cleansing

Chakra Healing, stepwise

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Since I wrote on the possible risks involved in getting initiated in energy-healing modalities like Reiki, there was a question on how to safely self-heal. Your energy is a part of yourself. You can easily sense your chakras or manipulate your energies even without initiation of any sort. Self healing is generally intuitive but for newbies it can seem a bit confusing so here is a very simple step-wise process you can perform on yourself once a week or once a month or as you feel like.

Your mind is your most powerful tool. If you can do three things at once using the infinite ability of your mind, try healing yourself with your mind? Watching TV while eating dinner and simultaneously texting your bff is very routine. Challenge your mind! Ask it to become aware of your personal energy, the flow of your inner energy and if there is something doing wrong to fix it.

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Chakra healing

This is how you clean and energize your every individual chakra.

In your darkened room, preferably on your asan, in a yogic posture with your hands in the gnyan mudra (just as you would do to sit for doing Dhyan). Or if this is too much, sit as you feel comfortable. Just keep your head, neck and back aligned, do not slouch. (If you are a woman in your 5 days cycle or if pregnant, do not sit on your asan, sit somewhere else.)

Close your eyes. Call on your source of faith. Focus at the third eye chakra/ ajnya chakra, tell your mind to still itself, take a few deep breaths, recite your mantra etc for a few minutes. The Ajnya is always the focus chakra, you will always work through it.

Then ‘look’ internally at the lowest Muladhar chakra at the lowest tip of your spine where your legs join your body. You will see a reddish color here. With time you will see a reddish lotus like figure with four petals. Visualise pouring brilliant red light and flooding this region with its red energy. A light, transparent, rich, beautiful red color. As beautiful as you can visualise it. Visualise the ‘petals’ of the lotus getting longer, bigger, stronger, more vibrant as the red light washes over it. If you see any dirt, murkiness, brown/black stuff sticking here, clean it out. ‘Wash’ out this lotus in the red light. Spend some time admiring the beauty of this lotus, feel happy about everything here. With time you will also feel the whirring of the energy vertex here, it will be in the clockwise direction for men and women always. (Only in women, just for the 5-days of the cycle it will be anti-clockwise. Your chakras going anti-clockwise indicate physical destruction occurring in the body.) As you increase your focus, you will also sense the nadi-s from the chakra moving out from the chakra to the concerned organs. As this chakra controls the sense of smell you might briefly experience the ‘essence’ of smell-sense while you are focussed here. You might briefly sense a ‘solidity’ here. Take about 2 mins over this chakra. Infuse joy in every action you  perform in your energy work.

Now I have used words like ‘wash’, ‘clean-up’ etc. You can visualise your hands covered with shimmery energy, touching the chakra-petals. Visualise your hands washing this lotus under a flowing light. Or visualise brushing off the murky stuff using an actual brush. Do your visualisations as you feel comfortable.

Next bring your focus to the Swadhisthan chakra, 4 fingers below your navel. Here you will do the same thing as you did at the Muladhar, except you will wash this lotus-chakra with a beautiful orange color. It has 6 petals. I always see this lotus ‘underwater’. As your mind ripples with emotions, you will actually see these ripples moving over this area. Here there is a sense of coolness and also of strength.

The Manipur is at your solar plexus a golden yellow colored lotus with 10 petals. Do the same healing here. Pour golden yellow color over this lotus and make it radiant. This is the seat of fire so you might feel a warmth enveloping you as you do its energy-clean-up.

Focus at the Anahata and do its similar healing. It is exactly at the center of the line joining the nipples. It has 12 loops/petals and emerald green colored. Visualise this lotus petals taking in the energy of the Vayu/air. You might even sense a gust of air moving around you at this chakra.

Then the Vishuddhi chakra at your voice box, it is sky-blue in color, very attractive pleasing. This lotus has 16 petals looping around it. The petals are like transparent overlays, soft glowy light and very ethereal. They move with a very gentle swaying motion, its very beautiful soothing. This chakra is also to be healed same as the rest. As you expand its energies you might feel ligher, more subtle, more vast like the Akash/ ether.

And back to Ajnya chakra, the middle of the eyebrows, a dark violet lotus with only 2 petals. Heal this too. As you clean and refresh your chakras, all their associated nadi/ vital energy channels will feel the positive effects. Thus your energy body as a whole will be rejuvenated.

Give about 2 mins to each chakra. You are supposed to just ‘wash’ them with their associated light and try to feel them getting all glowy, shimmery and radiant. This is all that you should do.

In this state of mental relaxation coupled with deep focus, if you look upwards at the top of your head, you will see your Sahasrara chakra too. Do not attempt to ‘heal’ this or try to manipulate it in any way. If you are doing your regular spiritual practice, then you will see this chakra as a lovely ethereal flower with infinite, long ‘petals’, curling and curving around as if in a gentle water current. They are pearly shimmery utterly beautiful. If you ‘look’ at this especially after doing your Dhyan, they stretch forever, they are then infinite in length and number.

Colors of the Aura

Specific organ healing

Now part 2 of the healing process. If you are suffering from some medical condition, you can direct a flow of silvery-golden light to this body part. Even if you are quite healthy, there might be some small injury to your body maybe a sprain or a backache or your eyes may feel tired after staring at the computer screens through out the day? Try this. Visualise your back covered with a golden-silvery healing cocoon. ‘Wash’ your back with this shimmery light, try to feel it covered with golden silvery pearly sort of a radiance. While doing the healing, you might see specks of darkness/ greyness in your back. So if you have a very good control over your mind then you can try this visualisation. Imagine two glowing magnetic orbs on the front and back of your body. Visualise that these orbs are now attracting the grey/black negativity. Their magnetic pull is pulling the grey specks out of the back into themselves. Now send these orbs as far away from you as you can and visualise a beautiful golden fire consuming them. If you do this regularly, just for 2 mins, your back will ache less with time.

Then if you ever get caught in an emergency situation, eg an accident or surgery etc, and you are in intense pain. You cannot focus your mind. So first visualise an envelope of a beautiful transparent emerald green light covering your entire body. This will reduce the pain faster, so that your mind will soon be able to recover and focus on the healing. Then focus your mind on the damaged body part and intend healing as above. As always contact a medical professional after you do your SOS with the energy.

The washing cycle!

Clean out your entire body with the power of your mind and intention. Literally wash it out. This is how you do it. Visualise half a glass of pure water in your hand. (eg Ganga water or any other pure spring water). Now top up the glass with silvery-gold shimmery energy. Mix the water and the energy in the glass. Visualise the water and the energy mixing completely and you have a glass full of highly pure water charged with a high level of shimmery energy. Visualise yourself drinking this water/energy. See it entering your stomach, intestines, liver, entering your blood, the organs in your abdomen, ovary/testes, pancreas, adrenals, your chest, your lungs, your neck, thyroid, head, hands, feet etc. Visualise it entering the important endocrine glands etc. Visualise that it cleans out the organs and removes all the negative material, toxic influences, foreign stuff etc. When it finishes this clean-up intend that the energy-water moves out through the kidneys and the bowel.

Be prepared for rather intensive bowel and urine movements over the next few hours. Drink a lot of water during these few hours and eat simple light food, no non-veg, no alcohol, no stimulants. Plan this energy-water washing-out on your holiday. This is quite an intense experience so you should do this once in 3-6 months.

Everything you do is powered by your focussed intention. So if you do some spiritual practice you will see faster and more visible results. Spiritual practice is anything that stills your chattering mind and allows you to focus. This focus point is always your third eye chakra. Even Silence can be a very effective focussing tool. Follow whichever practice which appeals to you for 21 days and see the difference in your ability to focus and intend.

Your mind is your most powerful tool, and a tool needs to be used. If you don’t, it will rust and spoil. Then later re-activating it will require more effort. We have let our minds rust for too long. So a tiny regular practice is essential, slowly you will hone your mind and then use it, for restoring your health and energy.

Kundalini and the Shatchakra

Wearing leather.. is a must

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Today lets combine fashion with energy. Leather! Leather is an extremely important tool in your energy kit. I have always loved wearing leather, but in India have been limited to leather shoes. I am a Marathi so the Kolhapuri chappals are a part of my traditional wear, very comfortable, classy and I am grounded all the time.

Wearing leather.. is a must

Different animal leathers give off different energies and have been a part of Indian culture for ages and ages. In other ancient and modern cultures too, leather is always present as a fashion accessory. But for those who can understand and use it, it is actually an energy tool. I mean our ancestors wore it, our Gods wear it, shamans everywhere wear it. There must be something that they understood and which we are missing out. But then, today in the age of animal cruelty and NGO’s, even saying something like, leather is necessary, will be inviting brick-bats. But, never the less, let just see what this natural product has in terms of energy. To wear or not to wear, ultimately is a decision between you and your conscience.

Our Gods use leather as a robe! Shivshankar wears a tiger skin. Indian culture is replete with leather symbology and use. Here the tiger skin is symbolic for the Yogi’s complete control over the base animal nature. It has other tantric uses too. In ancient times when there were real Ashrams in the forests where real Maha-Rishis lived, they used animal skins in their spiritual activities, mainly in the asaan. The deer, whose skins were used, were the naturally dead ones found in the forests. You cannot use the skin of an animal who has been killed by butchery or hunting, for spiritual activity. Such a leather will retain all its physical characteristics which can be used for other purposes, but it retains a mild impression of the agony of the animal being killed, so is of no use for doing spiritual sadhana. Maharishis or realised sages are shown to be sitting on a tiger or leopard skin, but for aspirants deer skin was used in the asaan. Asan is the multilayered mat you sit on while you do your spiritual practice. Today’s shamans also continue wearing their traditional robes of leather in all the cultures, world over.

Wearing leather.. is a must

Our bodies are electromagnetic in nature not bio-chemical. We function best when our skin is in direct contact with the soil, the water, the air and the sun. So you see Indian sages often are often seen semi-naked or even fully naked. Their mantra-fortified bodies are continually drawing vital energy/pran from the environment directly. They are using their skin just as its supposed to be used. But we all cannot be going about like these sages but the next best option of being in continuous connection with the electrical energies/pran of the environment is to use leather as apparel.

Commercially available leather or furs are sourced from animals like sheep /goats /bovines /reptiles etc who are not naturally dead but butchered. So there does exist a taint of the animal’s death agony imprinted in it. So when you buy a new leather apparel or shoes, do a small cleansing over it. Sprinkle sea-salt over it then collect the salt and dissolve it in the drain. Keep it in the sun for a few hours. Waft the smell /smoke of loban/myrrh over it. Brush it with peacock feathers. Roll a lemon in it and leave it for a few hours and then carefully cut the lemon and dispose it outside the house in the trash. Do any of these cleansing methods, with a strong intention and a thought of gratefulness to the animal who had it first.

I would recommend everyone to wear at least these 2 leather items if your Conscience approves of it.

  1. Item number 1 – World over, leather shoes were worn by our ancestors till even a few decades back, for a reason, ‘grounding’. These leather shoes were leather all through including the sole and both men and women wore them. We Indians wear them even now, they are available in several designs, formal as well as semi-formal styles. If you can, buy such shoes, wear everyday or at least a few days a week. If everyone wore such shoes there wouldn’t be any need of intentionally grounding yourself as I wrote in my previous post here. Leather is the perfect conductor of energy, and when you wear such shoes you are in contact with the energies of the earth at all times. We are electromagnetic beings and we need to ground ourselves. The negative emotions and destructive energies of stress are neutralized by contact with the earth. You live a healthier and more balanced life. In fact, there are several products like grounding mats, copper infused shoes and what not selling at quite high prices in the market. Instead of spending money on these go out and buy yourself beautiful Indian hand-made leather Kolhapuri chappas and mojadi shoes. So if you feel like it, at least buy leather soled shoes, wear them, be grounded all time and live a healthier life.
  2. Item number 2 is a leather jacket, but this cannot be worn by everyone, everywhere. In hot humid weather it will be unbearable to wear and will get spoilt very fast. But if you live in a place where you can wear this apparel, it would allow your body to breathe, electrically. It would, in energy terms, allow you to keep in contact with the energies of the sun and wind. The chakras/energy vertices, which are located along our back-bone would be more connected to the environment. You may feel the difference too, a feeling of ‘lightness’.

And now for some music. A leather post needs drums! This is the small, double sided, handheld drum which you simply have to buy, it costs just Rs. 250/- or so. The Damaru played by Shivshankar. It is very easy to use, even children play it, and when played properly created binaural beats. It can put you in a light trance, very enjoyable. Sound is energy, use it! Binaural beats are the next up-coming trend in the spirituality market. The two sides of the drum beat at slightly different frequencies which somehow get sorted out by our ears and our brain to generate the frequency of OM. We cannot hear it but we feel it. And you all, try it!

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So if you feel drawn to leather, sub-consciously we all are, because we feel its electrical properties, do buy at least the shoes, it will be a very significant step forward for your health!

 

Wearing leather.. is a must

How to ground yourself

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We all carry lots of tiny bits of negativity with us. It happens, just see what happens to us on our normal day, we brush against so many people on the street, in the train etc.  We pick up stuff touched by others, our auras interact with so many many objects and impressions that are being held on those objects. We are electromagnetic and not biochemical. Our bodies are actually energy and our energies are always being influenced by others energies too. This is why dedicated seekers of the self, Sanyasis, live a life away from the society to avoid their auras and thus their selves being affected by others. But we cannot do this, we cannot stay away from others, so we need to get into the habit of cleansing and grounding ourselves at least once a week. Grounding helps remove this debris in aura which we have unintentionally picked up from others. It is like earthing electricity!

How to ground yourself

I have written about cleansing in my earlier posts, using lemons, sea-salt, peacock feathers etc. Cleansing by itself is a good start but for a complete package, grounding is a must. This is how you should go about it. It works for everyone.

So do ground yourself preferably on a Tuesday or a Saturday, or if not possible whenever you are feeling relaxed and have 15 minutes to yourself.

  1. Prepare your room, it should be clean and pleasing, put on some light fragrance, sandalwood, lavender or whatever you like. Dim the lights. Switch off your phone.
  2. Wear loose comfortable clothing, loose your hair if you have tied them, remove your shoes and socks and sit on a straight backed chair. Lightly massage your soles and feet for a minute or so, get the circulation working, you are going to connect to the earth via your sole chakras so get them active.
  3. Sit with your back and neck straight. Rest your palms on your knees and keep both your feet flat on the floor slightly separate from each other. Close your eyes.
  4. Breathe deeply for a bit and relax. When you breathe your abdomen should move in and out, not your chest.
  5. Now focus in between your eyebrows, at the third eye/ajnya chakra. Visualize your body filled with gold-silver light from the Universe.
  6. Visualize roots coming out from the soles of your feet, piercing the floor, the crust of the earth and going down, down till they reach the diamond at the centre of the earth. This massive, huge diamond with gold-silver energy, gleaming and shining, very beautiful, very strong, the soul of the Earth.
  7. Your roots have now touched this diamond and linked you with the soul of the Earth. She is your mother and loves you very deeply.
  8. Now request her to help you, feel your request. Feel all the negative stuff, brown/black/dark red muck going out from you, from your roots and to the massive diamond. Feel all her energies of love, strength and beauty coming up from the diamond to you. Feel your aura expand and become even more brilliant. Feel gratitude and love in your heart for your Earth Mother and her love for you.
  9. Now your roots start coming back, through the crust of the earth, through the floor they go back into your feet. You have disconnected from the Earth.
  10. Now visualise your aura as a pearl, gold-silver and you at the center of this pearl. Hold on to this image for a few minutes and enjoy this moment with yourself.
  11. Then come back to the mundane world, open your eyes.

Ideally grounding should be done when you are standing barefoot on the ground, slightly moist ground, or grass law, or the wet sea beach sand. But in our daily lives we are always wearing shoes or so busy that we cannot go to a park or the sea beach, or the open spaces available to us may not be clean enough that we dare remove our shoes. So do it at home as above and it will be equally effective. You can even do a quick grounding in your office also if you are feeling stressed out, like during your lunch break. And always remember Intention is everything. If you intend for it strongly enough, it will happen.

So do your energy work and help yourself first. Ideally do both cleansing and grounding together, first cleansing then grounding, will take you around 30mins. I think 30 mins per week is something that you can definitely give for your own self. Invest time and energy in your own self because if you do not do it, no one else will!

 

How to ground yourself

Paraffin wax or beeswax candles?

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My friend with her camphor air freshener! Now this post is on the other part of the pollution that she was creating in her house. Paraffin wax tea light candles!

Paraffin wax or beeswax candles?

Its very fashionable these days to have tea light candles in pretty candle holders in your house. They create a cozy feeling with the pretty golden light and also can be used for making your room smell and feel fresh with essential oils, camphor etc.

But 99% of these candles are made of paraffin wax. Paraffin wax is a by product of petroleum and certainly is not what you should be burning inside of your house so frequently. It is extremely harmful and causes several problems and allergies of the respiratory system.

  1. Paraffin wax was at one time forbidden to be burnt as it is in itself toxic. It is the sludge that remains after everything including tar/asphalt is removed from crude petroleum.
  2. Then scientists discovered bleaching agents. So chemicals like acrolyn are added to it, which release carcinogenic toxins such as benzene and toluene on burning.
  3. Some more additions to improve its look ans shelf life – Acetone, Trichlorofluoromethane, Carbon Disulfide, 2-Butanone, Trichloroethane, Carbon Tetrachloride, Tetrachloroethene, Chlorobenzene, Ethylbenzene, Styrene, Xylene, Phenol, Cresol and Cyclopentene … I think if you cannot pronounce it better not burn it in your house!
  4. Finally the candle maker companies add various other chemicals to improve texture and burning properties. Also add artificial dyes for color and synthetic fragrances to create the mood scents. Even more chemicals to be burnt then.
  5. Finally the soot produced by paraffin wax remains inside your house, your AC filter and your lungs, permanently.

So what do you do now? There is realistically only one option left, Beeswax. Do buy 100% pure beeswax from a local beekeeper or reputed sellers and make your own candles at home. Making candles is quite easy. There are several websites to help you out. You get the candle forms pre-wicked and you just need to carefully melt and pour the beeswax in them and let cool. Or buy 100% pure beeswax candles from a reputed seller. I make my own beeswax candles and here are the benefits.

  1. A totally awesome fragrance of honey when you burn it. It is obviously natural and not chemical based. It even feels so pure, like I could eat it!
  2. Burning beeswax releases negative ions. This is so ultra important that there are negative ion generators sold in the market these days. See, all pollutants and allergens are positively charged particles. When these positively charged particles enter our bodies they cause harm. So what do your beeswax negative ions do? They stick to these positively charged bad stuff and neutralises it. You get cleaner and safer air around you.

Bees are such wonderful insects, beeswax, honey, pollination for fruits and food, everything is thanks to these little industrious workers. Really our civilisation rests on their tiny wings!

 

Paraffin wax or beeswax candles?

Natural Camphor and its energy

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Yesterday I went to one of my friend’s house and found that she was poisoning herself and her family with her new camphor air freshener. These air fresheners are really good, the tea-light candle heats the camphor crystals and the crystals slowly sublime releasing the aromatic molecules found in the camphor creating a freshness in the environment. But my friend was not burning real camphor, she was burning an artificial substitute of camphor and with a paraffin wax tea light. Both pollutants of the worst degree. This post will be on camphor and the next on wax. It was such a facepalm moment, a well-educated person doing this extreme silliness!

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Pure camphor costs about Rs 1500-2000 /kg and synthetic camphor substitutes sold as “camphor” cost about Rs 100/kg.

So about camphor, karpur. In most Indian households who perform daily puja, we burn a piece of camphor with a “Karpur Arti”. This burning camphor piece is waved over the Gods and taken around the house and everyone bows to it. I think now most households are using this same artificial substitute of camphor in their daily Artis. Its horrifying.

Camphor is the resin of the camphor laurel, Cinnamomum camphora. It is a natural product of a tree. When you burn it, it burns cleanly and has a very distinctive fresh smell. It is highly medicinal and is edible. Some south Indian dishes have a tiny bit of camphor put in it for the taste, delicious! Now whenever you buy camphor it should be clearly marked, “edible camphor”. It can be further marked as bhimseni camphor,  baras camphor, Patri camphor, Nagi camphor, Malay camphor, Sumatran camphor, Borneo camphor, etc but it should be “edible” written on the pack. That will ensure that you are buying the real natural camphor. It is available as irregular crystals which are flat and somewhat transparent.

camphor bhimseni
Natural edible camphor

Now to why burn it in front of your puja ghar. Camphor when burns emits quite a huge chunk of energy. This energy is absorbed by your palm chakras when you wave your hands over the arti and it helps speed up your chakra system. Natural camphor pieces have a white gold aura. Then again genuine natural camphor has really a lot of medicinal properties, listed below are a just few of them.

  1. purifies the surrounding air by destroying harmful bacteria and viruses and improves the air quality.
  2. keeps insects and mosquitoes away
  3. has a medicinal effect on the respiratory system and is good for the lungs.
  4. has a medicinal effect on the skin too, stops skin from itching.
  5. added to massage oils to release pain from arthritis and muscle aches etc.
  6. added to hair oils to get rid of dandruff etc.

So as you can see our ancestors were quite smart when they added “karpur arti” in our daily routine. This ensured that we got our daily dose of camphor goodness and lived a better quality of life in a better quality of environment.

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synthetic dangerous chemical

But now we have those businessmen who have developed artificial camphor. The raw material is oleo pine resin, extracted from pine trees. From this comes turpentine, and from this comes alpha pinene which is used to make synthetic camphor. This product has no place in our daily lives. This product is opaque and you will get it in the markets in neatly packed and embossed cubes like the photo below. Burning this will not give you the benefits but just add problems. When you burn this you get a liquid residue which further burns. Now our businessmen went one step ahead and added the following and more to this synthetic camphor chemical.

  1. Hexamine – is a carcinogen and releases formaldehyde on burning, is a skin irritant causes dermatitis. Leaves no residue on burning.
  2. Hexamethylenetetramine – can cause nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal disturbances and even kidney damage in the long run.
  3. Wax – it is a petroleum product, and that says it all.

So finally, if you do want to use camphor for your artis or as a room freshener, spend a more money and buy it from a reliable supplier to get a guaranteed natural product. The artificial substitute will just damage your bodies and poison your home’s environment.

 

Natural Camphor and its energy
Karpur arti