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How to Get More Energy
To make progress independently, a certain amount of energy is needed. India teaches us that psychic energy is essentially prana. In China, the home of the energy arts, they go a bit further. Prana is chi, and chi is needed, but let’s look a little deeper. Chi beneath a certain vibration level is called jing. On a higher vibration level it is shen. Shen is on the same level as consciousness. The next higher level is Dao, the level of spirit. All the same substance.
Jing is the most basic energy construct. In most people, it comes primarily from sleeping and eating. Jing is easily transformed into chi; chi is transformed into shen; shen is transformed into dao.
If you have jing, chi is a piece of cake. And so, in looking at the energy arts, one sees immediately that what is needed is a way to get more jing. Nei Gong, from which came Chi Gong, has identified several ways to pursue the problem of increasing jing. These include herbal preparations, tapping into the earth’s magntetic field, and drawing from Dao Heaven. There are advanced techniques that are said to bring results, but what you find in books without an instructor do not work very well; after much time and effort it is still the case that most jing comes from sleeping and eating.
To actually solve the problem, we must return to India, where Yoga offers a number of ways to build and store ojas. The tantrics say that the measure of a yogi’s power is the amount of ojas he has stored in his brain.
Ojas is equivalent to high jing, just before it transforms into chi. So if you have ojas, you have jing. In Yoga we find a dependable method of increasing and storing more jing, by ways that actually work and are really quite simple to use.
The first method involves kumbhaka, which is breath retention. There are two types of kumbhaka, antar kumbhaka and bahir kumbhaka. Antar kumbhakas are inhale kumbhakas; bahir kumbhakas are exhale kumbhakas. This method uses bahir kumbhakas. (Kumbhaka practices should be avoided by people with high blood pressure, heart conditions, glaucoma, or during pregnancy)
The Bahir Kumbhaka Method
Sit comfortably but erect.
Breathe in a moderately deep breath.
Breathe out calmly until all of the air is expelled.
Pause with the air expelled for 8 seconds.
Breathe in again.
Again breathe out until all of the air has been expelled.
Again pause 8 seconds, before breathing in. It’s alright to sometimes take two breaths.
That’s two repetitions of bahir kumbhakas. Continue until you have done 22. You can keep count with something like a key ring moving from finger to finger.
After one week, change the 8 seconds to 10. Every week, move it up 2 seconds until you find the level you are comfortable with. If 8 seconds is too much, start at 6, or even lower. I use 14.
As soon as you are finished, go immediately into corpse position (lie flat on the back, arms alongside body with palms up, legs slightly apart, feet open, and relax for 2 minutes with palms up and eyes closed. Do not move.) At the end of 2 minutes, sit up and rub your palms together for 5 seconds. Cup the palms over your eyes. This inhibits the ojas from escaping out the optic nerves. This rest period is vitally important. If you don’t take it, you haven’t done the exercise properly.
If you have performed the above exercise, you have ojas. You may find that you do not feel much effect at first, but at the end of the day it has been a better day, with more gumption in it. You have been basically more powerful than you would have been. If you want to gather the potential for immediate use, you will want to perform the Midday Boost, which only takes a few minutes.
Midday Boost
To Perform Midday Boost, stand erect with hands on lower abdomen, thumbs pointed at navel.
For one minute, breathe rather deeply in for four seconds, rather sharply out for one second.
Secondly, lower your head to the right shoulder. Roll the head forward, pivoting on your chin, until the head rests on the left shoulder. This roll takes four seconds. Then roll from left to right. Continue alternating for thirty seconds. Silently utter something spiritual during each roll.
Thirdly, breathe in slowly a quite deep breath. Raise your arms over your head and join your palms. Contract the anal sphincter — gently draw the muscles of the anus upward and inward. Contract the muscles of the urethra and raise up the sex organ. Bring the navel firmly back toward the backbone, drawing up the rectum and sex organ.
Lift the diaphragm into the chest.
Tuck your chin toward your chest, keeping the head level.
Contract the perineum (the area between the anus and the genitals).
Squeeze for 5 to 10 seconds, visualizing energy rising into the brain. Then exhale, lowering the arms.
Again breathe in a deep breath, raise the arms, and repeat the entire sequence to the squeeze and exhale.
Stamp your left foot, then your right, then your left, then your right. Say out loud or silently, “I am ready!”
That’s the end of the midday boost.
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