<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uqZthCm_TiIh3KhVnzm4jUHVVUEMaEvq/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> We're going on to the story of another Mahasiddhi today. So go back to your Mahasiddhi list in reading one. There is a yogi named Charpatti. Say Charpatti. And Charpatti means the whip. And this is a story of, we're going backwards now. We went from Mathendra to Gauraksha to their lamas. And now we're going backwards to Mathendra's guru, who is Charpati. Charpati was living in a certain village in India. And there was a very wealthy man there who had many, many flocks of cattle. I mean, he was very, very rich. And his father died. And so he arranged a big banquet over the length of a week or maybe even a little bit longer than a week. And he invited everybody from the entire district to come to this beautiful banquet. And he had all sorts of delicacies. And everyone was talking about this. This was the biggest thing that had happened in their town in hundreds of years, this big banquet that the herdsmen threw. And they didn't invite Charpatti. Charpatti was a yogi living in the forest next to this man's house. So it's a tradition that you go, after you do the ceremonies for death in India, you go and you take the body to the Ganges River and you burn it. And then you enter the river yourself. And so the whole entire family went to the Ganges River to do this purification practice. But the young wife of the herdsman, she just had a baby. So she stayed home with the baby to take care of the house. And she was home in the house, and suddenly Yogi Charpati appeared before her, just out of thin air. And he said, please, can I have some of this nice food also? And she was afraid, because she knew her husband wouldn't like it if she gave the food to this Yogi. And he said, don't worry. If your husband gets angry at you, or if his mother, because in India, I don't know if you know this, This is still the case. The daughter always moves in with the, the wife always moves in with the husband's family, right? So the wife becomes the slave of the mother-in-law. Always, always. This is a tradition in India. You know, and like, you're not afraid. I mean, it's bad enough that you have this arranged marriage and you've never even met the guy. You've only got a picture. But you're terrified of the mother-in-law. You know, you're looking more at the picture of the mother-in-law than you are of the guy. Because you know that, like, she's going to rule your life for the, you know, until she dies. You know, and you're trying to figure out, is she going to be nice to me? Or is she going to really boss me around? And, you know, there's been some really bad horror stories about mother-in-laws terrorizing daughter-in-laws. And so she was just as scared of her mother-in-law as she was of her husband. And she said, oh, the mother-in-law won't like it either if I feed you. And he's like, don't worry, if either of them get angry at you, you can go to my hut. You can just come over to my house. And he points in the forest, and there's this little thin waft of smoke coming up from the forest. He's like, that's my mata. That's my hermitage. And you can just follow the smoke and come to my house. And she said, okay, okay, you convince me. Have as much food as you want. And he ate quite a bit of the food. He ate almost all of the food. And they had a nice Dharma conversation. He taught her the holy teachings while he was eating, which was nice. And he left. And then the mother-in-law comes home. And of course, you know the story. She gets really angry at the wife for giving away all this food. And the wife gets angry back, and she leaves. And she goes to Charpati's house. She's like, well, he told me I could just leave and go away if he got mad at me. So she takes her infant son and she goes to the house of the yogi. And Charpati greets her very warmly and says, oh, great, you've arrived. And he sprinkles this holy water on her head and turns her into stone. Her and her infant son into stone, into a stone image of the Buddha. You know, so they're meditating, both of them. She and her infant son are now stone images of the Buddha. Now you never have to worry about eating again. he says. So then the husband comes home, mom, what'd you do? You know, what'd you do to my wife? Where is she? And finally gets out of her that they had a fight and that she went to Charpati's house. So the husband follows her to Guru Charpati's house. And he does the same thing with the husband. He sprinkles holy water over his head and turns into stone. So now there's three Buddha images, and he places them on a platform. And then slowly, one by one, each of the friends and relatives of this wealthy herdsman come to Charpati's house looking for them. He turns 300 of them into stone images of the Buddha. Then the son, the infant son of the herdsman, starts to get the signs of the eight great cities, the eight great attainments. This is like worldly spiritual powers, like being able to fly in the sky, or being able to see very, very great distances, or being able to go underground as if you were swimming in water. All these kind of cities. The king of the whole region hears about this place, hears about these people, and comes and builds a temple for all these Buddha statues. And then yogis start to come over, you know, all over India, start to come to this place because it becomes a place of power. And they say that the yogis are meditating in the temple, and whenever they have a bad thought, one of the stone images reaches out and smacks them. I think it would be great, you know, every time I had a bad thought, someone just smacked me. You know, it would be really good conditioning. You know, you would never lose your concentration in meditation. So, the moral of this story, I mean, the metaphorical meaning of this story, is that the idea, first of all, of Shaktipat, you know, where the girl would just come and lay their hands on you, And suddenly you would go into a deep state of meditative concentration. And this is what the idea of turning someone into stone means. He took people who were totally centered on the worldly things. They were really into this feast and they were really into material things like wealth and cows. Gathering things for themselves of this world. And he turned them into yogis who totally withdrew from the world into their own minds. And this is the idea of a stone statue. And they have this phrase in Tibetan, like Dorje Kuh, which is like the holy body of the diamond. And it's the idea of getting into a total stillness of your mind. And reaching a state of petrification almost. Where not only does your body stop and not only do all of your outer senses withdraw, but even your breath would stop. And they have these traditions of yogis who go into these caves that don't have enough air. just to induce these states where the yogi just completely stops, even breathing, and goes into a very, very deep state of meditative stillness. Can we have a hand? Can you have a hand? A little piece of chapati. I'm going to read you a little bit from this is something again from John Brady's project that we got last week which is a little bit of a selection from Chagpati so just to feel his state of mind it's called the full name of the text this and it means the way in which the world of the four elements has formed. And then it says Take an honest look at yourself. Where has your mother gone off to? And where has your father gone? You know, we see many, many students. I've been teaching for many years. And people come to me and they ask me for advice. Or they say, you know, how could I improve my meditation? Or how could I get deeper into my yoga? And then I just look at them. And then sometimes I think, this person, it's too early. You know, it's not time for this person. And I give some answer, because you can't just say, I'm not going to talk to you, you know. So I say, you know, try to get up in the morning and go to Jiva Mupti, you know. They have a four o'clock class. You know, they now have a meditation class every morning, starting next week, eight o'clock a.m. I think it's John Brady and Lizette Garcia from Diamond Mountain. Raise your hand. Yeah, yeah. So they're going to start meditating every morning here. 8 o'clock? Is it 8 to 8.15? The last half hour is eating maple-colored donuts. So 8 to 9. Every morning, starting next week. But then in my mind, I think, I think they'll be back when someone dies. You know? I always think that. I'm like, they'll be back when someone dies. And I got a call today. John took a call today from a person in North Carolina who, you know, came to class and got all excited for a week and then didn't come for a long time. And now they call me, you know? And I'm like, I know why they called. He doesn't have to tell me why they called. His daughter is fatally ill. His daughter is in the hospital. Can I pray for his daughter? And then, I know he won't really do anything unless she passes away. This happened in Tibet. Milarepa's student, he was a, what's his name? Gampopa? Gampopa. He was married, and he was trying to practice. And he couldn't do it very well. And then one day his wife died. then her uncle came and he wanted to tell Gampapa how sorry he was and Gampapa was like, now I can practice you know and the uncle got angry and chewed dirt in his face you know but then Gampapa did practice and got very serious so I watch people, I wait sometimes it takes 10, 15, 20 years I wait until enough people die around them hopefully they don't die first, you see and everyone around us he would have said, where has your mother gone? where has your father gone? and then slowly, one by one, they die and then at some point it strikes you that this is the way it's going and this is the way it will go so he's saying try to think about it before it happens, try to realize Babong Rinpoche used to give talks like this and he'd say, who would be the last one in the room to die? Which one of us will go last? You have to think like that. So what will happen if you think about it? Then he gets his next verse. Take a good look at the world and the world you see is but a dream. So suppose you become a big shot. What's it all mean if people are impressed, much less if you're just a nobody. And he's saying, you know, you can become famous like the man in the story who owned the house. He was very wealthy. In Tibet, when I first met the refugees, I studied with a man named Marlam Changza. And the first thing he told me was, I was a big man in Tibet. You know, I'm like, okay. I had 900 sheep, you know. I'm like, oh. that was the thing how many sheep do you have how many cows do you have and then you're a big man and then he had walked out of Tibet and he died on a porch in India I was there and that's all that's the end of his story nobody knows about it nobody knows his name and that won't be the same for all of us backside Better to get some rags from the trash and sew them into some clothes and take a begging bowl and go. Drop by once in a while in the better spots and towns. Get good at asking for spare change. This is talking about ancient yogis and monks' custom. and people know, but these robes have these little patches on them. And we're required to put these patches on the robes. Like we take a good piece of cloth and then we cut it up and we patch the cloth. And what it means in the old days, yogis and monks were required to take their clothing from the garbage and then sew it together. We weren't allowed to use a piece bigger than your forearm. And then you were supposed to sew it up and make clothes. You were not allowed to buy clothes or take them. You were required to take them out of the garbage. Other people's leftovers, right? And then go to the towns and for your livelihood, beg, beg for food, beg for money. And this is a bhikshu. The Buddhist monk's name is bhikshu, beggar. So, we, you know, when I say something like that, or we say, come to Diamond Mountain, and I always have to say three years or six months or three months or a couple weeks if you like right, for retreat why do I have to say that? because people get nervous you see, if you say three years or one year or six months, then people get nervous they're like, well how am I going to live? you know, like and then we all tend to take some comfort or we take some kind of we feel security to have a job, to have a family, to live in a city where all the buildings are very big and strong. There's a subtle subconscious security. Then when one fell down, something broke the whole security feeling of these buildings. Now it doesn't seem so comforting. It seems almost scary, because then they would fall over. And the whole feeling has changed. A yogi takes security in their practice. You see? There is no security in money. I have a very close friend, very, very, very wealthy, who just wrote me, come visit me when you're in New York, I got cancer, they took out my tonsils, they're both cancerous, I'm having radiation. And very, very wealthy, in the most expensive building in New York, and begging me to come visit them, you see, because it isn't security to have a... They have the nicest penthouse in New York. It doesn't help. And they have all the money to pay the doctor, right? And it doesn't... That is not a kind of security. To think that he's giving up his security by walking away, charpati, into the forest. It is more intelligent and it's more security to give away what you have, to help others with what you have. And then you're assuring your future. You see, people talk about karma, karma blah blah. Do you believe in karma? Yeah! So, so why don't you give away what you have? Jesus said that, right? Somebody came to Jesus and said, How do you get to heaven? And he said, Moses' commandments. Are you practicing Moses' commandments? He says, yeah, yeah, I know about them. And then Jesus said, but one more thing. He said, what? He said, give up all your stuff, follow me. And in the Bible, in the New Testament, the guy says, he can't do it, and he walks away. And you never hear of him again, you see. He can't do it. He just turns away and he walks away and you never hear anything about him again. It's in the Bible. So, there is no security in the things that seem to give security. And there's all the security in the things that don't seem to give security. You see what I mean? Give away as much as you can. Take care. Focus on other people. Do your yoga practice. Commit yourself to it. Devote yourself to it. Even if it seems to cost you your normal work and perhaps relationships that you value, because then you are really helping people. If you can learn how to overcome death and old age, which is the subject of tonight's class, right? We're supposedly, if we ever get to tonight's class, we are supposedly, we are going to talk about asanas, which supposedly slow down your aging and actually stop death. supposed to stop death. So, if you could concentrate on that, and not worry so much about worldly security, which is not security, that's what I'm saying, that would be higher security. That would be, people who have really committed themselves to those practices feel very secure all day. They feel very secure all day. They have like a security that even death cannot take away from you. the last one, di tabuyi jepayi jitenkun na gyawatok because that, by the way, is the way to become the king of the world. He says, you want to become king of the world, then just give away what you have to the world. And don't worry about your own security. And that's a true security. Thank you. So we're on reading 3 page 7 verse 19 The first asana Slip the soles of both your feet firmly between thigh and calf. Sit in a balanced way with your body straight. This then is called the auspicious pose. So, swastikasana, or the auspicious pose, it's actually su-asti-ka, right? So, you guys know what su is, right? Su means good. It comes in the words, do you remember? Sue. Su... Su plus, can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me? Sort of, I'll talk like this. Su plus Asti, what's a T? plus ka. So su comes in, it's from a word esu, a root esu, which means good, right? And we get the word euphonic and eurythmics from that, right? Then asi just means it is. and then ka is it just personifies the word like makes it into a person like a kshetra is a field and a kshetra ka is a farmer So it's like the ER of English So you could say the one for ka here So the one who is good So that means auspicious pose, right? The good pose And in this case, auspicious means firm It's like a stable Firm or stable the the symbol of aspastika is this right and you know unfortunately we have this terrible history where somebody has used it for a really bad purpose but in ancient times this was a very positive symbol this was a very beautiful symbol of long life because it meant stable. It meant stay for a long time. When lamas teach, they put four of these symbols on each of the corners of their throne to ask the teacher to stay. And when you go into a long retreat, there is a tradition to take this symbol, put it underneath your meditation seat and then never move that seat for the whole six months, year, three years that you're going to be there. You don't move your seat. You draw this symbol underneath. You draw it either with a piece of white chalk or you use rice and you just make this little symbol. And it's this symbol like you are now grounded to the core of the earth and you are not going to get up off this meditation seat until you reach your goal. And it's a very strong, it's a very strong symbol of, of stability, especially for, um, for meditation. They also put it on the, the foundation of buildings when they're about to construct something. They, um, they put it underneath the, all the construction. They find a way to put this symbol underneath the building so it'll stay Hopefully they've done it with the rest of the buildings in New York. So, this is a pose, mostly a meditative pose, right? Of a foundation. You're supposed to, you know, sit cross-legged, basically, but tuck your toe between your calf and your thigh on the opposite side here. So your two heels are resting above each other, right? And your two feet are tucked in between your thigh and your calves. And the reason that they tuck the toes into the thighs and the calves is to make it a more stable, grounded seat. You guys can try it if you want. You know, we were talking about these asanas. They're like mudras, right? They're like what we were talking about at the beginning of class. If you put your body in a certain position and your mind is tuned to it, you can listen to the movement of the inner winds from the position of the body. And it becomes a mudra for you. But it's really, really difficult to talk about these things in words. in fact it's one of the reasons why it was an oral lineage for so many years for so long in the history of this tradition because you pick up a book on Tibetan asanas or on Indian asanas like these and you try and translate it there's no way you can do it from the book you have to have a living master show you exactly what they're talking about when they say put your feet between your thigh and your calf, right? And you have to be next to a living master guiding you. The ideal situation in ancient India is you would have a master who would be guiding you one-on-one, and they would be teaching you these asanas privately. And that's what happened. It passed down from teacher to student one-on-one, or maybe two on one, you know, but not in a group of 50 people in an asana class. So it was very different in the ancient days. So this is a meditation pose, and it's a pose that is very easy. You know, it's not one of the most challenging poses in the world, And it's one of those poses that you can just do at any point during the day. You know, it's like what we call Chulam Ginaldor in Tibetan. You are now yogis, and your responsibility is to work with your channels. I mean, you've, just by virtue of, you know, being in this class, you've gained this responsibility. to protect your channels and to nurture them in any way possible so that you can reach your goal. It's not like you just go to yoga class for one hour a day or one hour every three days out of the week and then forget about asanas for the rest of your day. You have to be mindful when you go to work and you're sitting in front of a computer. It would be great if you got one of those armless chairs at work and you just sat in swastikasana all day long. Because what it does is it opens up the hip area and it triggers the muladhara chakra, which triggers the swadhisthana chakra. And things are happening that you don't realize are happening in this pose. And all you have to do is put yourself in it and then forget about it. And if you sit in the proper way, your back is completely straight, which is incredibly important. As yogis, we should never sit like this. You know? You should never see yourself like this. This is you typing on the computer. You know, you have to find a place in your house where you could sit like this and type on the computer, where it's like high enough that you don't squish like this, you know? So you build your furniture in your house to correspond to your channels. You know, you're no longer shopping for looks here. You have to build the furniture in your house to correspond to your body and how comfortably that will make you sit. Because you are a yogi and you have to sit like a yogi all day long. You know, you have to sit with your back straight all day long because it's going to influence your central channel. It's going to influence the winds coming through the channels. And if you sit in a cross-legged position, that's also going to influence the chakras down there. In Tibet, they don't distinguish between... Does everybody know where the Muladhara chakra is and where the Swadhisthana chakra is? How many people don't know? Okay. So the Muladhara chakra is called the root chakra, and it's at the base of the perineum. The perineum, what? Where's the perineum? I was just going to get to that. The perineum is the vagina in the ladies, and it's between the scrotum and the anus in the male, right? So that's the perineum. And the Muladhara chakra is about like an inch and maybe an inch and a half up from there. Right? Directly in the center of your body. Then the Swadhisthana chakra, you can actually feel. You put your... Well, one way to do it is to go from your navel and go four finger widths from your navel. And then put your finger there and then go corresponding, that corresponding spot at the back. The other way to do it is to go from the very base of the spine and go about two finger widths up. Maybe three finger widths up from the base of the spine. And you're here. That should hit the same place, four finger widths down and three finger widths up. And you can just press on the back of that and that's the Swadhisthana chakra. Like about, it's close, it's very, very close to the back. It's about half an inch from where you're pressing in, into the body. And the Tibetans don't distinguish between those two chakras because one of them always triggers the other one. If you trigger the Muladhara chakra, you're automatically triggering the Swadhisthana chakra. So they don't even have separate words for it sometimes. Sometimes they just say Sangne, And that's that whole general area. You know, there are three different chakras down there. And they don't always distinguish. Right? So any kind of sitting position like this is going to trigger those chakras. In a very good, healthy way. One of the most important things to say when we're talking about the asanas and we start, you know, talking. Is that you need to adjust the asanas to fit your own body. if you you try this thing where you're sticking your foot into here and you're sticking your other foot in here and you're falling over and it's not a stable swastika pose it's not a grounding pose for you for your own body then don't put your toes in between your thigh and your calf just leave them out sit in the way that's comfortable for you, that's grounding for you adjust to fit your own body or if you need a cushion behind you. The Tibetans have a tradition where the bottom should always be higher than the knees. So they always put a cushion underneath the body. The Indian yogis have a tradition never to use a cushion. Like Keshe Michael doesn't use a cushion. And that's another tradition. You have to find what works for you, what's comfortable for you. so this is a very simple pose and it's building up to the higher poses there's a Tibetan it's obviously a meditative pose this pose is obviously a pose of starting the asana practice I like to think of this as when you're doing your prayers and when you're doing your your intention at the beginning of your practice. You're in swastikasana, right? And it's nice that he starts the poses this way. And you do a little meditation at the beginning. In Tibet, they have a pose called the seven-point posture of vairachana. And they've got seven different qualifications for a meditation pose. The first one is your legs, which they say it either means to be in full lotus or half lotus or cross-legged, some sort of cross-legged position. Then your eyes, for meditation, they're neither open nor closed. They're sort of like this. They're like facing down, almost closed, and you're looking kind of at a space around here, so everything else is blurry. The reason they do that is if you keep your eyes open, you'll be totally distracted about what's around you. And if you keep your eyes closed completely, your body thinks that when you close your eyes, you're going to sleep, so it makes you tired. in the oral tradition, if you get distracted with your eyes slightly open like this, then just close your eyes, and that's okay too. Then the third qualification for a good meditation posture is you have to keep your back completely straight. They say that the spine is like a stack of coins, you know, one by one, and you should be completely stretched up, and then you should be totally relax at the same time. It's like you raise it and then you stack them and then you just rest in there. And that also means there's some sense of balance between sitting like this and sitting like this. You know, the back is a very tricky thing to get your body completely balanced in a state of meditation, where you can just relax and let go of your senses completely. You want to be like that stone. You want to be turned to stone when you meditate. You want to be like those people that went into stone Buddhist statues. In order to do that, you have to get your body in a completely balanced state, because otherwise, when you forget about your body, It's going to fall somewhere. So you have to be so aware of where your torso is balancing. Within this foundation, this swastikasana. Then the fourth qualification, your shoulders have to be level. They can't be like this or like this. And your head, it should be, the chin should be level with the ground. If you raise your head too high, your mind will start wandering. And if you raise your chin too low, you'll start getting sleepy. So, the art of keeping your chin level with the floor. Your jaw should be relaxed and your teeth and lips should just be kept in a natural position. That's number six. And then your tongue should be pressed to the roof of your mouth, like resting on your teeth. And that just helps you keep from salivating and having to swallow. Because once you get into a really deep meditation, Yeah. If you get into a really deep meditation and you have to swallow, it's really disruptive. It sounds like a big Mack truck. You know, and you're totally off your object. There's an eighth one that Geshe Michael is mentioning to me, whispering to me on the side here, which is your breath. It's called the seven-point posture of Vairachana, but there's always an eighth one attached to it. And traditionally in Tibet, they always count the breaths by breathing out first and then breathing in second, and that's one breath. And that's completely contrary to what we normally do. When we say take a breath, everybody always goes, you know. You always breathe in first and then breathe out second. But there are very deep reasons why it's better to breathe out first and to breathe in second. It has an influence on your inner body by doing that. There's an idea of withdrawal. Our goal is to go in and to withdraw all the winds into the center. And so when you breathe out first and then you breathe in second, you're left with the withdrawal at the end, you know? And that's a very good seed to plant in your mind. Just by breathing differently, you can plant that seed in your mind. The next verse, page 8, on the third reading. This is called the Gomuka pose. And Go means cow. And the English word cow comes from it. Bovine comes from it. Mukha means a snout. like a dog's snout. It can mean mouth also. It's related to the word moksha meaning freedom because of the mouth being an opening through which you could free things. I used to wander around the desert doing three-year retreat and look at the cows. We had cows, free-range cows would stop by. And I'd try to see why was this post called Gomukha. And I need a model. I have a model. Where's my model? I have robes on, so I can't really do all this stuff. Yeah, can you come? This is Anna Tom. He didn't know he was going to be the model until we were walking in. Do you want your pictures? Because we're on that stuff. I'm picking you. Your cow pictures. Oh, yeah. Is it an overhead? No, yeah, it should be an overhead thing. Okay. Can you sit right here and face them? How about... Is that okay? Right there? And face them. And this is just a trick to get into this pose, which I either learned in Kansas or Baranasi, I don't remember. But you get up on all fours like you're doing a cat pose. Then you cross your knees. And then you settle back down. that's just a trick to get into this pose it helps me a lot and this is a classic Gomukha so one foot is off to one side the other foot is off to the other side hopefully the knees are touching we'll see how long he can stay in it and it opens up your hips especially the outside of your hips everyone after they get around 45 they start to have hip problems and this keeps blood circulating in your hips, especially outer hips. In India, people sit this way for lots of common tasks. For example, I play sitar, and when I was taught to play sitar, you have to sit in the Gomukha asana. So I started when I was like 18 or 19, and you use your left foot there to hold the gourd of the instrument, and then you prop your elbow up on your other thigh. So this is a very common way to sit in India. It puts your muladhara pressure down flat on the ground. It's hard to get that area down flat on the ground, especially for guys. And Gomukha is good for that. I have some theories. I went on the web to find cow faces and mouths. I don't know. Rob thinks he put it in my bag they're going to try to find why is khaogamoka and it creates a resonance the reason musicians like to sit in this position in India is that each of the chakras has a note of the scale sare gama badanisa in Sanskrit each one of the chakras has a note in the scale, which is tuned to the scale. So when you play music, and if your muladhara is touching the ground, it helps when you hit certain notes, then it resonates in the chakras. So this is a nice pose for playing music if you have a chance. There's another thing about this pose, is that and we'll start talking about this, but we've been working for the last two years to try to relate the Indian presentation of the channels and the Tibetan presentation of the channels to the Chinese presentation of the meridians. And we've been doing a lot of work on that with Chinese masters in Vancouver and people in Arizona. And we're going to China in June, July, and August to work more on that. But when you take this post, then there are channels that run along the outside of your legs. The leg in Chinese medicine, I'm not a great master, but the leg is divided into three parts. The front has two meridians associated with it. The side has one each, inside and outside. And then the back has two meridians associated with it. So as we go through our day, some of those meridians are never opened. The way we normally sit in America and the way we do our activities, the way we even walk, some of the meridians are never stretched and never opened. In the Tibetan tradition, Buddhist tradition, which is the Gauraksha's friend Naropa, right? the central channel comes down to the groin and then splits into two channels and goes down to the end of the feet. But it's not much talked about in the Tibetan tradition. So this pose helps with the outside, outside of the leg, which I think is gallbladder, right? Inside of the leg is liver. Outside of the leg is gallbladder. Oftentimes the name of the meridian doesn't have much to do with what it does for you. But this helps the circulation of kravya in your body. So this pose is good for that. It's also a preparation for getting to Padmasana, lotus pose later. The lotus pose is the denuma. It's the climax of the poses. That's where he wants to take you. Yogi Svatmarama is taking us to the lotus pose. So he's setting us up, he's preparing us. by doing these other poses. If you also like, you can take the classic Gomukhasana by clasping the hands behind the back. I can never remember. Right on top and right on top? No, other way. It's opposite. Opposite leg on top. Dharmamitra has a nice thing where he says, push your head back against your elbow and it increases the stretch. For people who can do it easily, I think that helps. And then you open up heart chakra. You open up... We'll talk about it, but most people think of the heart chakra as being pasted on the front of your chest. And really it's like a half inch off the back. So this is very helpful for that. Okay, you can release all that. It's nice to boss him around in the outside. We're going to go on to the next one. You have to stay here. If you're uncomfortable, you can release it. But okay. We're on page nine. Eka-param-tataikaismin vinyased runi-sthiram. Itta-rasmin-stata-chow-dum virasana-iturittam. This is called virasana. You can say warrior's pose. In Tibetan, it's bow. And vira comes... It's related to English word virile and virulent, meaning strong, like that. And it means a strong... There are many words in Sanskrit for a man or a human. Vira is one that means a strong person or a warrior. And there's a lot of argument about what this pose is. The oldest group of asana illustrations that I'm aware of, a set of asana illustrations, is very late. It's like several hundred years after Yogi Svatmarama. It's the Mysore Palace illustrations, which is the tradition that Sri Patavi Joyce and Master Iyengar came out of. but these are very late. But in that set of illustrations, Girasana is done with both legs facing the back in the way that you might do it nowadays. Some northern schools, like the Ghar School of Yoga, and there's a tradition in North India to do it this way. So in Tria retreat, we did it both ways, and we experimented with which would be better. And we found this to be a very comfortable position for... I don't know if you would meditate so much in it, but it's very good for doing mantras. So oftentimes in retreat, you might sit and do mantras. He's got one foot, is next to his hip, facing back, and then the other leg is in a half lotus. Okay? It's like half virasana for the first, the left leg, and the other one is crossed. Half downward. Yeah, if you want to. You know, he's going to turn around. Maybe you can sit. Some sort of rug here for Anacol. Because he's going to need a little more room. Yeah, that would be great. Because you're going to have to go on your back in a couple seconds. It's a very, very nice pose. Very comfortable to stay for long periods of time. If you read the verse and you read the text, what it's saying is that you have to switch it. You have to do equal time on each side. So you'll find out, you can do maybe a half hour on one side, and then you switch it, and you do about half an hour on the other side. This has an interesting effect. If you look at him, if you think about it, the muladhara is being stimulated because one thigh is opened. So his one thigh, the one that's in a half lotus, is open. And he's getting warmed up for doing a full lotus. So it's a good position if you can't do a full lotus. This is a very comfortable position to do for learning to do a full lotus. So in retreat, we did this for maybe a couple hours while we were doing mantras. And then we would do full lotus for our meditations. Because in my experience, more than an hour of full lotus is pretty uncomfortable for almost anyone. Then the other leg is very hard during your normal course of your day to get any kind of stretch along the quadriceps in the front of the thigh. There's almost no position in your normal day which will stretch the top of the thigh. And people have trouble getting into Urdhva Dharasana, like me. Sharon once told me, it's because your quadriceps are too tight. Everyone thinks about their hamstrings when they're trying to do Uttanasana, or something like that, or Paschimottanasana. But you don't often think about stretching the front of your thigh out. And that makes all the backbends easier. There are two main channel systems happening in everyone's body. One is running along the back. The main channels are running along the back. But there's a sympathetic system of channels running along the front. that run close to the front of the skin. So here we're trying to open up that part of the leg. So it's a way in which you can do Chulang-gi-nyang-jong means, I call it George Ballantyne's thing. George Ballantyne is this great ballet teacher from New York City Ballet. And we had an opportunity to take classes with his main student, Suki Shor. in ballet classes. And she would talk about, he would encourage them in the kitchen, when they were in the kitchen, he would encourage them to put one leg up on the counter and make their toast. So they wouldn't be cooking or preparing dinner, but he would ask them, when you go home, so it wasn't just that you did ballet at the studio. He would say, find ways to do, to stretch the muscles, Find ways to develop your ballet further while you're waiting for the bus. You know, it's like while you're standing outside waiting for the bus, you would try to get into first position or something. And you would try to stay there the whole time you're waiting for the bus. In Tibetan, this is a very serious practice called Chilam Kinyaljar. It means all-day yoga. And you take positions, you learn to get into positions at work, at your office, or as you're cooking, or as you're eating, that continue to stretch the channels and open them. And then, like I've just sat this way since I went to study with the Tibetans, maybe 35 years ago. And now it's very comfortable. I can't do many asanas, but badakonasana is easy because I've been sitting cross-legged my whole adult life. So if you can do this kind of thing, it's a way to stretch the channels along the top of the leg, the top of the thigh, quadriceps. This is stomach and spleen in the meridian system, running down the front side of your leg. And then that opens up prana. And again, as Christy said, these are not so much... We give talks in Christian churches. And I say, yoga is like this. Yoga is like somebody telling you that if you did push-ups in the aisle at church, you would reach God faster. And then they look at me like I'm crazy. If you did push-ups in the aisle of church, you would reach God faster, right? But that's what we believe. That's what yoga is all about. You see, you've made a commitment to change your body into light. And every few minutes is worth something. I always tell Christi, life is made of five minutes. Life is made of five-minute chunks. So use that. You know what I mean? So even just sitting, this Virasana, It's a very pleasant... I think you should switch now. No, you have to give... Equal time. Equal time on each side. Equal time. And I just want to make a pitch for... Think about that. When you go home, think of ways you can keep your channels open all day long. With the computer, very important. We sit on the ground. We have a special table that comes up to about here. And we type like this. And then it forces your back straight all day. Your arms fall asleep, but that's okay. But it keeps your back straight all day while you're using a computer. Computers are very, very destructive to the channels. All the whole electromagnetic thing going through the computer and everything, it's very harmful for your channels. It's a necessary evil in my mind, and I use them all the time. Anything I can do with paper, I do on paper. You see, I mean, if there's any excuse to be studying on paper and not having the computer on, try to do it. And we are very careful to take breaks every hour and a half. So you can get these little alarms on your computer that go off. You shouldn't spend more than an hour and a half on the computer. I think if there are young yoga teachers here who are looking to make a contribution to yoga, I think studying the damage that's done by computers and then creating asana series which are aimed at correcting that damage for people. I think this would be a very great contribution to yoga. We don't have time to do it. But if someone were young and we're opening a studio, I think even having weekend workshops for people who are on computers constantly like programmers. At my old company, the programmers worked all night and they slept during the day. And so some kind of yoga that is designed for the damage, which people aren't really aware of now. I think in about 5, 10, 15 years, it will become evident, especially the effect of wireless on the body, to be working in a place where there are six wireless systems going and having it penetrating your body and your channels. I think it would be a great contribution. Somebody in this room, two or three people, I don't know who you are, study those things and come up with asanas which help carpal syndrome and back problems, neck problems, and then market that kind of yoga. It would be a great contribution to modern society. Okay, next one. Verse 22. GUDAM NIRUDYA GULPHABHYAM VYUDKRAM ENA SAMAHITHA KURMASUNAM PAVEDETAD ITTI YOGAM VIDO VIDUH Block your ENO region with your heels. Spread your knees wide, locked and settled for meditation. You are then in what is called by masters of the art of yoga, the turtle pose. So KURMA means turtle, right? this pose is is kind of a it's one of the disputed poses in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika it's kind of a controversial pose every book that you look in it's kind of slightly different or then you catch several books that they have the same one but they all stole the translation from the other person and it's one of those cases where the Sanskrit is just not that clear so it lends itself to interpretation and the lineage just it hasn't been passed down the oral lineage that we got Anatole will show you first you get into what's called Vajrasana the modern day Vajrasana where you're sitting on your sit bones with your two heels with your two toes. Your two big toes are sort of crossed, right, with your legs together. And then you spread your knees out to the side. So your legs are in sort of the shape of a turtle. You know, they're back behind you. You know the turtles? I don't know if you've ever seen a turtle swimming in water, but it's like this, you know, this little... So your legs are behind you like this instead of in front of you in a normal seated position. And then sometimes they even take their feet and they stick them out like this. But don't do that because it's actually quite painful. I was trying it earlier in class at home today. But the idea is that your legs are behind you And you're stretching the top part of your thigh here. You're stretching the same part of your thigh that you were stretching in Virasana, except you're now also stretching the inside of your thigh, which is directly connected to the Muladhara chakra. It's like doing a side split or something, but in a sitting position, where you can stay for an extended period of time. And it's a really interesting position because most people feel quite vulnerable in this position. You know, it's like it leaves you quite open. So it's a very interesting position mentally. It's like, for me, the difference between putting my hands like this in meditation and putting my hands like this in meditation, you know? Like, when I did this, when I'm sitting in meditation and I have my hands down on my thighs, it's almost like, and this is only my personal opinion after, you know, years of meditation, blah, blah, blah. I feel like I'm a closed circuit. Like, the energy is just going through me in a very closed way. And I've withdrawn completely. And then when I do this, and I sit in meditation like this, it feels like a very good position to ask for the blessing of the llamas. It's as if I'm opening myself to other energy coming to me, like the blessing of the llamas. If I'm visualizing the llama in front of me, I would want to be going like this, and I'd want to be soaking up the blessing. And this pose feels to me the same way. It's like a normal sitting position is like this, and you're a closed circuit. And then you open yourself up like this, and it feels like you're opening yourself up for blessings. It's very interesting. So I encourage you to try these positions, and try and see what it feels like to you energetically. Because really we can't sit up here and talk about them. The profound things will happen to you when you actually try the pose over an extended period of time and you get some sort of dawning realization about the pose yourself. We actually used this pose also when we were doing our mantras in retreat. But we used it with a pillow underneath our seat. It's like so. And this is another version of this pose. It creates less stress on the top of the thigh, and it actually presses down on the muladhara chakra with the pillow. It uses the pillow to actually press down on the muladhara chakra, which gives an entirely different result. so you have to try that too you have to try the difference between this and then using some sort of pillow, right one of my teachers even said you know, because there's a thing where you use your heel or you use something to trigger the muladhara chakra we all know where it is because we just described it, right you didn't forget already you put pressure up that chakra and it, it shoots the energy up the corresponding chakras up the spine in the back. Right. So, so one person, they were like, just put a tennis ball there, you know, just sit right down on it and like put a tennis ball there and just stimulate your Ruladara chakra and do your mantras for like an hour and a half and just sit on the tennis ball. I tried it. You know, we, we got two tennis balls in retreat. You can do these things. You can play with a tennis ball for an hour and a half sitting down, and then you can switch your positions and see what works for you because you've got a lot of time on your hands. And you're so quiet that you can actually feel what it's doing in your inner body. You're not talking. You're not watching TV. The only very exciting thing that happened was the rabbit, which would come, you know, it would come to the door for a cookie, like, once a day. That was, like, the most exciting thing that happened in our retreat. Or maybe, like, we'd see a snake, which always very much excited me and disturbed him. I always thought it was a good sign. It was like, Kundalini, you came to my door, you know. They were really big, too. They were, like, this thick and really long. And anyway, other than that, you know, most of the time they didn't come. And it was just like desert, plain desert, same picture every single day. And you don't have to look outside anymore because you know exactly what it looks like. You don't have to look around at the yurt because it's exactly the same as it was yesterday. And that's the benefit of retreating. It forces you to go inside because you're so darn bored of looking out there and seeing the exact same picture. So you sit in these new positions with your tennis ball, and you listen to your inner body. You take the time and you listen. Okay, I didn't really need you for that position, but I need you for the next one, for sure, because I'm not doing it. My excuse is that I can't talk and do it at the same time. Kesha Michael was like, you can just do all the poses. And I'm like, uh-uh. I'm in front of a room full of people who do yoga every day. I'm not going to do the poses. Okay. Okay. Padmasanam tu samstapya. Janur varantare karao. Nivesya bhumao samstapya. Vyomastham kukudasanam. Put yourself in the lotus pose. Put yourself in the lotus pose. And then slip your arms between your thighs. Uh-oh. Okay. Then slip your arms between your thighs and your calves. Plant your hands firmly on the ground and raise yourself up in the air. This is the way to pose. So while he's up there, I want to point out something. This is me, Ben. I know, just breathe, and it's all. No shaking. Can you come down and then go up? this way, facing this way. So you see how where his back is bent here? It's like just at the base of his spine, which is perfect for stimulating the inner winds at that spot. You can come down. I just wanted to show. Yeah, okay. When you feel ready. So there's a place right there where Anatole's back is bent, where they say the three main channels of the body come together. It's called Triveni, or in Sanskrit, like the convergence of the three rivers in your body, you know? And it's the central channel and then the two side channels. And it's where you would want to target to push the winds into the central channel. So it's a very important spot. So that's one of the benefits of this pose, is it's targeting that place. Of course, there's a lot to say about the lotus position. But we're going to cover that when we cover, you know, Like, we're going to the Padmasana section later. So the one thing that I will say is that when you bind the legs like this, with both legs on the thighs, the legs are actually an extension of the central channel. The central channel splits, and then it goes into the two legs. That's the reason that we have legs, is because we have these two channels. And the legs got built around the channels. So our core is being sort of drained into our legs at any given time. And now doing this, we are forcibly pushing the energy back up through the legs to our central area here, to our torso area here. The lotus position is a very powerful position. you can come down now please come down now there's a mental thing that happens with this pose where oh that's great All the weight is off your legs and feet, but you're not inverted. So it feels like you're levitating, except for that pain in your arms, right? But it feels, I mean, it gives you the sensation of what it must be like when you actually attain levitation. And the Udayana Bandha, which is like where you pull in your stomach in and up and you tighten it. Right? Does everyone know what Udayana Bandha is? Who doesn't know what Udayana Bandha is? Okay. So, do you want to demonstrate? right? This is how I had a total stripped to the bone in the class here. That's good enough, yeah? So the traditional Udayana Bandha is where you push all the air out of your body, And then you suck your lower abdomen in and up. Like almost as if you were taking your diaphragm and caressing, you know, squeezing your heart with it. It's like a hot laya, you get that yogi look of like a hollow in the body. But you can still, you can do a mild form of Vundiyana Bandha while you still breathe. Sure. Yeah, let's... See that hollow? Yeah. Yeah. He had no idea that he was going to do this tonight, So this is like really noble of him to like totally surrender himself to us. Thank you. So you do a milder form of that while you're still breathing. Where you're just taking the energy. It's almost like there's a little string attached from your muladhara chakra through your swadhisthana and up to your navel chakra. And the navel chakra is just opposite the navel. right? Like about a half inch in from your backbone. So if you put your finger like opposite your navel in the back, that's where your navel chakra would be. So you feel, you picture something pulling up from all the way from your muladhara chakra, all the way up through here and coming, you know, coming up and into your body past that area, right? And you have to do some kind of, I don't know, we called it core work the other day, right? You have to do something with your abdomen in order to even stay up there for one second. You know, you have, it forces you to engage this Uddiyana Bandha, whether you like it or not. You, can you do one more time? It forces you to engage your stomach muscles, you know, which helps Uddiyana Bandha, right? The arm strength will strengthen the upper back, which is very important for meditation. Everything here is geared around getting you in the perfect meditation posture that you could stay in, you know, for hours on end. And then the balance aspect of this pose is also really important. It influences that ability to find a state of balance when you're just sitting like this, right? If you practice doing balance postures in your asanas, you will understand the balance of the body in a way where you could automatically adjust your body so that it would be perfectly situated for a meditation posture and not too much forward and not too far back. And that entails, actually, a slight Uddiyana Bandha. You know? If you're... And that will happen naturally to you. See, you will naturally be able to get into these perfect meditation postures if you do these types of asanas, because these types of asanas are training in all the necessary qualities. You know, they're building up your Uddiyana Bandha. They're building up your sense of balance in your body. And also, a sense of balance physically helps your balance mentally. like in meditation you will be able to find a balance between too dull and sleepy and too many thoughts and too distracted you know they say it's like driving a car it's a sense of balance and it's the same sense of balance this is just the physical version of it right the is there are channels, there are meridians in the Chinese system that are particularly related to the heart in your palm area. And when you press down very, very firmly, and also here in your wrists, in the center of your wrists, and when you press down very firmly with your palms, and your wrists are stretched right there, and the whole weight of your body is on your hands, it's helping your heart. it's like massaging your heart okay that's all I have to say about this position before you see Anatole get into the next position we have to take a break so someone asked me to mention someone was at the Rubin Museum and apparently they have a special exhibit going on right now the Mahasiddhas. So you might want to drop, I'm sure it's just a coincidence. You might want to drop by the Women's Museum. We have to talk to Chuky, Tisama, and Jamie. Okay, have a nice break. I think they brought us a five crust. Really? They brought us each five crust. Aww. That's nice. This is his book. Lucky. That's a sign. I can't see you. What? This? Up hear? Look at that. Whose? Do you want to do the announcement? Yes. He wants to do the announcement. I like it. He's greedy. He's getting all the merit, you know? He's a Kaimahab. Yes. All right, we'll start. Just a brief announcement. From Monday to Saturday next week, Shri Sharon and David G. will be giving classes from 9 in the morning to 11.30 and they'll be concentrating on the poses from the Hatha Yoga for Deepakar. So, yeah, yeah. So, try to do it. Try to make it. Okay. Do homework and turn into your T.A. it's really lame if you like spend all this money and you don't get certified you know so just do it okay we got to bed at 4 last night and just do it for 2 weeks it's not going to kill you you know and you don't know how much work goes into those stupid homeworks so the least you can do is fill them out you know it's easier to do them than it is to write them trust me and again we encourage people do your homeworks with somebody else cheat on the homework go out together with somebody else next week or on the weekend make a date with somebody on the way out while you're trying to get the elevator and say would you like to do homeworks tomorrow or Sunday sometime get together and do homework together and we ask you we're encouraging you officially to ask someone you don't know on the way out if they would like to do homeworks together. And then they'll be too embarrassed to say they weren't intending to do homework. And then just go out together and sit down and the discussion between Dharma friends, the discussion between yogis is very powerful. You know, when yogis get together and talk about Hatha Yoga Pradipika. What did you hear them say? What did I hear them say? This is the most powerful way to study. It's not looking at the book, it's not even memorizing as much as talking to each other about what you heard. And it was written down by yogis who were there when the Medicine Buddha taught medicine. And they got together afterwards and they sat down and they wrote out the medical tantras. And it's very beautiful how it was done together. So there's much more. My first lama, Geshin Nandage, said if you take one pencil, you can break it easily. If you take 20 together, you can't break it. It means if you get together and do things together, just as friends, it's a lot more powerful. So please do, please get certified, do your homework, do it. Then you don't have to teach it right away. Then a year later you might want to teach it. All right. So we're on reading four, page one. Okay. Kukur tasanam, Vandhasto, Torbyam, Sambadya, Pandaram, Bhavet kurma, Uthana, Etad utha kurmatam. Lock yourself in the rooster pose. Then, link your arms to your shoulders. If you then lie back, You are in what we call... ...tuttle on its back pose. How long is it to stay there? I'm supposed to smile. Do you want to start over so you're actually on the mat? Yeah. Maybe sideways. Yeah, well, no, because then he can't roll back and forth. I want himto roll back and forth. Or, do you want to put the mat this way, and then roll back and forth? So, um, it has the same components of the, the pose we had before, where you're in padmasana, and you are putting your two arms through your legs. Oh, actually, I am going to have you do something else. By the way, if you can't get into Padmasana, you can do this pose in a gentle sort of cross-legged position and then just hold yourself up by lifting yourself off your hands. I mean, by putting your hands to the sides of your hips and lifting yourself up. It won't be as powerful a pose this way. But if you're one of those people whose knees just totally cry out in agony when you get into Padmasana, you shouldn't do Padmasana because the knees are something that you have to protect with your life if you're going to be a meditator. Because once you damage your knees, you can't get them back. You really have to watch the knees. The knees are like your tool for meditation. And you have to baby them. So if they're hurting you, move around in some other way. Adjust the posture to your own body. You know, don't kill yourself to look like Anatole. Seriously. Or if you can get into Padmasana, but you can't put your hands through your legs because your thighs are a little bit too heavy, then you can also lift yourself up in Padmasana. You can lift yourself up just with your hands to the sides of your hips. Now, it won't give you the curve at the base of your spine where the triveni is as much as it does with your hands directly in the center, like between your two legs. So it's not as powerful a pose this way. But adjust according to your needs. Okay, we'll go on to the next one. So this one, the starting position is the same, but instead of pushing yourself up onto your hands, you're rolling back onto your back. And you can even, in this pose, roll back and forth a little bit, and it massages your central channel in the back, right? And this is a familiar pose. This is like Guruji's Garvopindasana, right? And in acupressure, there's a bladder meridian that goes, Put your back to them and I'll draw on you. One and a half and then three inches from the center of your spine, two channels of the bladder meridian run down each side. Right? And the bladder meridian is a very special meridian that each of the points on the meridian relates to a specific organ in your body. So as you're rolling back and forth on your back, you're actually massaging every single organ of your body because you're massaging the bladder meridian. You know, it's very cool. And in the Chinese system, the channel that runs down the center of the back is called dumai, or governing vessel. And it goes all the way from your perineum area all the way up and around to here. And you're also massaging that, right? When you get into the pose and you actually... I think the classic position is you grab your neck here and you pull your chin straight into your chest. And this is, and then you roll back and you lie back. Well, make sure you're not falling off the end of the stage. And just stay there, right? And then you just stay and you just relax in the pose. This is one of those poses. The last pose was a strength position and you have to like exert effort the whole time you're there. This pose, once you get into it, it's like your only job is to relax. It's an interesting exercise. It's like it goes one inch at a time. You surrender to the pose one inch at a time. And this process of surrendering is very, very similar to the process of, I don't know, being around a llama, for instance. And if you learn how to surrender in this pose, you will learn how to surrender yourself to your llamas. It's the corresponding physical counterpart to the whole attitude of surrender that you need in order to become a proper vessel to receive the teachings and become a teacher yourself. You have to learn this art of surrendering. And you can practice it every single day in your asanas. And it's one of the most beautiful things about the asana practices is you get yourself into a position that might be slightly uncomfortable or even threatening to you. And you learn how to surrender, you know, the, the feeling of your chin being in your chest, it sort of resonates back to, uh, when we were in the womb, it's like this fetal position. And it's almost this incredibly calming experience to put your chin, to, to have your chin completely locked into your chest like that. Once you get over that feeling of fear, it's a completely calming pose. And once you get into that feeling of surrender to the pose, it's like going back to square one, right? Okay, I'm not told. Don't read that. Good square two, yeah. Okay. it yet. Grasp your big toes with your hands and pull them up near your ears so that you make the shape of a longbow. This one is known as the longbow. I guess the first thing to say about this one is that two traditions have developed to describe what Tanur Asana is. And by the way, if you just say it without Asana, you have to say Tanu. The R is just an added letter that's required before A. So a real Sanskrit knowing yoga teacher shouldn't say, oh, do the dhanur. It's dhanu, okay? The Sanskrit verse allows for two different interpretations, and in different parts of India, you can see different ones. You can see both of them being done. So I think this is an interesting pose in that sense. And both versions of it are very helpful. In the Mysore and in the South India, Pune area, we have studied there and we've seen people doing it one way. And you can see this one also in the illustrations of the Mysore palace. It's done this way. So in this sense, Danarasana looks like someone pulling on a bow. So I think you suggest you face it that way. And put your butt up here. And one leg is extended out all the way. I'd say left leg out. All the way. And then you hold your left toe with your left, yeah. And then you pick up your right foot and you pull it up to your ear. And then in India, they make a big deal that you have to squint your eye. Like you're about to, you're really going to shoot an arrow. So this is classic dhanurasana in most parts of South India system. You can let go anytime you want. Obviously it stretches the channels along the back of the left leg, which if you're doing a Chinese medicine system, it's urinary bladder and kidney. So it's affecting your urinary system. and urinary bladder is what you think of hamstrings. He's got a channel running all the way from the middle of his soul up his leg, up his back, up to the top of his head and then down the side of his nose. So you really, the exercise is to stretch that whole thing and think of the whole thing being stretched that way. And that's one effect that's going on and that affects the 67 different points. It's the one meridian of the 12 classic meridians that has almost twice as many points as any other meridian, so it's very helpful. Then the other, doing his left leg like that, opens up the muladhara and helps that. Then you get cross currents of prana. You can think of going from left leg to right shoulder and left shoulder down to the bottom of the right leg. So it's like, it's a very good effect. That's one way to do dhanarasana. This is also one variation. Now we'll do the other dhanarasana. I think you know, right? On your belly. Move for dhanarasana. No, just dhanarasana. And then, yeah, that's good. And you take hold of your ankles with your arms. I think one important thing that helps me a lot here, I'm not a great yogi this way, but is to move with your breath and to come up on the inhale. It helps a lot. Once you're up, it's hard to get further if you haven't done it right. So as you breathe, you reach your total, the max of your inhale at the same time that you reach the top of the curve. And again, what's interesting here is that it's not so much that his lower back is bending, it's that with the action on the shoulders that the heart chakra should be opening. So when you do it, you feel some kind of... If you feel like a pinch in your lower back, it's wrong. And that's not the point. People feel good. Oh, I got this good pinch going in my lower back. You know, and our teacher of the meridians, who is a Taoist master in... He's like the head of the Canadian Olympic team, and he's a grand, what do you call it? He has the Congress of Communist China voted him coach of the country or something. No, he has this thing. But he was very big on, he feels that people tend to bend or to bind the lower back, and the prana gets stopped there and hurt there. So he's very strict. Even when you do padmasana or any sitting pose in Qigong, you're careful not to get a crink here. He would want you to bring in your stomach and make sure this part here is straight and not like this, which he said would block the prana. So you have to be thinking. The point of having your shoulders back is that the area behind your heart would be opened more. And the bones behind your heart. David used to tell us the fact that the ribs are all connected there means it's the hardest place to open in your back. So you're tempted to open the two ends, which is your neck and your lower back. And that's not the point. You want to open the middle. Energetically, as far as the frontal channels, you see? There's channel running along the back, central channel. This is a big thing, Sushumna, right? And the Ida and the Pingala. But there's a shadow channels running along the front. There are reflection, they're called mirror channels, are running along the front of the body, frontal channels. And they don't speak much about them. Most people, when they think of their chakras, they're placing the chakras, as I said, like decals on your chest and your abdomen. They're really way in the back. The Tibetans say it's about a half inch in front of the backbone. is where all the heart channel, the heart chakra, navel chakra, and here, they call long chukikoilo, the chakra of experience, are here, about half an inch in front of your backbone, according to the Tibetan tradition. But then there's a parallel channel coming up the front. And it's in Chinese medicine, it's a conception vessel, Renmai. and the Tibetans also accept that and it would be a flow of prana either like this or like this so you get prana not only coming down the two side channels and up the central channel but you get prana coming say down the central channel and then up the frontal channel so those are two ways you can think about it when you do this pose this way dhanarasana this way you're putting acupressure on all the meridians that run down the front of the body, which are like liver is strong there, stomach meridian is strong there. Liver 14 is a big deal. When you feel your bottom ribs being shoved into the floor, according to Chinese medicine, this would be very beneficial for you, that the liver meridian is being activated. So like prana or qi, they call it qi, right? Qi is flowing through your body. and you can rock back and forth in this pose but this is the other dhanurasana I kind of like this way especially and it puts a back bend into the 15 poses of the of the Hatha Yoga Padipa what's the next one yeah you get to do Try to decide how late to keep you. Somebody told us Friday night is a good night to keep you late. I mean, we might try to catch up a little bit here, so you don't get cut short next week. Maybe just a little. It depends on how late you talk. She says if I don't talk very long, leave her. Okay. That's not what I said. This is a Machenda Asana. We'll start with right foot over the left eye. And classically, they would hold the right foot with the right hand. So twist to the left. Oh, I'm sorry. I've never taught yoga. And then it would be, hold it with your hand like that. This is the first big twist in the asanas that we've done. And what it does, according to the Tibetan tradition, this is a very Tibetan pose from Naropa's tradition. And it's considered very important in the Tibetan tradition because of the three channels going down the back. And so the central channel, which starts here at the Bruvor Madye, which we'll get to, Minsam in Tibetan, and then goes under the skull, between the brain and the skull, and then continues down, comes out the bottom of the skull at the neck, and then continues down to your groin, and then splits into your two legs. When you twist to one side or the other, it has the effect of opening the left and right channels. You can let go anytime you want. And here you have to know something deep. This pose is important for affecting the prana that's moving through the left and right channels. And this you have to know about. The left channel, Ida, right? In Tibetan it's called Khamma. It starts here, right about here. It's why you have two nostrils instead of one in your nose. Because there's two... Parts of your body have grown around your channels. The channels were there first, like a twig, and your body grows around those like ice on a twig. so the ice takes the form of the twig like when ice coats a twig every bump on the twig is reflected in the ice your body is shaped like it is because of the channels so these two come like this they follow the central channel down in Tibetan we'll get in the fourth chapter when we reach the fourth chapter we'll be doing piece of the fourth chapter there are many synonyms for the central channel Madhyaya is one Uma the central channel These two channels go down, they cross over, and we'll talk about that later. But they each cross over and then come back to their own side. So sometimes in Tibetan they're called tishing. Tishing means vying, or like ivy. And it comes down, twists over, comes down more, twists over. Inside of each of these channels is flowing most of our prana. So if you have to divide out all your prana, let's say 90% of your prana is moving through one of these two side channels. The right hand channel is associated with feelings of anger, or disliking things. The left hand channel is associated with feelings of desire, or wanting things. And then we have to talk about that briefly. Say, lungsem, jupa, chipa. Lungsem, jupa chipa. This is very, very famous in Tibet when you study yoga or you're studying the channels. Lung means prana, or chi, right? Sem means the mind. Jupa Chupa means they always ride in tandem. They always ride in tandem. So your thoughts and your prana are always riding together. If prana moves in the left-hand channel, you will want something. And if you want something, prana will move into the left hand channel you see? if you don't like something or don't like somebody that thought will run in the right hand channel and it will drag the prana into the right hand channel with it you see what I mean? so is it wrong to like things because it will fill up your ida and is it wrong to dislike things because it will fill up your pingala right? we have to get into the distinction of liking things in a wrong way and liking things in a right way. So is it wrong to like maple-covered donuts? I think not. I always tell people I had the opportunity to... My lama was chosen abbot of one of the three big monasteries in Tibet. So we got to go to dinner at the Dai Lama's table. And I got to go with him. And I've never seen anyone eat with such gusto as his holiness. You see, like, someone who likes to eat, you know, I mean, he doesn't just eat, he really enjoys eating. And it's not wrong, you see, to like food, to enjoy food. He enjoys things in a way that we can't. Like, we devour a bag of chips, and we don't enjoy it. You see? We nervously eat, and then we don't enjoy it. And he wakes up, he's really hungry, he picks food that's going to be good for him, and then he really enjoys eating it. And that's just a different experience of eating. So that kind of prana, when the Dalai Lama eats dinner with gusto, all the prana is running in the central channel. You see? Because he knows what he's doing, and he's doing it with joy, And he's doing it with wisdom. What does it mean to eat with wisdom? This food has come to me because I was kind to other people. This food is on the table. That's why Christians do grace and like that. We went to Seder in Tel Aviv. It's this big thing. The rabbi came. All my diamond dealer friends were there. And the food was super blessed before he ate. And no, it was really, that's the whole point. You're looking at the food and you're thinking, this food has come here through the grace of goodness. This food is here because I have served other people, because I have shared food with other people. And then when you reflect on that and you eat it, your prana is running in the central channel. Wisdom, you see. And then when we just devour a bag of chips because we're nervous, then it's running in the right-hand channel. That prana has moved to the right-hand channel. So prana and your thoughts are always linked together, and they're always riding in our condition, in the right and left-hand channels. Whenever prana moves in the right and left-hand channels, it is causing your old age. You are aging. The body is disintegrating. The body is breaking down. If prana is moving in the side channels, you're dying. That's the cause of death. The practice of yoga is to artificially inject the prana out of the left and right channels, get it through this thing called sumdo. Sumdo means the plumbing where all three are connected down here. Shove it into the central channel and get it to come up into the central channel. and out of the side channels. They say the vines should wither. The two side channels should wither and should go away. And then prana comes into the central channel. If a little prana comes in, you see ultimate reality directly. If a little more comes in, you have an experience of ultimate love, universal love, true universal love. And if more comes in, then your body turns into light. And then you've achieved the goal of yoga. Then you... Brahmandevi Charantite. Kalatanda. Right? Then you have slain death. You have murdered death. And you can wander the world and help people. Anonymously. Like Goraksha. Right? So this is... Why did I talk about all this? Why am I talking about this? It's Matsyendra's pose. Okay? You are opening selectively. you are working on the two side channels you are purposely opening the, they have given this name, the name of the founder of this Hatha Yoga tradition has been given to this pose, you know, it's this pose that was worthy of Matsyendra's name you see, and it's that this is the pose that gets the prana out of the side channels and into the middle channel, so it's very nice to do it with thoughts of wisdom and thoughts of dedicating it to other people. There's a practice in Tibet where you are concentrating on the on the connection point of the three channels and you are seeing some light there and you're imagining that the light is comforting other beings as you do this pose. You see? And so you should try to do it with this higher motivation. That's all I have to say about Matsyendra. Let me see. Do you want to do that together? Yeah. I think we'll stop there because it's such an auspicious place to stop. And then we'll see you Monday. I'm sorry we went on so long and I'm sorry it's so late. I think it's worth it. They say Tantra should be done late at night. Yeah. And that's what we're doing. So we'll give away the good karma. Oh, this is just for the sake of people who are helping with a... On Tuesday, and not Monday, we'll be reaching a special part in the text where it talks about what foods to eat and what foods not to eat. So it's supposed to have been on Monday, but it's going to happen now on Tuesday. Okay? And what we're going to do is give a real demonstration. So we'll have all the foods up here. You can see it. I think it's much more powerful with food if you can really taste it and look at it and see. So we'll be doing that on Tuesday. Again, I'd like to remind you, on Friday, there'll be a party here. It's supposedly a book signing party. But please, anyone who'd like to come... What time is the party starting? Is it nine? Yeah. Okay. The party starts at 90. And please bring your friends. Your friends are quite welcome to come. It's just open for the party. All right. All right. Sāṃśī bhūkī jūśīng me tautrāṁ Rīrābhlim śīng dēgyam bādī Sāṅkhe śīng dūmikteru vārkī Droghuna nam dak-shin la-jru-pa-shu Idam Guru Radha madala kamni atayami G-e-wa-di-ge-ro-man Sanam-yase-tso-so-shin Sanam-yase-le-jong-ve Dham-pah-pun-yir-top-ah-shom Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice weekend. Get some rest because you need it for next week. Thank you.