Learn To Manage Your Energies | Atisha's 7-Point Mind Training

A very warm welcome to all of you in this daily life meditation session with me,

Dhyansay.

Spirituality is only a means,

It is not the end.

Whatever you are searching for in life,

For health,

For well-being,

For any other goal,

For setting your perspectives right,

For understanding what this life is,

Who you really are,

Any quest that you have in life,

Any unanswered questions that you have in life,

Which you have explored in other dimensions of science,

Of the mainstream understanding of how life works,

Who you really are,

If none of those answers have satisfied you and have put you rather more in confusion,

Spirituality is a means to answer those questions.

Spirituality is not a way to get stuck in it,

To get stuck in the means,

But rather a way to understand,

A way to open up a new perspective,

A new energy into how we see things,

How we understand things about ourselves,

About our health,

About our wellness,

And giving us an opportunity to steer our life in the way we want to steer,

Giving back the control in our own hands.

There is no other path which gives the control back in your hand but spirituality.

So these 30 minutes every day that we put in spiritual contemplation and meditation are taking us one step closer to putting our lives back in order in the ways we want to live life.

We just have to follow along and rest the energies,

Reorganize by themselves.

The energies take care of where you want to go,

How you're going to get there,

All you need to do is flow with meditation,

Flow with spirituality,

Open your consciousness up to its highest potential.

In this series we are going through 7 points of mind training by Atisha where we are on point number 4 and the emphasis here is to bring meditation,

The strengths of meditation,

The outcome of meditation,

The fruits of meditation to one's own life.

To take the learnings and not just keep it to the practice of meditation but to also apply in our daily life.

There are 5 strengths,

We had discussed truth,

We had discussed silence,

We had discussed love in the past days,

Today we are going to discuss energy and tomorrow it will be awareness.

Today we are going to very briefly understand or let us say once again re-understand,

Put our current understanding aside how we see energy and take a fresh look at it.

When we say energy it is one of the most mysterious topics of our understanding for humanity and we have made so many attempts to understand how this energy works.

Everything is energy.

If you want to break down all phenomena,

If you want to break down all what's happening around you,

In you,

The fundamental unit of what's happening can be broken down to as energy.

So many ways of putting this together,

Putting our view,

Putting our understanding about energies.

Today I am going to share a slightly different,

A yogic view on how to see energies.

The sutra here from Atisha is learn to manage your energies,

Learn to master your energies.

If you manage your energies in meditation,

You manage your energies in life.

How do we see the energies that we feel in our body?

There are very broadly speaking for today's analysis we can break down energies into three categories.

The first category is of prana which is in yogic terms very famously known as the prana energy.

In Chinese system it's known as qi and it has several different names in different traditions,

In ancient wisdoms,

But there is this fundamental energy that when it's there we are alive and when it's not there we are dead.

When a person dies,

We say the person has died and when the heart stops,

When the breathing stops we say the person dies.

But yogis have proved that if you can stop the heart and still the person is alive,

You can even stop the breathing,

Still the person is alive.

So there is something even more fundamental than breath and the physical movement of the heart which determines whether you are alive or dead.

And that fundamental unit is known as prana energy.

You can give it any name you like if you don't feel like calling it prana,

But to follow a certain scheme of words I will call it prana energy.

This prana energy is available to us in all forms on this planet.

We gather,

We intake this energy from the food that we eat,

From the air that we breathe,

From just being in nature,

Being a part of this planet,

Being a part of this elemental ecosystem.

We get,

We take in and there is an interaction of,

There is a flow of this prana energy with our body,

With our mind,

With our whole system and the ecosystem.

There is nothing like that there is a,

That this energy comes from somewhere else.

It comes from the same ecosystem which we are a part of.

When it's there in our body,

When our body can hold to it,

When the entire organic system can hold on to it,

We call ourselves alive.

If we are unable to hold on to it,

It leaves the body and this is known as death.

If you have any problems,

Be it health,

Wellness,

Mental,

Any kind of problems that you are facing,

You can map it down to your prana energy.

If you are aware enough to see how the flow of prana is happening in your body,

That and that knowledge of that awareness you acquire in meditation,

Where you become so sensitive to your own energies that you start feeling the prana,

The movement of prana,

Where the prana is stuck,

Where the prana is overactive,

Where the prana needs reorganization.

In the silence of meditation,

In the silence of daily meditation,

In the stillness of the body,

In the calmness of the mind,

The prana energies are allowed once again to reorganize.

And this reorganization is so important,

Especially in the ways we live in these days,

Where everything is there to create more turbulence,

To create more disturbance.

None of the aspects of how we live are designed to calm us down,

Are designed to create that space for prana energy to reorganize.

In most cases,

When you are just still,

When you are just centered,

They reorganize on their own.

There is no additional special procedure needed to restore your energies.

That much capability we have in our body,

We have in the organic system to find its own balance,

Provided you give it a chance.

So be it meditation,

Be it anything else,

Please give yourself this chance,

This opportunity,

Cut yourself off from everything else for a while,

Allow your energies to reorganize and then you will see that health,

Well-being and all what you want in life happens on its own.

You don't have to live through misery all throughout your life.

In yogic system,

There are also pranayamas which are designed to shake up the prana system to,

If you are stuck somewhere,

Then to take you out of those pockets,

Your energies if they are stuck in some places,

To shake them up,

To take them out and allowing them to flow naturally once again.

There are pranayamas for that.

We will very briefly start with today a pranayama which is alternate nostril breathing.

It's very basic,

Anyone can do that.

It allows to create a certain balance for meditation.

But before we do that,

Let me very shortly talk about the rest of the two energies which you can see in your life manifesting.

The second energy is even more mysterious.

It is known as Kundalini.

We human beings are special because we can evolve ourselves on the spectrum to go to very bottom of things,

To go to the very top of things.

So we can evolve ourselves in a very broad range of spectrum and that evolution is possible because we contain in us a dormant energy at the base of our spine.

That's the physical mapping but it does not necessarily lie in the physical realm of our body.

But this energy is when this is fully activated,

When this is put to fire,

Then it goes all throughout our system and make us do extraordinary things.

This is not done by prana,

This is done by the Kundalini energy.

If you see those people who in extraordinary situations did extraordinary things,

Soldiers at the field or somebody fighting for days in the ocean or stuck somewhere and still surviving for days and you ask yourself how did this person survive despite no food,

Despite having all the pain and all the trouble that the person was in,

That is when the Kundalini energy somehow is forcefully activated and helps to go throughout the entire process.

Not even that,

Even if you want to achieve extraordinary achievements,

That's the energy behind playing its hand.

Its Kundalini energy that once this reaches to different,

In yoga you have these different energy centers,

Once it is fully activated and touches different energy centers,

It produces different extraordinary characteristics which manifest as abilities in our life.

Of course,

When we talk about energy,

There is always a caution which is that energy is energy.

It does not know where it's going.

So if the body is not purified,

If the mind is not pure,

When the energies rise,

It can make us also do all sorts of things.

So before we activate energies,

The first thing we must do is to purify ourselves.

The first thing we must do is to clear off all the channels in our body,

In our mind,

In our energy systems,

So that when the energy flows,

When the intensity of the energy increases,

Then it falls into the right place,

It does not get stuck,

It does not get caught in the wrong pockets.

What is the third type of energy?

The energy of Divine.

That's from another dimension that does not belong to the human system,

That does not belong to the ecosystem that we are a part of on this earth.

This is Divine energy which is not for everyone.

This is for those who dedicate their life to putting themselves in,

To purifying themselves to that extent,

To taking and rising their energies to that extent that they are open for it to meet the Divine and let that explosion happen for themselves where then they are not anymore as an individual,

They are the world,

They are Divine,

They are the universe,

They are the whole.

I will speak about the Divine energy,

The Kundalini energy when we go deeper into Yoga Sutras that's a better place to discuss these topics.

But for now I just wanted to give you a brief understanding of how we can see energies in our life and to bring the practicality of how to manage these energies,

We will start off with first of all a pranayama which is alternate nostril breathing and the second is to clean the energy channels in our body where we will visualize us breathing and having the breath flowing in and out in our spinal cord.

So from the base of our spine to the top of our spine.

Of course the breath is coming in and out from the nose but here we will link this,

We will bring our focus and attention to our spinal cord and we will assume that as we inhale we are breathing in from the base of the spine and taking it all the way up to our head to the top of the spine and when we breathe out we release that energy and it goes back to the base of the spine.

This will allow us to clear off any blockages that we have in our energy channels and prepare us for reorganization of energies by themselves.

Let us close our eyes,

Sit in a posture that is upright with your back straight,

Head relaxed,

Shoulders relaxed,

Legs cross legged or any other posture if you are sitting on a chair is also fine.

You can do the pranayama with your eyes closed as well but if you are doing it for the first time you may see how I am performing it.

Take your right hand up with your right thumb,

Close your right nostril and breathe in from the left nostril,

Close your left nostril,

Open the right one and breathe out from the right nostril,

Breathe in from the right nostril,

Close the right nostril,

Open the left nostril open the left one,

Breathe out from the left nostril.

Once again breathe in from the left nostril,

Close the left,

Open the right,

Breathe out from the right nostril,

Breathe in from the right,

Close the right and breathe out from the left.

Put your hand back in your lap and let your breath flow naturally,

Let it reorganize,

Let it settle.

Allow your awareness to turn inwards,

Your body to become still,

Your mind to rest.

As your breath flows naturally in and out,

We should be able to breathe in and out,

Let your breath flow naturally in and out,

Let it settle.

You can bring your awareness to your backbone and visualize your spinal column from the left side,

Your head part of this visualization at the top of your spine.

Keeping this upright posture,

As you inhale visualize that the energies,

That the breath is rising up from the bottom of your spine goes until the top of your spine and as you exhale the breath,

The energies fall back from the top of your spine,

From the top of your head down to the bottom of your spine.

Find a pace that's natural to you,

Where you're not forcing anything,

Allowing your breath to flow naturally as you visualize energy,

Prana rising from the bottom of your spine,

All the way until the top and as you exhale falling back.

Ignore the sensations.

Ignore the sensations that may arise as the energies open up.

You remain in the visualization with every breath.

Energy rising in your spine and falling back in your spine.

Now,

You can bring your awareness to your backbone and visualize your spinal column from the top of your spine as you inhale the breath.

Now,

You can bring your awareness to your backbone as you inhale the breath.

And let go of the visualization.

Simply remain aware and silent.

Your energies reorganizing by themselves as you remain aware and silent in this moment.

If you wish to go deeper in silence,

This is the perfect starting point to sit longer and let everything go,

Stay in silence.

Before,

Very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes while maintaining this sense of balance,

This awareness of one's own energies,

This sense of inner peace,

Silence,

Centeredness and take all these aspects of your meditation practice to your daily life as you proceed with your day.

I'll see you tomorrow at 7 a.

M.

Central European Time.

Namaste.