“Miracles rest not so much upon healing power coming suddenly near us from afar, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for the moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what has been there around us always” Willa Cather.

A few nights ago I dreamt that I was doing my Ashtanga Yoga practice. I realized that I was doing my jump backs with hiking boots on. For anyone who does not know what a jump back means, you bend over and hold the floor with your hands beside your feet, inhale, then jump your feet back into a front push-up position or you can exhale right into chaturanga, which is a push-up where you hug the body with the arms and your body does not touch the floor. In this pose you keep your whole body straight using the strength of your back, navel, arms and legs (many people think of it mainly as arm strengthening but to make it an even posture all parts need to be strong and aligned). In this dream I then realized I also had many layers of clothes on! I realized it would be better to take the clothes off leaving one layer of clothing on, the normal garb for yoga practice. The interesting thing was the clothing did not seem heavy and the shoes did not seem to impair me. Then the last thing I remember is my NYC Ashtanga Yoga teacher Eddie Stern coming over to assist me in going back into my back bend (wheel or inverted bow) and, since he knows I am not the greatest at this, he said “ We can work on this in the fall” whereupon the pose became really easy and I did it effortlessly, with lightness. When I generally do this posture my body feels heavy, the feeling of bending backwards does not feel light and easy, in my dream it did feel light and I have seen many people do this pose where it does look that way. Over 30 years ago I broke my back jumping out of an airplane in California. My theory is that experience has left my lower left back muscles locked, so, though I can do many types of backbends I am not able to do the deep ones. The interesting thing about my dream is that though it appeared that I had all this heaviness weighing me down I did not feel it in the least! Nor was the most challenging thing difficult for me anymore. It was an amazing dream. Not knowing its meaning, it felt like, despite the things that might be holding us back or weighing us down, these things are not always as they appear. Many things are not as difficult as we perceive and not necessarily holding us back and that things can change for the positive, like my easy light-hearted back bend (ok, it was the one in my dream, I didn’t wake up to a different back!). Things don’t always have to be so heavy!

From a physical perspective in yoga, all is about balance and opposites. As we need heaviness we need lightness. Just this morning I had a woman having problems with balancing in crescent moon posture, I suggested she ground her forward foot and back knee more deeply as she lift her upper body and arms. This made a total difference for her. The lower body is the part that grounds us, that relates to earth and the first chakra. All standing posed help to balance this but if we do not have our feet firmly grounded and balanced into the earth and the legs engaged, we can easily be wobbly and lose the balance of stability and stillness that we are working toward in our yoga practice. When we have too much earth element we go beyond being a grounded person and can become a depressed person. With too much heaviness we cannot experience joy!

The elements in the body require balance and strength. Water is the element associated with the pelvic region. Too many so us are rigid here and maybe even consider that to be the norm. Many people do not know they can actually breathe into the groin (Donna Farhi has a great book ,The Breathing Book, which I highly recommend for more on this and breathing in general). When we start to regain flexibility in the hips, pelvis and groin the water element frees up. As water is meant to flow, so are our emotions and our creativity. This is the seat of that!

Above the pelvis is the fire; as we move up the spine the energy becomes less dense. The navel is the seat of our power. Fire is very powerful and like electricity, can be either very helpful or very destructive. Going from the darkness to the light in the navel is going from fear, insecurity, reactiveness, judgment, anger (being hot around the collar) and jealousy to a sense of self-esteem that is strong and the power of our own inner fire to complete what we have set out to do, just as a controlled fire burns to completion without harming with strength and neutrality.

From the lower three chakras we move to the heart. This is very interesting because we all think of air as good and our breath as important, which it is. But, if we have too much of this element we may be very scattered, all over the place and not deeply in touch with our feelings (that is back at the second chakra, folks!). We may be way into our head. If we are not in touch below then we may have blocks in the heart and the throat. It is all part of our inner process of learning to go from the darkness to the light.

Introspection is a useful tool where we can learn about ourselves in a way that things we have pushed down can come to the light, even if getting there inevitably means moving through some uncomfortable times of darkness and discomfort. Watching the breath of someone who is too “pranic” (too much air in, not deep enough to connect and help the lower chakras contribute their elements to the scene!) is like watching someone hyperventilate. Sometimes people think the rapid breath in yoga, either bastrika (breath of fire) or kapalabhati is hyperventilation when in fact it is just the opposite, it is deep and not shallow at all.

The lightest element of all (called taatvas in yoga) is ether. That is pure bliss! Last night we did this set at the Sewall House. I woke up very early and felt great! I think it was because we did this. This set is best done in the evening, along with eating lightly, with lots of melons. The recommendation is to do this for 40 days to solidify the effects. Doing it whenever you can is great, too. So I started the article with my Ashtanga dream and now am ending with a Kundalini reality! Enjoy!

Sit cross-legged.

1. The breath in this first one is to cleanse the lungs and stomach. It is said the remove centuries of old grief. You just breath fully and really stick the tongue out. Stare straight ahead. Inhale through the nose, rest your wrists on your knees, palms up and open. Exhale, through the mouth with the tongue way out, let the fingertips come up and touch the shoulders (they will touch the back of the shoulders). Do this for 5-6 minutes.
2. Bring the arms straight up into the air; let the palms face forward, the fingers stretch up. Look up for a moment and start to move the left arm clockwise and the right one counter-clockwise. Bring the head back down, so the chin is slightly tucked in and the head is straight on your spine. Close the eyes and focus between your eyebrows. Do long deep breathing in this pose for 11 minutes. Do the whole time going through and past whatever you are feeling physically or otherwise. Breathe deeply and let this support you. This will let you get in touch with the ether element. The heavy elements may want to pull the arms down but keep them up! Let the spine move with this, it’s okay and it gives a nice massage to the earth element energy at the rectum, at the base of the spine. This is good for depression, do this movement for just 5 minutes. Inhale and exhale at the end.
3. Block off the right nostril and breathe in through the left, then block the left and breath out through the right. Continue this same pattern 3-11 minutes with eyes closed. You can inhale thinking Sat, exhale thinking Nam if you like, which is the Kundalini Yoga focus mantra. This is cooling, calming, clearing and decreases anxiety.
4. Hold onto your knees; make the spine straight and rigid. Begin to rock back and forth, inhale back and exhale forward. This moves the energy along the central channel of the spine, the sushmana. After 3 minutes, come to the center, inhale deeply, hold the breath, tighten the body and shake the body to distribute the energy. Do this 5 times.

After each exercise it is nice to take a brief moment to feel the shift in energy that exercise has created. It may manifest as warmth or tingling. The more you commit to the breath and the movement the more you will feel something. That is the gift of Kundalini Yoga.

In ending I would like to say to you: Wa He Guru! That is the mantra in Kundalini Yoga of ecstasy and means going from the dark to the light!

Never give up your dream of miracles and remember, as Willa said, so much is in our perceptions, which yoga can help us make clearer, or as she said, “finer.”

Donna Amrita Davidge has been teaching yoga since 1985. A recent interview with Donna on June 17th can be found at http://www.blisschick.net/2008/06/sharedbliss-interview-with-donna.html. She teaches in NYC, owns and operates Sewall House Yoga Retreat in Island Falls, Maine with her husband Kent Bonham from June 15th to Columbus Day and other times when pre-arranged. She can be reached at www.sewallhouse.com.