LAS INQUISICIONES DE LA LITERATURA FANTÁSTICA The Inquisition of Fantasy Genre
5. EL EJEMPLO DE CERVANTES EN PERSILES Y SIGISMUNDA
1. Wear comfortable clothes and choose a time and place where you won’t be disturbed. Ideally yoga is done barefoot. This also facilitates the flow of energy.
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Yoga: Embodied Wellness2. Unless otherwise specified, all exercises are done with the eyes closed. This helps provide greater focused attention on the exer-cise and the breath. If you prefer to keep your eyes open, you can focus on a point in front of you or on the floor.
3. If sitting cross-legged on the floor is uncomfortable you may do all of the yoga seated in a chair. Sitting on a cushion on the floor is also fine. If seated in a chair maintain a straight spine and keep both feet on the floor. Keeping the spine straight is important and will allow the proper breathing. For this reason, practicing on a couch or reclining chair is not recommended.
4. Relaxation is an important part of a Kundalini Yoga practice.
In the Kriya to Still Nerves, Shakes, Anxiety, and Tension and in the Elementary Adjustment of the Brain you will be relaxing between the exercises. Unless otherwise specified, relax from one to three minutes between each exercise. If the exercise is short (three minutes) as in the Elementary Adjustment of the Brain, then the relaxation will also be short (one minute). If the exer-cise is longer, such as eleven minutes in the first exerexer-cise of the Kriya to Still Nerves, Shakes, Anxiety, and Tension, then the relaxation may be three minutes. When the entire yoga set is finished you’ll take a longer period of relaxation, which may be ten to fifteen minutes. You may need to build up to this length of relaxation and that is fine. Deep relaxation creates and main-tains balance in the body and is important for healing the ner-vous and glandular systems.16
You may relax in any position you find comfortable. In the shorter periods of relaxation between exercises in a yoga set you may sit in a cross-legged position. For the longer periods at the end of a yoga set you’ll relax in shavaasana (corpse pose), which is done lying on your back with the arms to the sides, palms facing up, and ankles uncrossed. If you wish, you may also lie down between exercises in a set to relax. This might be helpful as all of the exercises presented below are done in a cross-legged
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119 position; lying down to relax between them allows you to stretch your legs.5. While practicing yoga, Kundalini practitioners cover their heads with a natural fiber cloth such as cotton. Covering the head provides a sense of containment and focus.17 If your hair is long enough to be pulled up, it can be gathered and coiled at the top of the head. Yogi Bhajan taught that coiling the hair in this way aids in raising the kundalini energy.18
Covering your head is optional. We invite you to add this to the series of experiments you have done throughout this book. You can try practicing Kundalini Yoga and meditations with and without a head covering (such as a handkerchief) to see if you notice a difference. Sometimes students who are par-ticularly sensitive to the flow of energy may develop a headache when doing certain meditations. In all our years of teaching Kundalini Yoga we have only seen this happen with one student during her home practice. Wearing a head covering while doing yoga eliminated her headaches.
6. When practicing yoga or meditations you may feel negative emotions. This is normal. Yoga works on areas of the brain that regulate emotions. If this happens just allow these emotions to come up and continue to focus on the breath as they move through your system. Pausing an exercise may also help as you bring yourself back to awareness of the breath and into the pres-ent mompres-ent.
TO START A KUNDALINI YOGA SET OR MEDITATION
Before doing any Kundalini Yoga set or meditation, we begin by chant-ing a specific mantra. We call this process Tunchant-ing In.
The words to the mantra are Ong namo guru dev namo. This means
“I bow to the creative wisdom. I bow to the divine teacher within.”
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Yoga: Embodied WellnessAn easy way to learn this mantra is to listen to a recording on the Internet. You can listen to a sound file at www.integrative-trauma -recovery.com.
Here is a written description of the pronunciation:
Ong: This syllable sounds like “song” without the “s” and with an emphasis on the “ng,” which produces a vibration on the roof of the mouth.
Namo: The first part of namo is short and rhymes with “hum.”
The long “o” as in “go,” is held longer.
Guru: “Gu” sounds like “good” without the “d” and “ru” rhymes with “true.” The r is rolled slightly.
Dev: Dev rhymes with “gave.”
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Chanting the Mantra to Tune InTo chant this mantra, sit with the spine straight. You may sit in a chair with your feet on the floor or sit cross-legged on the floor. Bring your hands together at the center of the chest as pictured. Your palms are
Posture for Tuning In
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121 together with a few pounds of pressure. Your thumbs are against the sternum and your fingers point upward. Focus your eyes at the brow point (the point above your nose and between your eyebrows). This posture has a calming neutralizing effect on the body and helps to focus the mind.Inhale deeply and chant “Ong namo guru dev namo.” You will chant this mantra three times, taking a deep breath between each repetition. Then inhale deeply. Continue to focus your eyes at the brow point as you hold the breath for a few moments. Then exhale and relax.