how to awaken your chakras: nadis

                     

How do we awaken our chakras?

Someone recently told me that the way to awaken one's chakras, was to meditate on them. This is both quite true and quite untrue. But then, chakras are beyond the usual realms of truth. And yet.... are about truth also. We could quite honestly say that there are a lot of paradoxes involved with chakras.

Chakras in the aura

I have written before about chakras in the aura, and I would like you all to know, quite clearly, that although they are part of the chakra system, they are not the deep spirituality of the chakras.

The internal aspect of the chakras

The deep spirituality of the chakras is almost one hundred percent to do with the internal chakras. An internal chakra is directly linked to the corressponding external chakra. For example, the chakra in the aura emanating from the navel, is connected to the internal chakra, directly behind the navel, in the spine. The external entry point and the chakra in the spine are connected by a hollow tube. 

The flow of deep spiritual energy in nadis

This tube is believed by some to be part of our prana, or life-force, body. But Swami Sivananda, one of the great Gurus and spiritual experts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, says that this tube, known as a Nadi (nadi = flow), is made of astral matter and he said that nadis are part of the astral sheath, where the chakras are housed. He stated that astral matter flows through these nadis, hence the meaning of nadis.

Certainly, when one starts the chakra awakening journey, using the correct practices for awakening, these nadis undergo a 'cleansing'. In yoga parlance, it is called a purification. These nadis get cleared of astral gunk, so that energy can flow through them. And it is a process. There are several yoga practices for achieving this.

The entire nadi system is an integral part of the chakra system, and, just meditating on one's chakras is not really the way to get the energy in the nadis moving. And the movement in the nadis is initially a prana movement, then astral, then....  something far greater and stronger.

Nadis are a gift from a God

There is a God who gifted these astral pathways, these nadis, to us. When the nadi purification process started with me, nearly forty years ago, I had visions of this God whenever I closed my eyes. Once I awoke from sleep with a start, and saw him standing by my bed. He was blue, but when I first started seeing him, he was neither white skinned nor brown, nor black, and he appeared as a baby whenever I meditated. Then as a child. 

I felt as though he was running , laughing, through the corridors of my mind, in his child form. Running through the nadis inside the head. Finally, he started to appear as a blue adult. In meditation, he would just look at me once I progressed to the adult level of him.

How blessed was I!!! Millions of people, world-wide, worship this God. ..... Ah, but I have digressed ..

So, there is this tube, this nadi, between the front entranceway of the auric level of a chakra, and it travels through the body into the spine. Except, it's not really the phsyical body where this is all happening. No, it's a "body" that we have that is known as the subtle body. And our prana sheath, our mental sheath, and our astral/chakra sheath, are all housed in this "body".  A "body" in this sense, is not a sheath. A sheath is also known as a kosha.

Our nadis need to be "purified"

But, just inside the body, where the auric chakra enters the subtle body, there is like a plug of gunk blocking energy travelling through the nadi to the spine.  One of the ways to unplug this gunk, is with awareness in meditation, combining the breath.

The correct breath for nadi purification is ujjayi, (the whispering breath). However, I had my first two chakra awakenings without ever doing ujjayi. Ujjayi is a slight constriction of the glottis whilst breathing. This creates a soft noise, and we could describe as a baby Darth Vader breathing sound. It is subtle, not harsh, and not loud.

First easy steps for chakra energisation

So, if you know ujjayi, you can use this, otherwise normal breathing is fine. For the most basic, easiest way to stimulate your chakras, simply breathe in and out of the entry point for that chakra, on the body.

The next step is to do this, but inhale through the entry point through the astral tunnel, which can be visualised as a transparent white tube, to the chakra proper, the exhale back through the tunnel and out of the entry point.

Do this as a concentration technqiue, start with the first chakra and work up to the third eye chakra, Ajna chakra. Do three to five breaths each chakra.

Concentration (dharana) is when we are doing a technique. Meditation (dhyana) is the sublime state that we enter as a result of doing dharana.

Mooladhara /base chakra:

1) in/out of the base of the torso, between the legs.
2) in/out of the base of the torso, between the legs, to and from the chakra internal site, which is in the perenium for men, and near the opening of the cervix for women.

Swadhisthana/sacral chakra:

1) in and out of the pubic area in the front of the body
2) in and out of the pubic area in the front of the body, to and from the point in the spine behind. The base of the last vertebra

Manipura/navel chakra:

1) in and out of the navel
2) in and out of the navel, to and from the point in the spine behind the navel

Anahata/heart chakra:

1) in and out of the centre of the chest, level with the heart
2) in and out of the centre of the chest, level with the heart, to and from the point in the spine behind

Vishuddhi/throat chakra:

1) in and out of the front of the throat, between the adam's apple and the collarbone
2) in and out of the front of the throat, between the adam's apple and the collarbone, to and from the point in the spine behind

Ajna/3rd eye chakra:

1) in and out of the forehead, between the eyebrows but a bit above (there is an indentation there)
2) in and out of the forehead, between the eyebrows but a bit above, to and from the centre of the head

These two ways of nadi purification to do with the chakras are two of the simplest ways to stimulate your chakra trigger points, plus the internal part of the chakra, and also the nadi connecting the two.

Chakra awakening is different
An awakening is totally different from stimulation. There are other things needed to be done for the third chakra upwards for it to awake, meditation of any sort, on it's own, will not just do the awakening. And, there are many more advanced meditations that can also be done for chakra stimulation.

There is more, much more to do with nadis and chakra awakening, but these two techniques are an easy and enjoyable way to start. 

Some of you more knowledgeable people, will be thinking: 'she's forgotten the main nadis'! No, of course I haven't. I have just chosen to do a more easily accessible method of chakra stimulation.