Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
So we all know yoga is not just physical poses, and that's part
of what makes it so powerful is we're working with energy as
well. Not just putting the body in
shapes, but doing things like pranayama and meditation and
working with these sort of maps of consciousness that we get
from the chakras, the Nadi's, the koshas, the kundalini
(00:34):
energy. I'm going to dive into this
today and share some of the insights I've had from my many
years of practice and teaching and what I share in the Quiet
Mind Yoga teacher Training. And hopefully this gives you a
sense of how to work with this energies either from a beginner
level or even more advanced and some nuances of this that you
might not have heard before. So I'm Jeremy Devons, this is
(00:54):
the Yoga teacher training podcast where I share about how
to go deeper into your own yoga practice, particularly for
teachers, but also for practitioners.
So energy, anatomy, subtle body,it's kind of the same thing is
just trying to understand how totalk about the things that we
experienced beyond the poses. Because you can have a yoga
(01:15):
practice where the only pose youdo is just sitting down and
there's actually very profound transformation happening within.
And that is yoga. It's not just doing down dog and
vinyasas and chaturangas and allthis, but actually yoga is much
more, as we all know, I think ifyou're listening to this
podcast. But how do we start to
(01:36):
contextualize it? How do we start to conceptualize
it and understand it? Well, the ancient texts, the
source texts of yoga are the Vedas who punish odds, the
Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutra, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.
So I think if you go back to those texts, you'll see the
evolution of what we call modernyoga now.
(02:00):
But then especially in the Upanishads, there's a lot of
talking about the chakras, the koshas working with energy, and
it gives us what we now know. And it's a sort of new age
modern understanding of the chakras are really well known.
The koshas are not so well known.
Prana is pretty well known. The Nadi's not so well known.
But we'll talk about this today and how to work with it,
(02:20):
starting with the chakras. So you may know the seven
chakras, 7 energy centers along the spine associated with
different aspects of life, from the root chakra to the sacral
chakra, the navel, our power to the heart chakra, our love to
the throat chakra, our voice andthe 5th chakra, our Ajna chakra,
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the intuition, third eye, and then the crown chakra, our
connection to spirituality and the divine OR the crown kind of
opens up to this wisdom to receive insights and intuition.
So there's a whole world of depth within the chakras as its
own map of consciousness. You can look at pretty much
(03:03):
every area of your life just through the lens of the chakras.
Issues with security and safety,that's the root chakra.
Issues with sexuality, that's the second chakra.
Issues with willpower and boundaries, that's the third
chakra. And the second chakra is
boundaries as well. Issues with love and grief,
that's the heart chakra. Issues with your communication,
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the truth telling, that's the 5th chakra.
Issues with insight and clear thinking, that's the the third
eye, the Ajna chakra and issues with connection to spirituality,
that's the crown chakra. And we can look at it as these
can be balanced or they can be excessive or deficient.
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And a lot of ways of working with energy.
That's one of the main concepts I come back to a lot is, is this
balanced, excessive or deficient?
Is it expressing in a favorable or unfavorable way?
When I teach Vedic astrology, this is a big concept to talk
about a lot. Is it expressing in a favorable
or unfavorable way? And then it becomes very obvious
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how to work with it. So let's say if you're feeling
very insecure, unsafe, that's root chakra being deficient.
So you want to do something towards the other extreme of
creating more security and safety, which could be something
very practical like getting a home security system or learning
self-defense, or doing somethingto save financially, like saving
(04:30):
an emergency fund financially. So there's lots of very
practical ways that you can workwith these energies.
And then of course there's the more subtle ways we do in like
yoga practice. So if I'm feeling ungrounded,
the root chakra is deficient. I can do grounding practices
like for example, legs up the wall with sandbags on your feet
(04:52):
and on your hips. It's very heavy, slow grounding,
holding still for like 15 minutes.
That's one of my go TOS. If you go to most yoga studios
around any major city where teachers are driving around town
teaching at different classes, you go to the break room.
You'll probably find a yoga teacher somewhere in there doing
legs up the wall. It's kind of a funny joke among
(05:16):
my colleagues in Austin, TX whenI was teaching there and
teaching all over town, I was usually somebody in the break
room doing legs up the wall before their next class because
it's such a simple and powerful way to reset between classes.
Or let's say you're just over stimulated in the crown chakra,
the other side, the other chakraat the other end of the body.
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So maybe you're overactive and like you're taking in too much
into information. Too much in your intuition, too
much in the ethers, it can help to just kind of tune that out
and go within and not go outwardso much.
It's going to be a heart chakra and balance as well, even third
chakra. But another practice that I
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learned from one of my mentors is similar kind of situation of
like having a busy day doing a lot of stuff, needing a time to
like reset and recenter. So go into like a the studio I
taught at in Austin had a reallysmall like private room for one
to one sessions that's usually empty.
So could go in there and turn all the lights off.
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It's like a large closet, basically large enough for like
a couple of yoga mats. But I can go and just turn all
the lights off. And at first you can't see
anything. It's pitch black.
And but if you wait like 20-30 minutes, eventually you can see
very clearly in there. Your eyes adjust, your whole
energy adjusts to be like more still, more attuned to the
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environment, more sensitive to the environment, more present,
more embodied. And that's a very powerful
practice that I learned from oneof my mentors and started to do
pretty often as well. So it's sort of reset,
especially if they're just taking in so much information,
modern life, modern busy life, social media, all this stuff.
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You can kind of overwhelm the crown chakra and your connection
to your own divine inspiration and connection, the source or
universe or God or whatever the God of your understanding is.
That can be a little bit harder to access when there's so much
going on. So just slow it all down.
And usually that practice was like legs at the wall or
(07:25):
shavasana or maybe like some pigeon pose or some yin stuff.
And that kind of environment might be beneficial as well, but
just keep it really simple. So the map of the chakra is very
powerful. I was very fortunate to work
with Anadia Judith and be certified in one of her
trainings. She has great books like Wheels
of Life and Eastern Body, Western Mind.
(07:46):
I highly recommend if you want to go deeper into the world of
chakras. There's a lot there and there is
some misleading stuff and confusing stuff out there.
But I think Anadia Judith's workis excellent and she's a great
teacher. And it can come down to this of
just starting to understand eachof these energy centers and if
they're balanced, excessive or deficient and then adjust
(08:10):
accordingly to try to create more balance.
And ideally that will create more healthy functioning of that
energy center. So that healthy root shock or
you feel secure, confident, grounded, rooted, healthy second
chakra, you feel connected to your senses, healthy sense of
expressing your sexuality and your sensuality like enjoying
(08:33):
foods, taste, music, touch, sounds sense.
And the third chakra of being healthy is you have a healthy
sense of self, a healthy sense of I amness or ego and a healthy
way of having a role we play andcontribution to others and
boundaries with others and expressing your will and what is
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alive in you to sort of take action on what is alive in your
spirit. And the fourth chakra, the heart
chakra, this ability to love andreceive love in the front of the
bodies where you bring this energy outward of the chakras,
the back of the bodies where youreceive this energy.
So sometimes it's harder to receive in some of these places.
(09:18):
Like for instance, one time I was going through a financial
difficulties many years ago withone of my mentors I was working
with and well, the financial difficulties were just personal
and nothing to do with her, but I started to share about it with
her. She put her hand on my low back
just intuitively. But that is this area of like
the third and 2nd chakra. Second chakra is the water
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element, which water is a current and money is a currency.
And the third chakra is the ability to take actions.
You express yourself to sort of put your stake in the ground and
stand for something and and do something about it.
So those two energies were deficient for me at that time
and I was having difficulty withthe flow of money and with
(10:04):
expressing myself and sharing mygifts with the world and just
putting a hand there. Receiving support in the back is
where we receive just putting her hand there.
I was just like jabbering on about, you know, my fears and
securities doubts. And as soon as she just put her
hand there, I just got quiet andhad a huge emotional release.
(10:26):
Cried, felt seen, felt understood and felt relief.
And I was actually able without her even telling me what to do
and trying to give me advice, trying to fix it by just being
there for support was all I needed to make the changes that
I knew I needed to make. I didn't really need advice.
I didn't really need her to liketry to impress me with her
(10:47):
knowledge or anything like that.But I just needed somebody to be
there who could hold space. And so fortunate to have that.
And, and I hope that you can have this as well from people in
your life that can hold space and support you and wherever
you're at right now. And, and if you are feeling
deficient or imbalanced in one of these areas of life, the back
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is where you receive. So like getting massage actually
can be very therapeutic just to receive the sort of maybe you've
got a lot of tension in the backof your shoulders blocking your
expression of your voice. So receiving some healing
therapeutic touch there can helpactually unlock your voice.
Many years ago, I worked with a lawyer who's barely did any
(11:30):
movement in his entire life. He was just, you know, lawyers
have a pretty intense lifestyle often times, and very demanding
work schedule. And he did.
And he's just was finally catching up with him and he
wanted to do something about it.So after about 20 to 25 years, I
think, as a lawyer and not really doing anything to take
care of his body, he was seekingout yogurt lessons.
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So I worked with him as a private client for a while.
And when he came to me, his upper back was completely locked
up. There's like almost no movement,
no mobility there. And this is part of this thing
is like high stress positions where lawyers may need to bend
the truth sometimes or may be exposed to lies.
(12:15):
So I don't know, I don't know his anything about his career
path actually. I just saw know what I saw in
his body, but having to being ina role that, you know, maybe
lawyers are required sometimes to bend the truth or be exposed
to people who are lying. This can create a lot of tension
around the neck and shoulders. And I saw that with him and it
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did start to thaw out. But you know, to reverse 25
years of tension is not going tohappen immediately, but you can
have some pretty miraculous results within a few months for
sure. And over continuous practice,
definitely can have dramatic results.
Can't guarantee anything, but that's an example I saw of
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somebody's throat chakra being impacted on the physical level,
but it's actually both physical and energetic.
So this is a big topic I want toaddress in this episode is the
perspective from the Upanishads is that you want to address
things when they're subtle before they become gross.
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So the throat chakra on a subtlelevel is about truth
communication, right? Can't show me necessarily.
Can't like hand me a handful of truth, right?
It's a subtle concept. So to work with subtle energies,
it's more in the mind, more in the breath, more in the
(13:41):
lifestyle and the sleep and the subtle things, not as much in
the physical things, but things go from subtle to gross.
And this is what we talked aboutin the koshas.
So I want to talk about the koshas a bit here.
This is the sheaths. Kosha means sheath.
By the way, chakra means wheel. What is chakra?
(14:02):
Chakra means wheel. And it's a sort of this idea
that there's this wheel of energy at each of these energy
centers that you want to have balance, not going too fast or
too slow. OK, so moving on now to the
Kosha's kosha means sheath. So we have this physical body
with the seven chakras inside, but the kosha is now
representing the layers, kind oflike a nesting doll, where
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there's five layers from subtle to gross, gross to subtle.
So it actually can be perceived as around your body, but also
inside your body. So I'll just say that for now.
It's kind of a complex subject, but the main thing I want to
share today, if you're newer to the coaches or want to better
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understand the coaches, is just to really remember that it goes
energy moves from subtle to gross.
So if you're stressed out at work, you're going to feel just
off and you're not really going to have any physical symptoms at
first. But if this keeps happening for
days, for weeks, for years, you're going to start to have
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physical symptoms, maybe rashes,maybe dry skin, maybe, maybe
you'll start to have like tension like this lawyer did
tension in his upper back. So it goes from subtle to gross.
And you want to address it when it's subtle because that's where
you have the most ability to change it.
It because it becomes gross and physical and dense, it becomes
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more difficult to change. If you've ever experienced this
with yourself of having a reallytight muscle, really tight back
or shoulders or neck, the longeryou let that tightness persist,
the worse it gets, the harder itgets to undo it.
But if you dress it like you know you're feeling good, good,
good, and then one day you wake up with some shoulder pain and
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you address it that day and the next day you wake up and you
feel good again. So if you can address it as soon
as it arises on the physical level, it can be addressed and
maybe eliminated pretty quick. Not always, but I've experienced
this a lot. And that's the goal with working
with the koshas, is trying to address things on the subtle
level before the physical. Now there's another way of
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thinking about this that is veryrelevant for the world of yoga,
and that is that we can think ofthe koshas from the body inward.
So just forget about the subtle external part that I mentioned.
We'll just go through this layerof the kosher's where we start
with the body and then we go inward and the body is the first
layer and that's the physical layer or the anamaya kosher the
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actually translates to the food body.
So if you look at how much or how little you eat, that has a
big impact on what the physical body is.
If you eat more, you have a larger body.
If you eat less, you have a smaller body.
Now there's genetic factors of course as well, but that's a big
factor. And they say you are what you
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eat. Well, that's the anamaya kosha,
the food body or the food sheath.
The kosha means sheath Anna means it's relating to food here
Maya is an illusion. So Anna Maya, Kosha, the sort of
illusion of the food body, whichis a sheath over the true self
deep within. But yoga practice typically
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stops here just the physical body.
Can you do the pose? Are you strong?
Are you flexible? Do you look good on Instagram?
Do you look like a model physical body all good Let's
just stay there that's lots of fun great looks great.
You know, it's a lot easier thandealing with the other layers.
So a lot of yoga practitioners will just stop here, and that's
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fine. And a lot of people will think
of yoga as just this, just how flexible are you?
How strong are you? And oh, I can't do yoga because
I can't touch my toes. You know, it's all about the
physical layer. And that's the most obviously,
that's what we see. So it seems like the most real
one, but it's still Maya. It's still illusion and it's
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still a sheath for the true selfdeeper within.
So quickly say the next 4 layersof awareness here.
And I know there's a lot of information today, but again, I
go deeper in the teacher training.
I go deeper in mentorships and programs.
Ioffer and the Upanishads I think are a good resource to go
deeper into the koshas if you'd like.
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But there's a physical layer, next is the energy layer, prana
Maya kosha. Next is the mental layer, then
the wisdom layer, then the blisslayer, Ananda Maya kosha.
So I'll briefly discuss each of those four layers.
And again, if you want more on this, actually have a full
series of classes in the Quiet Mind Yoga membership at Quiet
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Mind dot Yoga. So you get a whole hour practice
which with each of these to get to embody it and understand it
on a deeper embodied level. But the physical layer, then the
energy layer, pranamaya kosha. So that's when you can just feel
something is there's a vibe. And I think a lot of people get
this, you know, but not everybody, but there's a certain
vibe. You go into a room where there's
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like a wedding reception, there's a certain vibe there
feels pretty good. Usually you go into a room where
there was just a big argument. There's a certain vibe there
feels pretty intense usually. Or let's say you sleep super
well and you wake up to the sunrise and you go on a
beautiful hike in nature. There's a certain vibe, there is
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certain energy that you're taking on.
But let's say you stay up all night partying and you mess up
your sleep and you drink much alcohol and there's a certain
vibe there that's different and noticeable.
And it's not just physical, it'senergetic as well.
And there's a certain energy to foods you eat.
If you eat celery stick, there'sa certain energy that or if you
(20:00):
eat Hershey's chocolate bar, there's a certain energy to
that. So I think, you know, if you're
listening to this, you get it, you understand it.
But in the world of yoga, it's more subtle because we're
working with awesomeness. So you go into downward facing
dog and your muscles are workingand there's a lot of awareness
of the body. But that's where it's helpful to
focus on the pranamaya kosha andso much of yoga practices.
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OK, get in the physical shape, but now notice your breath.
And when you notice your breath,you start to notice a lot more
about your general energy. Is your breath shallow because
you've been running around all day and you're stressed out?
Is your breath slow and deep because you're relaxed and
regulated in your nervous system?
The goal is not to judge or say anything is better or worse, but
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just to be aware and to be in choice around how you're
managing your energy. Sometimes it becomes sort of
unconscious and you can go too far into the extreme of being
very active and overexerting. You can also go too far in the
other direction of being too passive and running out of
breath when you're trying to walk upstairs and something like
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that. So your energy is actually lower
in this, you know, physically cardiovascular, but there's also
the energy of the prana. And prana we get through the
breath, through the food, through sunlight.
Predominantly the sun and the breath are the main sources of
prana. And This is why many yogi's can
live off very little food because they're so aware of
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their energy through the breath and through their connections in
nature. And then food is just a
solidified form of the sun essentially, you know, sunlight
meeting seeds and water and timeand soil and all this.
So but it's a way of getting thesame kind of energy from life
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force that's changing forms and that can change into the form of
the physical body, but also intothe form of the mental body.
So this is the third layer, the mental body, the the kosha, the
mono Maya Kosha. Mono is mind my illusion.
Kosha is sheath again, back to backtrack for a second, I
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apologize. Prana Maya kosha Prana is just
energy or life force Maya illusion kosha sheath.
So the energy, life force illusion, that's a sheath over
the true self. That's that's the prana Maya
Kosha, the second layer. And now we're on the third layer
of the mono Maya kosha manos mind and Maya illusion Kosha
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sheath. So this mind illusion, so we
think the mind is so real and somuch what it is.
And it's like, I know I'm right,I know you're wrong.
I know I have this idea, I know I'm this identity.
You're that identity that's all in the mind.
And if you've ever done psychedelics or holotropic
breath work or things that really push the limits of the
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physical and energetic body, that's the first two layers.
Now we can really start to work with the third layer, the mental
body, but we have to go through those first two.
There's a sequence to this, and when we get to that third layer
of the mental body, we can startto uncover and unravel the roots
of our beliefs. We can do this very slowly and
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sustainably through therapy, counseling, through self
inquiry, through meditation. These are wonderful practices.
We can do it very abruptly, intensely, and fast with things
like psychedelics or holotropic breath work.
I think it's best to do the slowstuff first and then small
intentional doses of the fast stuff in a controlled,
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supervised environment, intentional environment, because
it can be very intense and people can lose their mind in a
bad way if they go too far in this.
So you want to be careful with this realm of working with a
mental body and people could maybe take on beliefs just
throughout life. You maybe take on conditioning
and beliefs from religion, family, society that becomes so
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ingrained that you don't even question them, and it just
becomes the way it is. But it is still Maya, it's still
illusion. It's still something conditioned
and something to become aware ofand have choice over how to
interact with. And that choice now becomes what
do you want to focus your mind on?
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The mind needs a job. If it doesn't have a job, it's
going to get hooked into drama, reactivity, and all sorts of
sort of dysfunctional or harmfulpatterns or addictions or
obsessions. Basically modern technology and
social media is brilliantly, perfectly crafted to try to get
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as much of the mind as possible to just hook your mind with
novelty, playing with all of your sort of buttons of like
dopamine and what's going to getthe most reaction and emotional
reaction. A lot of politics just using
like the most emotionally charged words now and the most
things that have the strongest trigger and reaction in, in the
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mental body to get your attention.
Because attention then leads often times to ad revenue and
income and back to the physical.And we kind of keep stuck in
these first 3 layers, physical, energetic and mental.
And to go beyond the mental means we enter the wisdom body,
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the vignanamaya kosha. So this is more subtle.
This is the part of us that can observe the mind.
Now this is at least my understanding of the vignanamaya
kosha. It's actually not too much
written about it in the old text.
It's actually very subtle energy, but I think of it as the
wisdom of discernment to have some level of choice in what we
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think about because it's still often feels like a thought.
Big Nyana Maya Kosha. It's like the wisdom, the
knowledge, the knowing sheath, the the illusion of knowing over
the sheath over the the true self.
So even the sense of like higherwisdom.
Maybe it's a connection to God or the Dao or the universe or
(26:14):
Krishna or whatever. There's still, this is still a
level of Maya from this perspective of the Upanishads.
So we don't want to get too attached to it.
Or I think that it's the only way or the best way.
And even all of this, this wholepodcast, everything I'm talking
about you don't like. I encourage you to question and
challenge all of this. This is just my best
(26:36):
understanding of these ancient texts and my own practice
working with it for many years now.
But the Vignana my kosha now is where you have choice and you
start to notice I'm thinking this certain way and behaving
this certain pattern. I'm reacting in this certain
way. I'm struggling with
communicating in this way or having this pattern play out in
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my relationships. That's now all in the wisdom,
the Vignana, my Kosha, to have the perspective of seeing the
mental patterns, seeing the energetic behaviors and
patterns, seeing the physical behaviors and patterns and
having more choice in how to engage with all of that.
Now, I recently in my astrology podcast did a podcast about
(27:20):
David Lynch. He wrote the book Catching the
Big Fish. And I think that title in that
book, he's talking about gettinginto this layer of awareness
because he's saying like basically life moves fast.
We rush around all day if we don't take time to slow down.
And it's this idea of like dropping a line if you're
fishing, if you want to catch little fish, you try to move
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quickly. If you want to catch big fish,
you got to wait and you got to let the fishing line go down
deeper and deeper. And it takes time and patience.
So that metaphor of catching thebig fish is a lot like what
happens in deep meditation and deep spiritual practice where we
go through the physical like asana, the energetic, like
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pranayama, the mental, like concentrated meditation, like
focusing on a single point. So now this wisdom arises within
that. So you're sitting there
meditating, notice inhale, notice the exhale.
And then it's sometimes like verbally, like a thought of
(28:24):
words of an insight. Sometimes it's just an energetic
shift. It just feels you just change.
It's, it's very hard to put thisinto words, but it's like when
you know that a stove is going to burn you when you, if you
touch it, is it the physical choice?
Is it an energetic choice? Is it a mental choice?
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It's just a knowing that you know, don't touch the stove.
It, it's all of these things, right?
It's, it's not so easy to put into words, but you could argue
with all three of those things. You could argue it's beyond
those things. And if you have a sort of
knowing of like where you need to move or what you need to do
in your career or what you need to do in your relationship or
changes you need to make in yourhealth, This can come from a
(29:10):
book, the knowledge, the mental part, the the third layer.
But that's not real wisdom. And if I just say to you like,
you know, you should save $1000 in an emergency fund, yeah,
mentally that sounds great. But to actually do it, there has
to be like this deeper sort of alignment, clarity, truth, or
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maybe it's, you know, to save however much money.
You know, just as an example, you know, you might read
something in a book that's like,you know, you should treat
others how you want to be treated.
And mentally it makes sense. But if their behavior, you might
find that you're not actually doing that or people close to
you are actually causing harm toyou in some way and you're not
communicating your boundaries insome way.
So wisdom comes often times they're just experience and
(29:57):
time, like catching the big fish, like just sitting there
waiting, allowing. And the biggest fish to catch
essentially you could say is thebliss body, the fifth layer, the
anandamaya kosha. And this is at the center of the
nesting dolls within all these layers, physical to energetic to
mental, to the wisdom to now thebliss.
(30:20):
And you've probably experienced this like dancing, singing,
sometimes spontaneously in yoga practice after shavasana.
You just feel amazing if you're blissed out, right?
That's the bliss body. Ananda means bliss.
Maya is illusion, Kosha sheath. So even this is an illusion.
So we don't want to get too attached to it and chase it.
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This is where people get hooked onto drugs and chasing highs and
even you can get addicted to going to yoga too much and like
kind of lose responsibility in your life and lose yourself
because it too is an illusion. But when we see all of this is
just illusion Maya, then we havea choice.
And I think it's like, why wouldany of this happen?
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I think there's something in it to like be experienced to to
enjoy the ride of being a human.There's some perspective.
It's like, well, you got to justtranscend all that.
Don't get attached. Transcend, transcend, transcend.
Well, that's a desire too. It's a, it's pretty stern, you
know, on the spectrum of like stern to not stern to relaxed.
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That's pretty stern way of living pretty strict.
That'd be interesting to look at, if there's maybe some sort
of mental patterning, their belief that life needs to be
hard. Maybe it does.
Maybe that's the reality. Maybe my perspective is that it
is too LAX, that life needs to be enjoyed, or that like, why
does this happen? Why we have bodies?
Why do we have this planet Earth?
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Why do we Incarnate? Why have the senses if we're not
going to use them? Is it just for survival and now
we don't need them so much? I don't know.
My perspective is more on the tantric side of like we have
this human body and these perspectives and senses and
experience to enjoy, to explore,to be curious, to try things
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out. To explore the range of the
physical body through like flexibility and strength.
To explore the range of energetic body through kanayama
and energy work. To explore the range of the
mental body through learning andwisdom and and taking on new
knowledge. To explore the range of the
wisdom body through having life experience and having things to
share with others, having insights and explore the range
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of the bliss body through seeking to transcend the
physical body into these momentsof joy, bliss, ecstasy,
enlightenment, clarity. Like ecstatic dance is often
this kind of energy or differenttherapeutic modalities often
times lead to this kind of state.
The sexual experience in the orgasm is the state of bliss.
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So why would all that exists to just like try to subjugate it
all or ignore it all? My perspective, just my opinion.
I know there's a lot of different spiritual
perspectives, but my perspectiveis I think it's here to be
experienced and enjoyed and we have more consciousness of it.
We can do it very consciously and beautifully and have amazing
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insights and experience and perspective.
And I think part of it is, is myopinion and perspective is like
the universe could be or do or have anything imaginable.
And somehow it evolved to have humans who get to look back at
the universe in awe and appreciation.
So the universe created something to appreciate itself,
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to experience itself, to have this experience of emotion, of
life, of different perspectives,and to enjoy the many possible
expressions of life, particularly on Earth with all
the different life forms. So that's my thought on it.
And through yoga, back to our principal topic here, through
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yoga asana, we just can focus onthe physical and the average
yoga class and maybe get to the energetic and mental and the
wisdom will come over time. The bliss will come
spontaneously, if at all, but westart with the physical to keep
it accessible and simple. Then we progress deeper into the
energetic and mental over time. And in the same yoga class when
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I'm teaching, I could be teaching a beginner and the 10
year veteran downward facing dog, but their experience is
going to be very different because of that, because of that
time that they put into the practice.
And they're going to be more into the subtle stuff just by
nature of having done it regularly.
And that's the thing about yoga is even if you're not aware of
the koshas or even if you're notconsciously working with them,
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you're working with them every time you practice.
So the first year of practice, all you might notice is the
physical, and the second year ofthe practice, you might start to
notice the energetic. In the third year you might
start to notice the mental, and the 10th year you might start to
notice the wisdom. You know, it just accumulates
even if you're not consciously working with, even if you're not
consciously aware of it. I think this from the Upanishads
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is an observation of what is rather than a construct of what
somebody thinks it is. And it's actually considered
channeled wisdom from the Rishisand the Sages.
So it's this understanding of the way the universe works, the
way the body works, and that I resonate with that, that feels
true to me, that feels true to my understanding of it.
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So if you want to go deeper withthis, then check out the Quad
Mind Yoga membership. There is practices on each of
these. There's also practices on each
of the seven chakras, multiple practices if you want to go deep
in embodying that as well. And then briefly, I'm just going
to touch on these other three things for today.
So we went pretty deep into those.
So #2 is the naughties, the energy channels and these sort
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of intertwine with the chakras. So how did the chakras spin if
their discs? Well, there's two naughties that
intertwine kind of like adna Helix, and they cross at the
chakras. These these naughties are the
ETA and pingala, or the yin and Yang energy, or left and right
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nostril, ETA, left nostril, pingala, right nostril.
So they end at the nostrils and they crisscross down the body
through the chakras to the base of the spine.
It's an energetic thing. It's not a physical thing, but
basically when you're working with the yin energy, you're
working with the Ida nadi. When you're working with the
Yang energy, you're working withthe pingala nadi.
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So you could say yin or Yang. You could say feminine and
masculine. But I think yin and Yang is more
all-encompassing and more widelyunderstood.
Ida and pingala are just the Sanskrit terms which are more
nuanced. But yin and Yang is good enough
for today. And into the center of that is
the sashumna or central channel,which is basically your spine,
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your cerebral spinal fluid, and the sort of pillar of your
consciousness. So when we said meditate, we
want to sit tall and allow that sushumna energy to root to the
base of the spine to the ground,but also rise up into space with
our body at the center of these two polarities.
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So basically working with alternate nostril breath to keep
it really short and simple from this topic for today is if you
do alternate nostril breath thatwill balance the noddies and you
may notice one nostril is dominant and one is less
dominant, meaning one nostril you can breathe more easily, the
other nostril you cannot breatheas easily.
And this will change every 90 minutes, where one nostril
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becomes more dominant roughly every 90 minutes.
When the EDA, the yen, the feminine energy is more
dominant, it's a good time for doing more yen activities,
resting, nourishment, relaxing, these kind of things, healing,
recovery. And when the right nostrils more
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dominant, the pingala, the Yang or masculine energy is more
dominant, that's a good time fordoing more Yang activities,
physical exercise, productivity,achievement, accomplishment,
goal setting, these kind of things that are more Yang in
nature. Now we all have both of them
within us, regardless of your gender, we all have both and
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access to both, some more strongthan others, some more balanced
than others. But basically great athletes
have have this gift of being able to be very Yang and active
in their sport, but also very yen and able to shut down and
relax. And that recovery is equally
important to that activity. So we can learn from that on our
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daily lives. Like if you have a job where you
need to be very active and focused, ideally you have some
level of adaptability where you can focus, do the more focused
work during the gang dominant times and your right nostrils
more dominant and do the more social or simpler or more
resting or innourishing kind of activities.
Taking a break on the yen time. Neither is better or worse.
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We need both, but just tuning into yourself and where you're
at day-to-day, moment to moment is super valuable.
And all of this today is part ofprana, the life force energy.
So we talked about working with energetic anatomy, working with
these maps of consciousness, working with the subtle body.
This is all to do with prana, and there's five ways prana can
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move. If I have values, I'm not going
to go into today, so I want to keep it a little simpler, but
just know that the main prana that we talked about life force,
we get that through sunlight, food, breath.
And if we do a lot of breath work, we don't need so much
food. If you're trying to diet, just
do a lot of breath work or get more sun exposure, right?
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We get a lot of life force through sun exposure and breath
work. And if we are just eating a lot,
actually that starts to take prana.
So it's good to notice. Like how?
Energizing or draining food is for you.
Processed foods tend to take prana from your body to digest
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that food. Healthy, natural organic foods
tend to give you prana in life force.
It's like basically the effort to break it down in your body is
less than the received value of the prana of the food.
Whereas processed foods, the effort to break it down in your
body is greater than the received prana or life force
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from the processed food. So very valuable to notice on
this level of the food, but thenalso on the level of
friendships, relationships, TV shows you watch, activities you
do, games you play, people you spend time with, environments,
workplaces, every area of life. It's very important to be aware
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of. Is this draining prana from you?
Is it giving you prana? How do you feel in this
experience before and after and during prana yama practices?
Prana yama, breath work or life force control yama or a yama
letting go of control. There's different arguments to
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be made of how to interpret that, but I think of it as prana
yama. So life force control.
So it's like exercise to intentionally direct your life
force, like alternate nostril breath.
These kind of practices help regulate your energy flow and
help you have a sense of awareness and direction to this
energy rather than just unconsciously breathing.
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So the last thing I'll say aboutthis is pranayama is so
fascinating, so powerful becauseit makes what is unconscious
conscious. It makes the breath conscious.
So you can, you can go your whole life without ever really
thinking about how you're breathing and it's unconscious
can also go most of your life thinking about how you're
breathing, which would be a bit stressful, but you know what I
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mean? If like you can make this thing
that is unconscious and automatic become conscious and
intentional. And that's how we get from that
energy layer, the pranamaya kosha to the mental layer,
monomya kosha. We go from prana is just
automatic. It's just there not thinking
about it. So now I'm thinking about it,
now I'm aware of it, what else can I be aware of?
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Where else is my energy going that I might not have noticed?
So it's like a very powerful gateway from unconscious to
conscious by noticing prana in your life.
In my first kundalini teacher training, we did this exercise
where they brought out a table of stuff.
It's all covered under a sheet, so or multiple sheets.
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So we didn't know what was underthese sheets, we didn't know
what was on the table. But the exercise was to put our
hand over the object and try to guess does this thing have prana
or not and which thing has the most prana.
And it turned out because we're a group of yogis and a kundalini
training about 5 months into it,there was a lot of good
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incorrect and accurate guesses. And you can feel this.
You can have someone tested out with you, blindfold you put
something in front of your hand,just try to feel the prana of
it. We can sense this.
We're intuitive sensing beans on.
And this is a like a sixth sense.
But the thing with the lowest prana was ATV dinner under the
cloth thing was the highest prana was some fruit and
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vegetables under the cloth. So that's what you might expect,
but it also demonstrates and youcan test it for yourself, see if
it's true for you, if you can dothis and recreate it.
But it also shows like, yeah, you can feel the energy of
things. There's definitely an energy
there. And Speaking of kundalini, the
last thing I'll touch on is the kundalini energy which moves
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along this central channel, thisSashumna I mentioned, and with
the noddies, the DNA shaped channels of energy along the
spine. So the kundalini rises through
the central channel. This metaphor of it being a
coiled serpent at the base of the spine is coiled potential
that arises and pierces through the crown chakra awakening
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consciousness. Now, I had an experience of a
Kundalini awakening when I was about 19, just a sudden rising
of energy up my spine, a bolt oflight.
The room, it was night time, butthe room seemed like the sun was
out pitch, pitch bright, very bright, the white light.
And I was like, what is that interesting?
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So it got me looking and curiousand landed on my kundalini path
and learning Kundalini yoga. But it could happen
spontaneously like this. It might not ever happen in your
life. I haven't had many like that
since then, so it's not like something I have some special
power to, But I was starting to get deeper into meditation at
the time and I think just tuninginto my energy and, and it just
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sort of awoke in this way. But it's a powerful energy that
basically you feel alive, you feel energized and you can
awaken it through conscious practices.
Basically any yoga, meditation, breath work is going to help
awaken this energy. I don't think of it.
I don't ascribe to this idea that it's like something that
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you have to make a lot of effort.
You have to try to force it to awaken.
You have to make it this big deal as big production.
I think it's just a natural arising of consciousness that
comes through time and practice.And if it doesn't, it's fine.
If it does, it's fine. It's not a big deal.
It's not some cool thing to bragabout.
It's like it can be very intensefor some people.
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It can be very disorienting and ungrounding for some people.
It very much helps to have a strong root shocker if you want
to work with the kundalini energy.
But it is another map of consciousness to understand the
kundalini and the Nadi's, the energy channels.
But I bring it up here just because it's something that
comes up a lot. And I personally don't align
with the three HO and Yogi Bhajan's teachings, but that's
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something I was trained in. But what I align more with is
what's in the punish shards is essentially like, do alternate
nostril breath regularly and you'll awaken this energy and
you'll know it's awakened because you feel clearer,
lighter, more energized, more creative, less tense, less
blocked. The three HO Yogi Budgen style
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of Kundalini was very helpful for me to get out of depression,
which I was in before that because there's a lot of
movements to awaken and sort of forcefully move energy, which
was necessary for me at the time.
So if you're feeling depressed or stuck, those practices may be
helpful. And my teacher was actually
pretty far removed from Yogi Budgen.
And it's just like a place to focus on the practices.
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And you can find that around theworld and online.
So there's a lot of great resources like this.
So if you can find it separated from the sort of cult of
personality, then I think it is a very powerful practice.
I just couldn't reconcile continuing to practice and teach
it myself. But I do find it very valuable.
And I think I generally just lean towards what's in the
Vedas, what's in the source text, what's been used by many
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teachers for many generations through thousands of years.
Let's try to go back to that andmerge it with modern science and
exercise, science and anatomy and wisdom and bring those
together. And that's my approach.
So those are some energetic maps, some ways of thinking
about energetic anatomy today. There's a lot more to it and all
the topics I saw on today, I go deeper in the Quiet Mind Yoga
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membership with practices to embody it.
If you want that and if you wantto learn more about it, how to
practice and teach it, that's inthe Yoga teacher training all at
Quiet Mind dot Yoga. And this is just Part 2 of A10,
part series. So we've got a lot more to
cover. And next we'll be talking about
meditation and mindfulness. So we're going from subtle stuff
into more gross stuff. And we'll continue from the
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subtle energetic anatomy into now meditation and actual
mindfulness practices to work with that mental body, that
mental kosha, mana Maya, kosha Imentioned today.
And this is a great gateway intothe asana coming later because
in the old text, all the asana was just basically sit down to
meditate. That was the asana.
Sit this way or sit that way, but you're sitting down to
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meditate. So if we want to understand
yoga, we got to understand meditation because that's where
it really comes from. So stay tuned.
We'll go into that on the next episode.
If you're enjoying the podcast, leave a review, share with a
friend. And a special thanks to everyone
in the Uks. We're constantly in the top 50,
top 20 UK podcasts. Very cool.
So got a lot of listeners there.I appreciate you all and thanks
(48:33):
for listening And share with a friend, share with your teacher
training, share with your yoga friends and discuss, get your
own opinions about it. Test out what I share here.
Read the books I mentioned and you know, do your own studies
and practices and take what works and leave the rest.
Thanks for listening. Look forward to sharing more
with you next time on the Yoga Future Training Podcast.