”. 

 “Likewise, behind the movement of my hand  is the power of Kundalinī. Without that power, it would be a dead man’s hand”. 

 “Every  experience we  have  is  a  kundalinī  experience. This is what the tantras say: without this life force there is no experience”. 

 “Some people wonder if kundalinī is specific to human beings alone. Actually, kundalinī is the life force in all creatures. However, karmic limitations are superimposed on kundalinī which is why it does not develop into the full power of mind and prana in subhuman species, or even why it awakens in different degrees from person to person”.  

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 (Article translated into English by Raffaella Sevieri)

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Daniele Belloni and Susu Stefanini are centre leaders of Spazio Shanti, http://www.spazioshanti.com/