natural breath retention

05-19-2000, 05:25 PM

On Thu, 18 May 2000 07:01:11 Harsha wrote:

>Thanks for bringing this up Amanda. You are extremely
>knowledgeable about these topics.

I'm afraid I'm just an amateur pretending to be
knowledgeable (or wishing she was) in these matters.
The information about kumbhaka
was generously provided to me from Gurubhakti M.
after I had enthusiastically raved to him that
I had developed "the double breathing of a bird".

>Perhaps you should give us some background on your
>yogic and meditative practices.

Again, I cannot take any credit myself.

Some breath retention was done when I
did free diving as a teenager. Swimming under water
had the effect of meditation, making it easy to turn
the mind inwards very automatically.
Since I regretted going up, I actively tried to hold
my breath for as long as I could.
I remember the phys ed teacher yelling at me during
swim lessons for staying under water longer than
she liked and demanding me to surface immediately.

Of course, being under water I pretended not to
hear her.

I had a mild khumbaka going for months last fall and could have
qualified for centrally caused sleep apnea.

That was all the Kundalini's work.

So it has been with all my meditation and "practice".
It's been the Kundalini practicing and doing virtually
all the work while I take the back seat, sleeping
or working.

Since I have had close to no physical problems
at all and few psychological ones (apart from a few
nasty shocks) with the energy, I figured it was ok to let Kundalini-
Shakti do what it wanted to do. I set aside some hours
each day in the
weekend and sometimes every afternoon to relax
(being lazy

) and the energy does its thing
bringing about a natural form of meditation,
i.e. a natural and spontaneous witness state,
as well as doing some Japanese paper folding with my body. Most has happened
when I have not been there
and there were no one there to be afraid.
And if I experienced fear,the energy would show through
various ways that there was nothing to be afraid of,
starting out gently and making room for me getting
accustomed to the effects of the energy in the
mind-body.

Just about the only things I have done actively are
practice celibacy (chastity),
get enough sleep, try to eat and drink correctly
(as someone advised me to

)
and read up on things when I became curious what
the different experiences were.

Thank you very much for this reminder, btw.

I would not have noticed the reference or the
term if you and Rob had not commented on it.
For some reason I missed it when reading the Yoga
Sutras both the first and second time.

Learn something new every day...

Thank you also for your kind and
encouraging comments.

Love,

Amanda.

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