by Kristie Dahlia Home
Swami Ramananda has asked me several times to join him in holding space for satsang in moments of cultural turbulence and pain. In those moments there are two things that bring me the greatest comfort: one is taking action outwardly and the other is turning inward. In our satsangs I have spoken mostly of the former. I’d like to try to share the latter: how the inward space of energetically-oriented meditation brings me comfort and keeps my hearthfire lit.
The experience of the energy body, the pranamaya kosha, came to me like a bolt of lightning. I’d been studying yoga for a few years when I went to Burning Man for the first time in 1997. A friend was feeling sad as we waited for the burn. I wrapped my arms around him and imagined a green light flowing between our hearts. He turned around and said, “How are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Making that green light in the middle of my chest.” he said.
You could have knocked me over with a feather!
The visualization I was doing was improvisational. The rational and mystical aspects of me had not yet made the friendship that they have now. My inner mystic was overjoyed that he could feel this; my rational parts were shaken! This was a pivotal moment in my life. That man has been by my side ever since, and the hunger within me for understanding of this experience was lit.
When I came home I asked my mentors at the IYI for more information about how energy moves between bodies. They heard me kindly but said this wasn’t part of our teachings, so I studied in other places. I have become a reiki master and studied intuitive healing, Thai Yoga Massage, and Chi Nei Tsang. Each has offered more experience and understanding, layers which enrich the yogic home base of my heart.
As a nondualist, I understand the koshas as different lenses through which we can view the experience of ourselves as the cosmos in human form. Through the meditation and healing techniques of energy work we can engage all of the koshas. Symbolic visualization helps access the manomaya and pranaymaya koshas, our mental-emotional and life force aspects. Changes on those levels affect the annamaya kosha, the physical aspect of our being. Contemplation and insight connects to the vijnanamajakosha, the higher mental realms or wisdom body. Often this kind of experience offers invites us to experience the anandamayakosha, the bliss body – and the wider body of the cosmos. In the state of energy we may experience ourselves as the life of the universe, dancing. As the Upanishads teach us: Tat Twam Asi. Thou Art That. We are the life of the cosmos.
Having access to the experience of self-as-life through meditation can be a profound comfort. It gives us deep roots from which to view the tumult of human existence, with all of its beauty and all of its suffering. It can provide ready access to awe, gratitude, and compassion. This can help us weather storms with more grace.
As yoga’s benefits for physical health and mental wellbeing have been popularized, its spiritual dimension is often moved away from its rightful place at center. The spiritual aspect of yoga may even be deliberately obscured in hopes of making practice more accessible. In difficult times, though, spiritual comfort is that which we need most. Yoga and meditation offer us intimate access to the experience of ourselves as the life of the universe. What a gift this is as we live our human lives.
Join Dahlia this Saturday for Energetic Refreshment for Summer, Saturday, May 4 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Kristie Dahlia Home has been devoted to the sharing of spiritual arts since 1995. With training in Instinctive Meditation, Yoga, Thai Massage, Reiki, Intuitive Healing, and Chi Nei Tsang. Dahlia has served as a Yoga Therapist at the UCSF School of Nursing, Dr. Dean Ornish’s Preventive Medicine Research Institute, and at UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, where her work included both public classes and medical research. She has taught Reiki for CPMC’s Institute for Health and Healing and Thai Massage at Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Her students say that they appreciate her warmth, precision, contagious love of life, and keen attention to the unique needs of each individual. She has recently returned to life on land after five years at sea and looks forward to sharing practice with the IYI sangha once again. For more information, visit beloved.org