 Any amount of Kundalini Yoga and meditation that you do is beneficial. But I want you to gain everything you can from this amazingly rich tradition. I want you to experience all the promised benefits. I want it to infect your whole life so that you reach the full potential of your vitality and creativity. Good news. There is a way. There is a way to accelerate your Kundalini Yoga practice, to receive more benefits: begin a 40-day Daily Practice or Sadhana. What is a 40-Day Sadhana? It is the consistent practice of the same kriya (sequence) or meditation for 40 days in a row without missing a day. If you miss a day, you have to go back to day one. It is said that in order to get the full benefits of any given practice, you must do it every day for 40 days. According to yogic wisdom, it takes 40 days to the remove any of the bad habits and blocks that might prevent the outcomes from fully emerging. It takes 40 days to retrain the mind. Forty days is significant, and not just according to Kundalini Yoga. In the world of religion, this number represents a threshold for fasting and prayer. In psychology, researchers have shown that one's personality could be changed through handwriting exercises done over a 40 day period. In this world, in these times, there are so many distractions, so many options, so many reasons not to roll out the mat and stay with the same process over time. So when we do, we conquer all that. We conquer our egos. When we commit and build up our discipline muscle, we see that we can do anything, and we see that this yoga works like magic.
It does. It works like magic. I've experienced myself -- such specific and deep change within. Magical! I've seen it in my students and private clients. Magical!
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 During meditation, we may have interfering thoughts: a memory, negative self-talk, mundane planning, fear, hope for a future event. That isn't bad. In fact, it can be good. It can be important. It can be that these thoughts are presenting themselves in order to be dealt with or released. That is part of the "work" of meditation, and I am grateful for that work, as it heals me and will continue to heal me.
But there is another way to meditate that is a joyful expression, a way that leaves little room for interference. It's called Celestial Communication, and it is a stress-relieving meditation method that is accessible to all. So what Celestial Communication and how is it done? A Celestial Communication, or moving, mantra meditation, begins with a beautiful piece of mantra music. Then, we add arm choreography to the sounds. Essentially, we sing and move our arms. As we stay present with the mantra and the movement patterns, we reduce the possibility of interference. Yogi Bhajan (Master of Kundalini Yoga), who brought us this practice explained why Celestial Communication is so effective. "The tension in the neural patterns is relieved into a relaxed pattern of its own originality. It is a very fantastic release. Physical relaxation is not as important as the systematic relaxation of nerves and self are. That's why the Celestial Communication system will work wonders with all people, from all religions and places. It is a methodology which gives you a tremendous amount of relief in your inner being." The best way to understand is to do one, experience one. Watch this: chant and move along with some of the heavy weights of Kundalini music -- Snatam Kaur, Mirabai Ceiba, and Jai Jagdeesh -- singing Guru Ram Das and leading a beautiful Celestial Communication. (Watch up to the 4 minute mark, beyond that they move into another meditation.) Here's some more of what Yogi Bhajan said about this practice which he believed was so important for stress-out folks in these times: "Celestial Communication is the greatest wonder food for healing the body, mental intelligence, and creativity, and to uplift the soul and increase the inflow of spirit.. it creates the mental equivalent of timelessness and brings that into full play. In that way, your automatic intuition wakes up." I don't think there's anything within Kundalini Yoga that I LOVE as much as I LOVE Celestial Communication. I LOVE it all, but this is a beneficial practice for which I don't have to "go through" anything. I can just enjoy the beautiful music and moving. Bliss! There's also the joy and creativity of creating my own Celestial Communications. Everything else within the practice is prescribed and specific (for good reason, because that's what works), but with moving, mantra meditations, I can make them my own. I love the description in my Stress & Vitality manual, "Celestial Communication is the body, mind, and spirit authentically telling a sacred story, a story of soul, a story of victory and a story of love." When we move with a mantra, we embody its meaning and the "sacred story" of the soul becomes part of us. |
AuthorsCo-owners and Instructors of Montclair Kundalini Yoga, Cate Baily and Savitri Narayan Kaur. See their bios here. Archives
September 2020
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