By Courtney Rohan
Revolutionary Instructor
To live on this planet is to feel pressure. To think that the Sun, powered by nuclear fusion, with billions of particles crashing into each other with such force that they fuse, supplying us with immense amounts of photonic energy-- To think that we are in orbit but on the ground-- It is natural for us to feel the pressures of nature within, and without.
We are one moving piece amongst many.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson says in the Netflix Documentary, The Universe: Secrets of the Sun, Season 1: Episode 1, “We are a participant in the activities of the solar system”. In our moving, speaking, being, we create pressure.
For example, in simply walking, we leave our footprints on the beach sand. Things are moving and growing in life, nothing is still as it seems, so we are constantly reidentifying with the pressures of this moving and growing to create momentum towards or for something.
In all the cycles of life, we need pressure. From creation to death, each process requires a certain amount of pressure to create energy, a catalyst or prana shakti. In going towards an opportunity there is so much internal and external influence. So many things are colliding and triggering response within the body as in the nature of the core of the sun, and so many other natural phenomena. They naturally allow the force.
Like flowing soul particles, prana shakti is the life force, that which animates the body and mind, the primordial cosmic energy that represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire Universe. This can become stagnant or leak out of the organism through unnecessary interaction or sustained and unhealed trauma.
Still, pressure itself is neither negative or positive, even though from the vantage point of any situation, we might choose to call it something. So much of what we are living that we have assigned terms to is not as it seems. We have decided that this or that is bad and made it out to be the enemy. The enemy, my friends, is the mind with which we deem things to be good or bad. The shadowside of life, the triggers and weight of our trauma is not all bad when the pressure of the circumstance allows us to continue growing. Pressure doesn’t often take a negative stance when it is behind us.
This is a hard lesson, one I am learning over and over again in my life, living with a chronic disease. The disease that people are most apt to say F-you to has reminded me how to live. That does not make this diagnosis easy, but rather it makes thriving with a disease a fundamental part of the practice.
How can we use our practice to seal up the pranic holes from the pressure of our daily lives?
Start by asking yourself two questions. Then, listen for the response. Close your eyes and see if an image arises. Push nothing away. Allow the pressure.
What do I need to see? As one of my online mentors, Anne from @intuitivethrive shared in a recent live broadcast-- the subconscious mind does not understand “why”, so start with “what”.
As things begin to come up, inquire further. Ask, What do I need to know? Specifically: Where is my life force seeping out haphazardly?
Journal these ideas or do a voice recording of your heart’s responses so that you can hear what arises, feel what comes up with your thoughts. Seeing the pressure in feeling, word or image will allow you further access to the experience and your ability to neutralize it. Seeing the truth, however it emerges, is the first step to using the pressure of life as a tailwind.
What comes up can be blatant or covert. Not all balloons pop; a pin-sized hole is not always noticed until the object is deflated enough.
To use myself for example, before I was diagnosed with leukemia, I was definitely deflating. I had been trying for years to work through a deep grief of losing my mother, which I did not truly do in my youth, and what I would now call a depression. I kept trying to tape the hole, the void, that I now know is not filled with temporal things. I wanted to be better but I did not want to ask the real questions and sit with the pressure. So I didn’t.
Or at least I did not think I was feeling it, or that I would have to. If I didn’t stay still, it would not catch me. Until I had to sit still. And even now, in smaller doses, it is important to sit with the hole through which the prana escapes to do the real work on another layer upon layer, billions of layers like the sun.
When we can sit with this knowing, we do not need to know anything at all. A simplicity emerges: I will feel pressure. It will be OK. Taking time to listen will help you know which way to turn.
Knowing how to pivot is even more useful when you intuitively feel which way to turn. Pivot the right way, then the pressure gets behind you. There are many ways to kiss the ground. You can do so with the wind in your face or at your back.
As we modify our way through life and make choices that suit our bodies, it will be good to practice this turning, this unraveling. Practice, study, and show ourselves (the effects of the practice) approved.
Practice taking the pressure off by putting the force at your back.
Join me for a Taste of Kundalini Workshop, a class for all levels that will expose practitioners to a Kundalini warm up, kriya, and meditation for thriving under the pressure of life’s daily stressors.
To be followed by a delicious and nourishing vegetarian meal to complement our Kundalini yoga experience, provided by Yogi-Chef Natasha Raymond.
Revolution Yoga
April 4, 2020
2-4 pm
Sat Nam