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An Introduction to Numerology – The One | The Stomach

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Winter. The first season.

During Winter our energies tend to gather more deeply inside. Things freeze over, the colder days cause us to contract, this can imply pressure, like the internal pressure building up inside a seed. Less daylight has meant that we are encouraged to cultivate our own inner light. We have planted the seeds of our future growth and intention. Hopefully some of these are starting to germinate. The days are growing longer and we have the sense of new beginnings. There is still a sense of waiting and perhaps needing to be patient in this time of transition but things are starting to stir.

The Seasonal Cleanse.

During Winter we go within to consolidate and reflect. Our energies gather deeper and more internally as the nights draw in and the weather becomes colder. It is natural at this time to eat more and to be less active. However once Christmas has come and gone we start to feel weighed down with the extra blankets and the extra food. Rather than feeling sluggish like we are being dragged protesting it is great to be ready for Spring so that we can meet that energy fully alive and ready for the year ahead. Come February or March depending on how quickly it warms up (not good to fast or eat a lot less when it is still cold) a spring clean is a good idea;

Let’s explore the connection between the Stomach and our emotional/psychological life.

Stomach. The First Organ.

Holistic Medicine means that there are connections between the mind and the body, between the emotional and physical, the psyche and the spirit. These are connections that were explored deeply by the ancient masters of the healing arts.

Let’s explore the connection between the Stomach and our emotional/psychological life.

Food is first taken in via the Stomach. How we feed ourselves and what we choose to feed ourselves is often difficult to determine. The Stomach energy does not discriminate. When we don’t anticipate the consequence of our actions it devours anything that excites it’s appetite. Smell is the trigger. The smell of freshly baked bread, the scent of a woman/man, pine needles, sea salt from ocean spray.

The mouth is the start of the entry into the stomach. The taste buds are first activated by smell and the stomach starts to secrete its juices. Oral fixations can develop as we try to replace the deep contentment we felt in the arms of our Mother suckling at the breast or the fact that we didn’t receive this we may substitute with smoking a cigarette or drinking alcohol. Then there’s the images that excite the appetite; a naked body, sexually suggestive and explicit language and posturing. How the right car is supposed to turn you into a sexual magnet for the opposite sex. All of these things attempting to create an appetite, desire.

Your appetite is your lust for life? What do you do to satisfy it? How much do you live by your instincts and immediate gratification and how much do you live by your intuition? When do you have to suck it to see and when is it best avoided? How do we know when to act and when not to?

We live by our vices or by our virtues, by our animal nature or by our humanity. It is well to bear in mind that to the extent we serve one thing something else in us dies.

In Chinese Medicine the Stomach is called the official in charge of the public granaries and it grants the five tastes. A granary is a building for storing grain. A grain is a small hard seed like particle. We have sayings such as ‘a grain of truth ‘or ‘going against the grain’ (interestingly this phrase is often used to suggest a lack of compliance with the present status quo when it’s original meaning is much more likely to have meant going against the natural order) We need to find our grain of truth, to gravitate down into the essence of ourselves so that we can nurture the truth, the seed of our potential, our soul.

What are we giving birth to and how do we access our potential? If we think of our inner, as yet hidden potential as the inside of a seed we know that we need the right kind of environment, the right conditions and patience and the seed will create the internal pressure to break through the outer shell. This is really about us breaking through our perceived limitations and growing towards the light.

Practically it is good to regulate sugar intake as too much sugar will lead to dispersion and a lack of grounding and focus. You are what you eat and this determines the quality of the blood through which the soul moves through the body.

Exercises, yoga sets and meditations for the one

It is good to work on the spine and our sense of grounding. It is most important, especially in yoga that the spine is kept straight for it is through the spine that the consciousness rises transforming as it moves from the lower to the higher chakras.

Why meditate in the early morning?

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This morning I decided to write down a few reasons (not all) for an early morning yoga and mediation practice. It is most important not to have any attachment or expectation about this. The Aquarian Age is motivated by inspiration not by dogma and rules.

Why meditate in the early morning??

Sadhana means spiritual discipline and in the Kundalini Yoga tradition this is generally taken to mean a daily early morning practice (though it could mean a practice at another time of the day). A commitment made by the mind and body to serve the soul. “A time each day to notice the patterns that lead us away from higher consciousness and to transcend those patterns”

Every 72 hours all of the cells of the body change. Our motivation waxes and wanes, our physical strength and capacity fluctuates but through all the change we have the chance to maintain a regular practice.

In the Kundalini Upanishads 2.5 hours was understood as one tenth of your day (they lived by cycles of nature rather than the 24 hour clock!). It was determined that if you give one tenth of your day to your higher consciousness, your whole day is covered by the energy return.

Before sunrise, typically between 4 and 5 am is a great time to get up (or anyway to have done some kind of practice before around 7.30 – 8 am). The stillness and the cleaner air makes it a great time to breath deeply, cleanse the body and mind and meet the day on your terms. If we get up when it is still dark we need to switch on our own inner light and face our shadow self. The birds start to sing their joyful songs and so we also have an opportunity to uplift ourselves.

The collective ego mind of the world is mostly asleep so there is less psychic interference (after sunrise the mind is less controllable as the energy of the sun is more scattered. The angle of the sun at 60 degrees is ideal)

Metabolism is slower (body temp is coolest at 4 am), and the atmosphere is cooler, therefore there is less heat and less agitation in the mind and body.

If you also have a cold shower whilst you body temperature is at it’s lowest it will not only set you up for yoga with a clearer mind you will improve the bodies circulation. When the body is hit with cold water when it’s temperature is already lower the circulation has to work harder. Blood is forced from the organs to the periphery so that although you may feel cold at first you will feel warm once you start to towel dry. It is more difficult to meditate deeply if your circulation is still in patterns dictated by sleep and feeling drowsy.

In the early morning hours known as Amrit Vela (the time when nectar rains down) the mind is more receptive to thoughts and you have more clarity to assess them. It is a time when, if in bed, we tend to dream more. This is the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep which is lighter. The body is more restless than when in the deeper periods of sleep that came earlier so whilst when you wake up early you think that you maybe tired later the converse is usually true, especially if you increase the energy you get from meditating with others. Some people claim that it’s important to dream and to attempt to analyse our dreams but sleep can also be dream disturbed (which is often simply a psychic detoxification) Good quality sleep is when we ‘sleep like a log’ and awake refreshed with occasional dreams that are genuinely insightful and profound (not that often!).

The Chinese Body Clock shows that the Lungs are at their strongest between 3 and 5 AM therefore activating them through deep and rhythmic breathing during this time is beneficial. Between 5 and 7 am is the time of the colon so it’s good to get the bowels moving early! So that between 7 and 9 we start to build an appetite for breakfast which is the time of the stomach. The colon is also our shock absorber – the dumping ground physically and psychically so subconscious fears that are stuck in the lower 3 chakras can be addressed well at this time.

We need of course to manage our need for sleep so there will be times when we need to rest more. If it’s possible to wake up without an alarm this is ideal but a certain training is usually needed to set a rhythm which is why a group sadhana is ideal.