The Active and Passive Aspects of Each Kundalini Yoga Exercise:

Finally, it is vitally important to understand that each kundalini yoga exercise has an active part and a passive part. In other yogas this is not the case. Each posture is a complete exercise in itself, whatever the series might be or whether in a series (like a karate karta) or single posture to corps pose. But in Kundalini Yoga the purpose of the practice is to develop radiance (laya) and depth (pratyahar), which is only felt in other yogas much further along in their practice. In Kundalini Yoga you are maximizing and working directly with all the systems of the body simultaneously – circulatory, pulmonary, endocrine, nervous etc. Each posture and movement brings about a pressure in a specific area or system of the body. This pressure means that the blood will saturate in that area. As powerful Kundalini Yoga breathing techniques are combined with the postures and movements,these areas put under pressure will have the strong effect of thepurified and energized blood flow into that area. Initially, this means that these areas, where the capillaries and cells open under the pressure of the exercise, discharge their impurities and toxinsin return for the vitality of the purified energized blood flow. Moreover, these same areas begin to build a charge- a voltage.

Now, here is the important part to remember: The body is like a car battery, only with many batteries working together. In a car battery, there is water, and there are chemicals. As the chemicals are increased the voltage of the battery also increases - 3 volts, 6 volts, 12 volts, 24 volts, are a standard we can buy at any K-Mart. The body is mostly water, with some chemicals, whose secretion is the basis for the maintaining of voltage generated in the body. (This is why it is said: You are as young as your glands. In the practice of other yogas, there is a gradual process in which the tensions and blockages of the body are reduced and the mind begins to become still. The process accelerates with increase practice and especially fasting and internal purification, such as (in the west) colonics (versus Nauli Kriya for cleaning the large intestine). Then, as the energies of the body are used less and less towards the incessant pressure of thinking and identity encoding, imaging, impression taking and so on, there is a build up of unused kinetic energy, that begins to fill through the body, so that the body begins to lose its inertia, becoming satvic pure, transparent, blissful, easing into the ever-present oneness of the yogi’s surrounding.

Awareness to movement and eventually prana, as in Kundalini Yoga practice, is a key to the expansion of this kinetic energy in other yoga practices, what in Buddhist meditation and martial arts is called "Mindfulness." This is because that simple awareness through which we experience the inner and outer world is really the light of the Infinite Being. When the mind becomes pure and still, this light of awareness, through which we experience the inner and outer world, sinks into its source, and illumination flashes forth. In Kundalini Yoga, the posture/movement (always practiced with still awareness) combined with powerful breath creates this purification in various areas of the body directly, and with it comes an electrical charge to these areas. To support this electrical charge, and this is the very important point to remember in your Kundalini Yoga practice, the glands secrete very specialized chemicals.The charge or voltage generated directly impacts the glandular system causing the glands to secrete so that this charge may be sustained and maintained. Chemical electric pathways open.

Once the active part of the Kundalini Yoga exercise is completed, the passive part begins. The reaction of the glandular and nervous system to the vitality of the bloodstream impacting the specific areas of pressure brought about through the posture or movement takes some time to complete. The time period depends on the duration of the exercise and other dynamics of the body's ability to circulate the secreted chemicals. Therefore, you have an active aspect of each Kundalini Yoga exercise and a passive aspect, which must be experienced for the exercise to achieve its full benefit! In the experience of the passive aspect of a Kundalini Yoga exercise, initially, there is the sensation of decontraction of the cells and muscles and ligaments in the area. Then comes the sensation of opening and radiance.

Then the radiance begins to balance with all the other organs and cells of the body, strengthening the magnetic field of the whole body, bringing it into balance with the area affected in the exercise. And you begin to feel a previously impalpable sensation of "electric radiance" / "transparent electric" - which grows and expands (and brings about a deepening) through each progressing Kundalini Yoga exercise (and kriya) that make up a set, and then progressively building from set to set. At the end of each set, usually before a meditation, we allow the body to go into a deep relaxation, yoga nidra, through which all the energies compacted in various areas of he body may finally release, merge, deepen, effecting an entire systemic new increased voltage plateau in the body, so that gradually you will become aware of the inner and outer radiance continuously. In Kundalini Yoga, we usually diversify the sets practiced in order to bring about the opening of the cells, glands, organs, nerves and systems in every area of the body. Typically, the passive part of a Kundalini Yoga exercise is as long as the active part, but what you are looking for is a sensation of the radiance circulating and rising through the body to the crown and beyond, which indicates the balancing of the electromagnetic field is complete. Typically the Yoga Nidra is 10 to 15 minutes.

Purification of the subconscious: The body is a mechanism that stores the impressions of who we think we are.(The body is like the hard drive for computer storage, versus the brain as the RAM/cache storage.) Because the impressions are stored in the body structure, we call it the subconscious. With Kundalini Yoga practice, the electric chemical balance of the voltage of the body increases to bring about a system wide vibratory frequency that is higher – more subtle – than the frequency of thought vibration, so that your sense of identity begins to become clearer and clearer, less linked to thought and sensation. No longer drawn to this or that reactive thought or imbedded compulsion, but open single clear awareness of the pervasiveness of consciousness throughout the body field (i.e., the ten bodies). At the lower voltage level of the body, the mind's focusing mechanism of attention needs to be used to see and know. It moves through the darkness (unawareness) of the body/mind field like a flashlight used to see on a dark night whose light grips each arising thought, sensation, impression in order to compare or merge with the sense of “I” inherent in the light. Sometimes more is seen. Like the waxing and waning of the moon cycles, the mind becomes brighter (feelings of love, compassion – satvic) and dimmer (feelings of hate, distrust, judgment – rajasic, tamasic). Many people have no real sense or feeling of the energy radiance that pervades and sustains the body, i.e., their own life force, let alone that this force of Life is actually the Light and Life of the Infinite Being that denotes the single sense of "I" in the body. We focus to each part of the body and feel that part of the body. But with Kundalini Yoga practice, in particular a daily morning sadhana, the overall voltage of the body begins to become the same as, even greater than, the voltage of the focusing mechanism of the mind........


The result of this is that you begin to lose your experience of the need to focus, i.e., direct attention, as your awareness now simultaneously encompasses the whole body! You realize yourself to be the single seer of the whole body and the radiant field around, which you actually experience without focusing. Kundalini Yoga practice includes the use of mantra and meditations. Mantra in Kundalini Yoga is much different in effect and impact than with other yogas, because through the practice of what we might call the “Yoga of Light,” as described above, the “Yoga of Sound” is amplified. With the Yoga of Light, the whole body begins to resonate. When you add the Yoga of Sound, the sound amplifies throughout the body, and has the unique and special effect of integrating the energy that has been systematically stored from each Kundalini Yoga exercise. It's like playing a regular guitar versus playing an electric guitar, where the reverberation increases with the amplitude of the voltage. But with Kundalini Yoga, the very use of the mantra also increases the amplitude of the voltage, so that you have a leveraged effect. Part of this is due to the effect of the sound causing a breakdown of subtle blockages of energy flow. Part has to do with the effect of releasing of energy stored in areas of the body from practicing Kundalini Yoga exercises. And, with the use of mantra, the glands also secrete to support and sustain the increasing voltage. You may practice a Kundalini Yoga set for an hour, and feel the radiance throughout your body and mind, and now you practice a mantra, and within 5 minutes the energy is so tremendously greater, and yet at the same time easy flowing and expanding, that there is no comparison.

While there are kriyas to benefit every part of the body and every aspect of the mind, and kriyas to activate the energy channels and control governors between the base of the spine and crown, there are also special kriyas and meditations to trigger the opening of the Spiritual Heart (not the anahata chakra) and the Pathway of the Self between the Spiritual Heart and the Crown. The Radiance felt here is both inward pulling and expansive, all absorbing and pushing out from within and between the atoms of the body. Time and space lose there meaning altogether. Stillness, radiance, pervasiveness, and all notions are relinquished. Once you are able to “hear” the soundless pulsing of the “I as I,” the radiance takes on a different characteristic that inwardly reflects the Truth (Sat), giving the continuous sensation of Remembrance of your True Self single and pervasive and Abiding as That.

Kundalini Yoga meditations have a very specific purpose of opening the gate to the Infinite Spirit, which is to say, to subtly dissolve the remaining idea that the notional sense of "i" we feel as myself in the body is separate or different from the True "I" of which our notional "i" is only a reflection in the mind ofthe Temple of the True "I" in the Spiritual Heart. As the mind becomes pure and satvic, there emerges a sense of a clear Force of Intelligence, that pervades the body field, but is felt initially in the area of the brain, wherein you feel the question arising, without a thought formation, of inquiry into where the sense of seeing arises.As the inner intensity increased, you feel a pulling force in your Heart (not the anahata chakra), initially like a magnet, and then like a graviton, transfixing the body and mind as one in Spirit, where inside and outside vanish, and “Everything is Whole” (YB)

Yogis call this force of intelligent awareness the budhi or discriminative faculty of the mind.The emergence of this discriminative faculty is because the mind is experienced tobe radiant, clear, pervasive and still. Abiding in that stillness and pervasive field of radiance, which has no here or there focus, the experiencer Itself amplifies Its own Intelligence to ask "Who ...? And suddenly something new happens, which we can call Yoga - Union. A Hearing, Recollection and Abiding. You hear and experience with a deep inner clarity that draws your sense of "i" powerfully inwards to a remembrance of who you are behind everything. Yogis call this experience Turya. You feel as though a sun is rising in the Heart, and with it that the moon of the mind is less and less needed to see and know, even though it may appear in the crystal blue sky. The notions of here and there become meaningless, and you abide in the recollection of your True Identity, the Ground of Being, as though coming out of an amnesia.

Initially, this "hearing" (sunia, sravana)is felt like a pulsing of "I as I" – like the striking of a tuning fork that reverberates as a soundless sound, or like a self-effulgent pervasive screen upon which everything emerges into appearance, only the images on the screen are seen from their perspective of the undifferentiated whole, and the idea of separateness simply dissolves from the conscious field. In Kundalini Yoga, the evolutionary/involutionary practice taken as a whole is called One Star Spirituality, the One Star being the Reality in the Heart that expands Light of Being outward while drawing the self inward to abide as one's True Self. The True Guru within us is experienced as sound and light that subtly draws us inward to awaken to our whole Self. While Kundalini Yoga is not a religion, with daily practice the words in the spiritual texts of all religions will be heard, and you will feel the force of your True Self awakening to the meaning within the sound of the words, like being called from a sound sleep. All this to say that, if a daily sadhana is taken up and you practice the breathing and locks properly, and you practice each Kundalini Yoga exercise, kriya, mantra and meditation understanding that with every active part there is an equally important (more important) passive part, then fear, imbalance, and everything related will pass and you will experience your True Whole Self. "Wait, be patient, relax, consolidate integrate, be You..." Yogi Bhajan Just practice, practice the right way, and keep up, and “everything that is good will come to you.” (YB) Sat Nam