Saturday, September 22 marks the fall equinox—the first day of autumn, when daytime and nighttime are equal and the planet’s energy shifts. It’s an ideal time, says Kundalini yoga teacher Guru Jagat, to incorporate new ways of thinking and being. Here, the Well+Good Council member shares her insights on making this weekend the beginning of an even better life.
Fall: It’s electric!
One thing I love about fall is how electrically charged it is. We’re moving into a more autumnal time and the positioning of the Earth’s axis will begin to face the Northern Hemisphere away from the sun. In very basic terms, it means the electromagnetic field of Earth is shifting.
In an 1831 experiment, British scientist Michael Faraday discovered that a changing a magnetic field (i.e., a magnet moving in some way through time and space) will produce a corresponding electrical current. Likewise, a closed circuit of electricity will produce a magnetic field.
It’s a powerful season to use the energies for greater love, prosperity, creativity, and a new understanding of yourself.
As the Earth’s magnetic molten core super-rotates, and we counterspin as a planet through space, circling around the sun, we live on a dynamic sphere with a constantly changing electromagnetic field. In Kundalini yoga, we know that our synchronization with the Earth’s electromagnetic field has a direct effect on our balance, positivity, personal magnetism, and success. You, of course, are also an electromagnetic being (seeing as you have built-in magnets in every cell and a closed-circuit nervous system that runs on electricity).
The autumnal equinox, with its distinctly changing energy field and its balance of dark and light, night and day, is a charged time. It’s a powerful season to use the energies for greater love, prosperity, creativity, and a new understanding of yourself as an infinite being.
This new way of working is subtle, but it’s becoming more the norm as we understand how energy and reality works. So I want to share with you the three easiest ways I know to sync with the season and use it to launch into a new trajectory of life and personal radiance.
Find your body’s rhythm
Everything has a pulse—or a rhythm, so to speak.
Your job has a rhythm. Your partner has a rhythm, and your relationship has a rhythm. Clearly the earth has a rhythm. And your body has a rhythm based on the rate of its glandular secretions.
Stress and anxiety happen when your glandular secretion rate is out of sync with the pulse of with your environment. The glands are the keepers of your emotional and experiential balance. When they out of sync with the pulse of your environment, you feel substantially and viscerally “off.”
This is why most ancient cultures started their day with some sort of rhythmic movement and breath. It adjusted the biological rhythm to work in concert with the environs and as a community. It’s actually a very recent development that people leave the house without some sort of meditative practice. Prior, breathing and energetic contemplation were like brushing your teeth or washing your face—you weren’t ready for public interaction until it was done.
Most ancient cultures started their day with some sort of rhythmic movement and breath.
One of my favorite ways, other than meditation, to get back into the rhythmic cosmic cycles is with non-linear movement. This type of movement can be practiced with music or done silently. However, non-linear movement is not dancing. It’s a listening to your body and the motion it needs to take in order to feel electromagnetically whole. It’s a self-medicine. How does the body need to move in order to heal itself and become more in-tuned as an organic unit in relationship to the pulses of environment?
Non-linear movement is one of the practices that I incorporate into my seven-month women’s program Immense Grace, which can be done in person or remotely and has immersion in Los Angeles, New York, and Palma de Mallorca, Spain. I also love Cass Phelps and recommend visiting his website and checking when he might be in city near you soon.
Practice pranic adjustment
Of course one of the quickest, most succinct ways to synch your glands with the rhythmic cycles of nature is with daily meditation, especially pranayam. Pranayam, or breath-work, regulates your energy metabolism.
We often hear talk of metabolism in a weight loss or dietary sense, but metabolism works on so many levels. There’s a metabolism of love and a metabolism of money. On a very basic level, metabolism relates to energy: when and how you choose to conserve or expend it. Often, we’re metabolizing energy in unconscious and inefficient ways.
On a very basic level, metabolism relates to energy: when and how you choose to conserve or expend it.
Because personal energy management is most times autonomic, a pranayam is most helpful in that it upgrades the intelligence of your energy rhythm on an intrinsic level. You’re not thinking, “Am I going to use my energy in this way? Conserve here or spend here?” Each cell in your body has its own intelligence. When you practice a daily pranayam, you train your cells to naturally sync up to the highest, healthiest, most efficient rhythm available as soon as it’s presented to them.
It’s an energetic and subtle activity, but it happens instantly and without effort.
That said, once you become this subtle and sensitive, a balanced pranic rhythm does allow you some psychic perspective when the energy waves get high. It gives you the breath space to make a conscious choice to redirect or keep going based on your intuitive sense of what will bring the best outcome.
With the energy field changing so consistently, as it does during the fall, it is a great time to take on a pranayam practice to help your body and energy stay in dynamic rhythm with the earth. The following Kundalini breath practice is one of my favorites because it’s so easy and can be done anywhere, at any time.
THE KUNDALINI FOUR-STROKE BREATH
Posture: Not particular. ( You may sit in a cross-legged, meditative posture or on your heels. This breath practice can also be done while making breakfast, on your commute to work, sitting at your desk, taking a walk, etc. You can really do it anywhere, anytime.)
Breath: Inhale in four distinct sniffs or “strokes” through the nose. Exhale in four distinct sniffs or “strokes” through the nose. Continue.
Eyes: Closed and focused up and in between the eyebrows or open and relaxed if you are going about your day.
Time: 3-11 minutes
To end: Inhale and hold the breath. Exhale and relax.
Notes: This breath also effectively resets the pituitary gland, the so-called master gland, which in turn balances out all other hormonal secretions in the body.
Find power in mantras
On the equinox, the light and the dark meet at equal footing. It is a day of harmonic balance, but it is also a day of polarity and opposites. And any pair of opposites is powerful.
Think AC currents (formed by a coil of wire spinning in opposing magnetic fields), chemical batteries (where the flow of electricity is created by negative and positive charges attempting to balance), and even nuclear power (where neutron and proton pairs are split, releasing mass energy). Opposing forces mean attraction, but also tension. Tension can be used for propulsion, trajectory, vibration, and speed. I find the equinoxes to be very exciting in this way.
On the equinox, the light and the dark meet at equal footing.
If you know how to utilize the polarity forces of the equinox day, you can launch yourself at higher accelerations in a positive direction—creatively, materially, and in your consciousness. This is where I love the use for mantras.
Mantras are cognitive and energetic sound templates. The sound vibrations of mantras move your neurons into new, uplifted thought patterns. These patterns are “permutation/combinations” that take your mind beyond its current scope and into a higher, more expanded experience and perspective. Like pranayam, mantras work on the baseline bioenergetic mechanics of the human system. So you don’t have to put in a lot of effort to “stay positive” or figure out how to use the equinox for an accelerated material and spiritual experience; mantras do it for you. Positivity is your new OS.
There are a lot of mantras from a lot of different lineages. If you already have a sound current that you connect to, I encourage you to practice it more regularly and let it intrinsically adjust your mind and body. However, if you want to try something new, or have never used sound as technology before, I offer you this simple Sat Nam sound code from Kundalini yoga.
When chanted together, Sat Nam brings the mind and body into cosmic and earthly balance.
The “Sat” in Sat Nam is pronounced with a uh sound, as in nut. “Sat” is a clarifying sound. When it vibrates through you and through the space, it’s like an air purifier. It adjusts the mind to think universally.
The “Nam” in Sat Nam is pronounced with an ah sound, as in mom. “Nam” makes the universe personal. It’s balancing in the body and remembers humanity.
When chanted together, Sat Nam brings the mind and body into cosmic and earthly balance in an actual glandular and psychological way. There are many manners in which Sat Nam is used in Kundalini yoga, but a very approachable way to start is with the Seven Wave Sat Nam Meditation.
KUNDALINI SEVEN WAVE SAT NAM MEDITATION
Posture: Sit in a cross-legged position. Place the hands palm-to-palm in the center of the chest, with the thumbs touching the sternum and the elbows wide to each side.
Breath and mantra: Inhale deeply. Exhale vibrating sat in six waves (or six long beats) and nam as one wave (one beat). On each Sat Nam, mentally focus on threading the sound though your seven energy centers (chakras): base of spine, pelvis/sex organs, naval point, heart center, throat, brow point/third eye and crown. Place nam at the top of the head and let it radiate from the crown into the aura and into infinity.
Eyes: Closed and focused up and in between the eyebrows.
Time: 3-11 minutes
To End: Inhale and hold the breath. Exhale and relax.
Think like it’s a new year
Fall is a time where a lot of changes can happen and, because of the electrical environment, you can really treat it like a new year.
I’m a huge fan of all the techniques I’ve shared here. I use them daily to adjust my energy field and set me on a path for a successful day. You’ve transformed a lot over the summer. I encourage you to use some of these easy technologies, take that transformation, and let it inform your new rhythmic pattern.
You can be new, life can be different, you can achieve what you really wish for for yourself and the world. Its just a matter of energy dynamics—and now you have the tools. Use them and make note of how your life changes. I’m sure that a lot will.
(P.S. If chanting isn’t really your thing, but you’re interested in mantras, check out the Grammy award-winning group White Sun (whitesun.com). You can pre-order their new album and receive their hit single, “Say Saraswati,” a sound code that delivers love, prosperity and intellect.)
Guru Jagat is the founder of RA MA Institute for Applied Yogic Science and Technology, a Kundalini yoga school with locations in Venice, CA; Mallorca, Spain; and New York City, and the author of the best-selling book Invincible Living: The Power of Yoga, The Energy of Breath, and Other Tools for a Radiant Life. In 2017 Guru Jagat created the Aquarian Women’s Leadership Society, which has members in over 20 countries, and she is also the founder and CEO of RA MA TV; RA MA Records; and the RA MA Foundation.
What should Guru Jagat write about next? Send your questions and suggestions to [email protected].
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