Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

energy refers to the intentional creation of energy flows along channels or directions in the body. Working with anddeveloping lines of energy in yoga poses refines and increases the benefits of the poses. Yogi Joel Kramer, who articulated this concept, defines it as follows: “Lines of energy are vibratory currents that move in different directions within each posture. The intensity of these currents in the nerves can be controlled by the muscles and has a feeling that moves in an outward direction.”
    You can easily experience this directional energy flow by coming again to a standing position. Raise your arms directly out to your sides, parallel to the floor. Extend and lengthen the arms outward, toward the side walls of the room. You can now experience the extensional feeling from the lines of energy moving along the arms. This flow can be increased by making sure your arms are extending all the way to the ends of the fingers, and even beyond to the walls, without breaking or bending at the joints. This extensional movement energizes and brings vibrancy to the arms, but it also opens the neck and shoulders. Next, begin pressing the feet until you feel lines of energy moving down into and coming up from the floor. Try to allow this flow from the floor to connect with and move out through the flow along the arms. Connecting and linking the various energy flows creates more beneficial effects and structural integrity in the postures. All postures have these lines and flows to be discovered and worked with. Don’t increase the flow to a point of tension, overexertion, or contraction. The energy lines will help you align and adjust your postures because when the flow feels good and moves freely internally, the posture is usually properly aligned.
    In addition to moving particular lines of energy through the limbs and torso, you also want to experience a general feeling of movement of the entire energy body. In a twisting pose, for example, the energy body itself feels like it is twisting. In a backbend it feels like it is arching back. Often when students see themselves with video or photographic feedback, they are surprised that they feel like they are bending farther than the picture shows. This is usually because they feel themovement of the energy body more than the physical body actually moving. I discovered this difference once when having an instant photo made of an asana I was doing. I wanted to see how far back I was bending and had a friend take my photo. I felt like I was bending much farther than the actual pose shown in the picture. With some experimentation I realized that my energy body was bending much more than the physical body. It is good to be able to sense this nonphysical movement and to use and accentuate it in postures. Whether or not you are able to move fully into a pose physically, you can still move the corresponding internal energy. This inner movement actually creates and maintains physical structure and support and, in time, you will be able to move into a fuller pose. Actually all physical movements are preceded and controlled by this flow of energy.
    Keeping your energy active makes the body radiant and vibrant in the postures and prolongs youthfulness. The awareness and posture you cultivate will carry over from yoga practice to daily life. We eventually learn to walk taller, keep our spines supple and straight, and keep our energy channels open throughout the day. The effects of gravity and aging are balanced and our vitality increases. Lifting your energy up will help to uplift you too. Smiling lifts the spirit and is an indicator that your energy is flowing upward. One of the goals of yoga is the alchemical transformation from being down, heavy, sad, and lethargic to being up, happy, high, energetic, and clear.
Withdrawing Energy
    We concentrate more often on creating and extending energy into parts of the body. Learning to withdraw energy is the other, equally important, side of this coin. You can learn to pull energy out of a limb or body part. When you do a pose more passively, energy is withdrawn and the limb is moved or stretched. For example, in a forward bend, instead of energizing the leg muscles they can be made passive, the energy withdrawn, and then the muscles are stretched by using leverage from thearms and weight from the trunk. Savasana, the Corpse pose, is the ultimate in energy withdrawal. You learn and develop the ability to consciously withdraw your energy