Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

injury with a sling or taking weight off a strained area such as legs, back, or ankles with a crutch or cane.
    RICES can be useful to guide you in using or administering first aid during the initial moments and first few days after a strain or injury. If the problem is not resolved and healed, then professional help as well as using the other principles in this chapter may be necessary.
    Hatha yoga tends to be preventive, focusing more on health and wholeness rather than sickness, but it also is used as a therapeutic practice. A great teacher and information system, pain is not something we voluntarily seek out; nonetheless, it often provides a key catalyst in major times of learning and growth—both physically and psychologically. If we look back on some of our greatest experiences of growth and learning, we will find they often involved some pain.
    Don’t let injuries stop you. Learn to activate and assist your body’s powerful healing energies. When working with sickness or injury, pay attention to any feelings of wellness and wholeness and give your energy to building and increasing them. Balance internal process and awareness with external input and feedback from teachers, healers, and body workers. Experiment with a good repertoire of poses and practices. You will not always find the right approach logically, as it often reveals itself serendipitously. You might just stumble on the perfect movementor asana by trying something new, taking a class, or letting your body guide you. An injury is a moving target, so your approach must be a living approach that attunes and adjusts to the movement of the process. We do not reach health and wholeness as a permanent, fixed state of balance, but as an ability to adjust continuously and dance with the changing realities of each moment. This living process will grow and evolve as it guides you through all the stages and changes of life.



T he chakra system (pronounced chuh kruh) is an ancient mapping of psychic phenomena and layers of consciousness. Though myth and folklore often date its origin back millennia, most academics believe the concept of the chakra system originated within the last several hundred years. Many view the chakras as having been “revealed,” discovered or perceived intuitively, but scientific evidence suggests that their depiction probably grew out of religious practices and beliefs. Descriptions and definitions of the nature of the chakra system differ widely. The belief in this system may have started with external diagrams, sorcery, and the worship of goddesses, mystical beings, and power entities. The chakras have been described as wheels of energy, loci of power, and mystical power centers that exist in the subtle, or
astral
, body. They have been used as magical diagrams for sorcery or protection from demons, the appeasement of gods, and the control of supernatural forces or entities.
    As it is viewed today, the chakra system has evolved through many, sometimes contradictory, phases of mapping and delineation often related to stages or levels of consciousness, awareness, and spiritual development. Various earlier chakra concepts have included four chakras, twelve, sixteen, and more. The story that this subtle, scientific “energy system” was discovered by mystics through inner vision is mostly legend. The currently accepted number of seven chakras wasprobably solidified in time and thought with the advent of the printing press and strengthened by the publication of Sir Arthur Avalon’s books in England,
Kundalini
and
Sakti and Sakta
. 4 His diagrams and presentations of the seven-chakra system have become the most widely accepted. Avalon’s seven-chakra system technically includes six chakras plus one, with the additional seventh chakra representing infinity and the synthesis of the other six. However, Avalon’s chakra color rendition follows no apparent logic. Contemporary chakra renditions are often linked to the physical sciences, following the progression of colors in the rainbow from red to violet and pure white light.
    Whether by coincidence, selective observation, synchronicity, or even divine revelation, the seven-chakra mapping seems to align holographically with many observable scientific principles. There are, for example, seven colors of the rainbow, seven days of the week, and seven notes of the musical scale before it repeats on the next octave. The seminal works by Professor David Gordon White,
The Alchemical