Doei Shabd Kriya and Moola Bhanda

I plan on, at some point, in the near future, beginning a practice of Doei Shabd Kriya to bring my focus more deeply to three bhandas of moola bhanda, uddiyana bhanda, and jalandhara bhanda, but more specifically to re-connect with the root chakra and it's connection to the ajna chakra. The ajna chakra is the command center, the site of the pituitary gland, and the seat of intuition. Everything about doing 120 days of Laya Yoga was for me about expanding my intuition. Part of that, I only realized very late into the practice, requires opening the root chakra, the mooladhara, and expanding that energy upwards to pierce through the knots, or granthis, and open into the sahasrara as expanded consciousness.

That top granthi, the brahma granthi, is a psychic knot like the others, that when broken, releases amrit, or divine nectar. My name, Amrita, seems apt. I've known, of course, that the kundalini energy needs to rise from the base of the spine upwards, but somehow, much in the way one might go looking for one's glasses while they are actually on the end of one's nose, I just didn't figure I would have to open up the basement floors and look at all the junk ~ the lust, anger, rage, hatred, fear and pain. Well guess what? I figured it out.

And something pulled me today not only to read more about Doei Shabd Kriya as a further continuation of practicing Laya Yoga, but to pick up Swami Buddhananda's book "Moola Bhanda: The Master Key". His words, first written in 1978, in India, touched not a nerve, but the base chakra:

"Breaking through the barriers

"Moola bhanda offers an infinitely powerful technique capable of breaking down the rigid barriers that have been built up in the mind over the years, thereby expelling deep unconscious conflicts and complexes that are not easily accessible to modern psychological techniques. This is because of moola bhanda's action on mooladhara chakra and the pranas of the body. Psychiatry on the other hand relies on drugs and other physical processes, or psychotherapy, which cannot get into the depths of the mind.

"Even abreaction therapy could not help some people, such as severe depressives too inhibited to release the required amount of emotion to break up the depressive condition. Perhaps this was because these more severe and long-term conditions had become cemented into the body and mind and thus were no longer amenable to abreaction, because abreaction only allows free unconscious material to rise and be expelled, not concentrating on the physical aspects of anxiety.

"Wilhelm Reich's work with repressed sexual energy exemplifies the above concepts. He formulated the concept of 'character armour' or muscle tension and posture rigidity which he says makes itself felt as 'character resistance' (instinctual desires and defensive functions of the ego).

"Character armour, for Reich, represented layers of defence mechanisms which had been psychosomatically transferred into the physical body and could be pictorially schematized similar to geological or archaeological stratification. As such it represented the 'solidifed history, of the patient, the deeper tensions being the oldest.' Reich states that conflicts which have been active at a certain period of life always leave their traces in the character, in the form of physical and mental rigidity. Each conflict forms a layer in the individual's character. Each of these layers in the character structure is a piece of life history which is preserved in another form, that is, physically, and is still active. He demonstrated that by loosening up these layers, the old conflicts could - more or less easily - be revived. If the layers were particularly numerous and functioning automatically, if they formed a compact unit which was difficult to penetrate, they seemed like an 'armour' surrounding the living organism. The armour may be superficial or deep-lying, soft as a sponge or hard as nails. However, in each case its function was to protect against displeasure.

"Reichian schools of psychology have developed various forms of exercises which resemble asanas and mudras, designed to release pent-up emotions, anxieties and repressions. These exercises concentrate on releasing prana, which they call bioenergy. (This reminds me of the Trauma-Release Techniques that I learned from Saul David Raye, as well as Kundalini Yoga Kriyas) Thus it is similar in many respects to moola bhanda and other yogic techniques. However, no abreactive, Reichian, or relaxation therapy in psychology has yet utilized the perineum in contraction, let alone the perineal body and cervix. ( This is key, really, because I doubt seriously that within the last 30 years anything has changed in that respect.)

"The technique of moola bhanda had been a closely guarded secret for millennia. By contracting the mooladhara chakra we have a more powerful technique than all the modern psychological techniques put together. They look like child's play compared with a technique offering infinite bliss, knowledge and enlightenment.

"We have seen many cases of severe depression clear up quickly and without emotional or psychic trauma through the practice of moola bhanda even though the individuals concerned were close to suicide. They experienced old memories, emotions, and experiences, but because of training in detached awareness, the memories passed into consciousness and out again, like bubbles floating harmlessly to the surface and bursting.

"So moola bhanda has the potential to release us from the depressions, neruoses and other psychological problems that dampen our joy in life and prevent us from fulfilling our potential, through raising of kundalini shakti. Moola bhanda is safe (when practised according to the instructions), efficient and simple. Coupled with its purgative qualities, capable of 'spring cleaning' the mental and emotional body, moola bhanda is a technique to open the door to freedom, joy and liberation."

This is incredible, I think, that I have never read this before. I am really convinced now that I need to more actively practice this in the future with Doei Shabd Kriya.

Though this is a lot of information for one post, I think the following is also rather pertinent:

"Moola bhanda is a psychic practice which manipulates the pranic body, especially apana, by contracting mooladhara chakra. It sends energy up to ajna and sahasrara chakras directly and thereby stimulates all the other chakras as it travels through the sushumna.

"The Chakras

"The chakras are whirling vortices of energy which exist in the pranic (etheric) body of man at the linking points between the body and the mind. They occur at the intersection of ida and pingala in sushumna, being psychosomatic points, where mind and body touch.

"There are fourteen major chakras. The seven lower chakras are: atala, vitala, sutala, talatala, rasatala, mahatala, patala. They represent evolution from basic anatomy structures to mineral life, then plant, lower animals, and so on. The seven main chakras (shat chakras) are mooladhara (perineal body/cervix), swadisthana (tip of coccyx), manipura (navel), anahata (heart), vishuddhi (throat), ajna (eyebrow centre, and closely related to mooladhara chakras), sahasrara (crown of the head; not always included in the shat chakras because it does not lie within the merudanda - spinal cord). Each higher chakra represents a more subtle frequency of pranic energy and a higher level of consciousness. They are like switches which turn on different parts of our psychophysiological mechanism."

Hm. Why did I not catch before how deeply an imbalance and blockage in the root chakra would affect my intuition? If the foundation isn't strong, how can the house stand up under pressure? Armed with more information for the journey, I will eventually embark on a practice of Doei Shabd Kriya, but meanwhile, my journaling and diary entries in blog format will go back to where they originally began: on the blog I created to help me stick to doing 1,000 Days of Bound Lotus. Sat Nam. Namaste. Wahe Guru!