THE OBJECTIVE of this practice is to open to your inner ear and listen to the inner sounds of your body.
1. Sit comfortably in your meditation posture (several options are listed in chapter twelve) and gradually — as though in slow motion — bring your hands toward your face.
2. Use your thumbs to press the tragus (the pointed flap of cartilage that lies above the earlobe, partially covering the entrance to the ear passage) against your ear canal to prevent sound from entering your ears. Next, shut your eyelids and use your index and middle fingers to prevent light from entering your eyes. These aperture-closings are known as “locks.” Position your ring fingers so that their tips are lightly touching each nostril; they are kept ready so that you can press them against your nostrils and prevent air from entering or leaving your lungs. You are now controlling six openings: a pair each of eyes, ears, and nostrils. This is known as the “six-way seal.”
3. Raise your elbows high so that your forearms are at shoulder height, with your armpits wide open. Take a few moments to adjust your overall body posture and hold it steady. It is normal to hear a lot of rustling in your ears, but this will lessen considerably as you learn to hold still. Ignore your thoughts and listen intently to your body.
4. Take slow deep breaths. On the exhalations, allow yourself to hum in a relaxed way. There is no need to make it sound beautiful; just modulate your breathing so that the sound, coupled with the breath, is smooth and effortless. The idea is to imitate the buzzing of a bee, which is what the word brahmari means.
5. Hum for seven to twelve breaths, then inhale deeply and hold the air inside by blocking off your nostrils. Try to keep your mind empty of thoughts and images while you listen intently to the silence inside your body. Don’t excessively prolong the retention of your breath; you should be able to release your breath smoothly when you exhale. During exhalation, slowly remove your hands from the blocked apertures, bringing them to rest comfortably on your knees or thighs.
Immediately following the release of the mudra, you will experience a tremendous spaciousness and a corresponding silence. Attune yourself to this silence and spaciousness. To progress into deeper levels of silence, repeat the locks, the humming, and the breath retention.
NADI SODHANA is an exercise used in Nada Yoga to purify the solar and lunar channels, ida and pingala, that conduct hot and cold energy on either side of the spinal cord. Following brahmari, the yogic buzzing, Nadi Sodhana cleanses the central susumna nadi and distributes and balances energy in the chakras, creating a condition of calm and poise. As you learned in chapter eight, “Shakti Yoga,” the nadis are psychic meridians that distribute prana — vital energy and life force — throughout our spiritual nervous system. The susumna is the central meridian that runs alongside the spinal cord.
1. Sit in your meditation position. Place your left palm on your left knee and position the fingers of that hand in the gnana mudra: thumb touching index finger. A variation of gnana mudra that I suggest for this practice is performed by pressing the tip of the forefinger against the base of the thumb and relaxing the other fingers, which are pointing downward. For your right hand, the tips of the forefinger and middle finger rest gently against the palm; keep the ring and little fingers aligned with each other. Curve the thumb toward the ring and little fingers so that it looks like a sort of clip, or a pair of horns on a bull. Hold this hand up to your face, palm facing you, and position it immediately in front of your nostrils so that the thumb can control the right nostril and the ring finger can control the left.
2. Using your thumb, block off your right nostril and inhale slowly and deeply through the left. Send your breath into your abdomen first, then continue inhaling into the upper portions of your lungs. Remember to breathe audibly, a type of sonic breathing I described in chapter thirteen (ujjai pranayama) and also on the accompanying audio tracks. Block off both nostrils by pressing your ring finger against your left nostril. Hold the breath inside for a count of three.
3. Open your right nostril and exhale slowly through it, expelling air from the upper part of your lungs first. Later in the exhalation, gently contract your abdominal muscles to empty your lower lungs. Block both nostrils and hold the breath outside for a count of two.
4. Open your right nostril and inhale slowly, relaxing the abdominal contraction and breathing into your lower lungs first to expand your abdomen; continue breathing into your upper lungs. Block off both nostrils and hold the breath in for a count of three.
5. Breathe out slowly through your left nostril, upper lungs first, abdomen last. This completes one cycle. To repeat contiguous cycles, hold the breath out for a count of two by blocking both nostrils, then repeat the process from step one. To bring closure to the process, inhale through both nostrils smoothly and bring your right hand down to your right knee, positioning the fingers in gnana mudra, the same way your left hand is positioned. Exhale through both nostrils and rest.
WHILE INHALING through your left nostril, move your awareness from your left buttock upward, toward the left hemisphere of your brain. As you hold your breath inside, move your awareness from the left to the right hemisphere. Next, follow your exhalation down the right side of your body toward your right buttock. When you hold your breath outside, hold your awareness at the base of your spine. Then follow the breath upward from the right buttock along the right side of your body toward the right hemisphere of your brain as you inhale. As you hold your breath inside, move your awareness from the right to the left hemisphere of your brain. Finally, as you exhale, follow the breath down the left side of your body toward your left buttock. This completes one cycle.
TIPS: Breathe slowly and audibly. Coordinate and apply the same muscular contractions you did for the great yogic breath described in chapter fourteen. Sit still and relaxed while you engage in the process. Internally sound the Om with your exhalations; inhale in silence.
IN THESE EXERCISES, you will use the mantric syllables SA, RI, GA, MA, PA, DA, NI, and SA to ascend and descend the spine, vibrating each chakra with its appropriate musical syllable.
YOU MAY USE this method to develop an intuitive approach to your chakra frequencies by employing tones without regard to tempered tuning. The most important rule is to keep the tone steady, without wavering in pitch once you’ve started the tone. Try to resolve each tone smoothly. The great yogic breath described in chapter fourteen is the ideal breath cycle for this Nada Yoga meditation.
Start with a deep, low tone and sing out the syllable SA while maintaining an awareness of your root chakra, allowing your hips and spinal base to relax while the tone vibrates in that area, disintegrating any blockages and facilitating energy flow.
Next, use the syllable RI and raise the tone just a notch higher. Feel the shift in energy cause by the raised tone, and move your awareness into the space immediately above your pelvic area, relaxing your genitals and vibrating the tone in the second chakra for as long as your breath lasts.
In this manner, keep moving your pitch for each syllable: GA to your navel, MA to your heart, PA to your throat, DA to the point between your eyebrows, and NI to the crown of your head.
Once you have arrived at the crown chakra, reverse the process, singing SA on the same pitch you ended up with (or as high as you can go) for the crown chakra, then drop your pitch slightly to tone NI between your eyebrows. Likewise, incrementally drop your pitch for DA at your throat, PA at your heart, MA at your belly, GA above your genitals, and RI in the rectum.
The key to this process is to start at a very low note — as low as you can manage — then sense the right pitch for the next chakra, always moving higher in pitch as you ascend the spine. If you raise your pitch too high too fast, you will arrive at the highest register of your vocal range before you have gone through all the chakras. If you are overly cautious and use very short spaces between your tones, you will cover all your chakras within a narrow tonal range. The vision for this exercise is to know that the spectrum of your chakra vibrations lies within your vocal range.
IN THE SECOND METHOD, the body’s energies are actually tuned to specific frequencies chosen for the chakras. As mentioned toward the end of chapter ten, many factors must be taken into consideration to balance and harmonize an individual’s chakras, including such things as body type, time of day, place, and time of year. The following sequences are ones I’ve used in my own practice for many years, and they work really well for me. I offer them to you as a guideline; you can try them as recommended, then configure your own sequences based on your needs. You may refer to the Chakra Interval Chart provided after the practice to see how the intervals are positioned.
IN THIS METHOD, the energy released by moving between two frequencies activates the chakra. SA and RI function as a pair that governs the abdomen; the interval between the two activates the chakra. Similarly, the distance between GA and MA is used to activate the heart chakra, PA and DA to activate the throat, and NI and sa (higher octave) to activate the command center between the eyebrows.
The syllables ri and ga activate the seventh chakra, the crown center; they are represented in small letters because these tones are above the higher octave. Similarly NI and DA activate the second chakra, the sex center; they are underlined because they occur in the octave lower than the fundamental SA. To reach down to the root chakra, the lower octave PA and MA are utilized. The whole process spans a range of one-and-a-half octaves. You should be able to do this once you find a comfortable key to work with; if you can’t, then slowly stretch yourself over time. This is how vocal exercises also become spiritual exercises.
There are three sequences of intervals that I recommend you work with; each is suggested for a specific time of day.
Between 4:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M.:
RI (min 2nd); GA (maj 3rd); MA (reg 4th); DA (min 6th); NI (maj 7th)
Between 11:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M.:
RI (maj 2nd); GA (min 3rd); MA (reg 4th); DA (min 6th); NI (min 7th)
Between 6:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M.:
RI (maj 2nd); GA (maj 3rd); MA (augmented 4th); DA (maj 6th); NI (maj 7th)
Make sure you get some sleep between 1:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M.!
SA, PA, and the octave “sa” are not written in the above sequences because they naturally occur in all of them. The first sequence is the Ashkenazi mode, often recognized in Middle Eastern music; the second is the Natural Minor, common in rock and pop; the third is known as the Lydian or Lesbian mode, favored in Indian music. In the key of C, their notes would occur as follows:
Ashkenazi mode: C, D-flat, E, F, G, A-flat, B, C
Natural Minor: C, D, E-flat, F, G, A-flat, B-flat, C
Lydian: C, D, E, F-sharp, G, A, B, C
The chart on the next page shows you how these intervals are spaced and where they will occur in the body.
