Pranayama, Dangers, Finding a Teacher
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@Cygnus said
" What exactly are the dangers, what are the crucial factors in "doing it right,""
The thread got me thinking a bit and I did some searches. This thread looks pretty helpfull heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1835&start=0&hilit=pranayama
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Uh Oh!
I'm sure many more people die from car crashes in a given 5 second slice accross the world then people die from Pranayama in a year, so danger is relative.
Point taken - got to take some risk to get anywhere in life (or have fun), but calculated risk.
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@mojorisin44 said
"The thread got me thinking a bit and I did some searches. This thread looks pretty helpfull heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1835&start=0&hilit=pranayama"
Yes that thread is a good discussion.From it:
@Jim Eshelman said
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@RegentLynx said
"I too would be interested in knowing to what extent you feel these warnings should be heeded. Specifically, what would be the safest beginning practice(s) for a complete novice in pranayama who does not have ready access to a qualified teacher of Yogic disciplines?"Witnessing the breath is safe. So is non-forced rhythmic breathing of the 3-fold or 4-fold breath variety.
If you're going to get much more heavily into it, then the least you should do IMHO is to have personal access to someone who knows about this stuff and report any significant phenomena as they occur."
Unlike say, physical exercise, where if you hurt your wrist you can easily get fixed up, pranayama has profound effects on your nervous system. Kundalini phenomena for example, which isn't always pretty. And problems of that nature are much less easily fixed by a Doctor.
My personal experience with inadvertently triggering kundalini phenomena left me very weak and painful for a week, nearly bedridden, and pretty feeble for a month afterward. Other people have had painful symptoms that lasted for a year or more.
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"Unlike say, physical exercise, where if you hurt your wrist you can easily get fixed up, pranayama has profound effects on your nervous system. Kundalini phenomena for example, which isn't always pretty. And problems of that nature are much less easily fixed by a Doctor.
My personal experience with inadvertently triggering kundalini phenomena left me very weak and painful for a week, nearly bedridden, and pretty feeble for a month afterward. Other people have had painful symptoms that lasted for a year or more."
Yeah, this is more what I'm talking about. How would one know the stages of this, warning signs, and how to manage properly without f'ing oneself up.
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Alas, I'm not an expert.
All I've been able to do is (a) repeat info from people with more wisdom and (b) share one personal anecdote of what negative side effects could be like.
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@Dar said
"As with any sort of teacher/student relationship - think for yourself and be alert for the assumptions your teacher will make as they may be erroneous at times. i.e. - everyone makes mistakes but when teachers fall into the trap of believing their words must be the authoritive 'bottom line' then both truth and learning opportunities fly out the window."
From OM by Talbot Mundy.
"We should ascend out of perversity, even as we ascend a mountain that we do not know, with the aid of guides who do know. None who sets forth on an unknown voyage stipulates that the pilot must agree with him as to the course, since manifestly that would be absurd; the pilot is presumed to know; the piloted does not know. None who climbs a mountain bargains that the guide shall keep to this or that direction; it is the business of the guide to lead.
And yet, men hire guides for the Spiritual Journey, of which they know less than they know of land and sea, and stipulate that the guide shall lead them thus and so, according to their own imaginings; and instead of obeying him, they desert and denounce him should he lead them otherwise. I find this of the essence of perversity."
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@Dar said
"If there's a Master - then there's a Slave."
Uh, that's not the only meaning of "master." An old use of the Latin magister is in the sense of "school master," i.e., a master teacher. That's the primary (especially in the sense of "original") meanings of the title Magister Templi, and the one especially meant by "spiritual master."
Teacher. Not Lord & Savior.
"And in spiritual matters - even the best teachers - a veritable New Buddha - would be in no way, shape or form, better than your own elemental."
Ignoring the fact that you and I seem to use the term "elemental" in harshly different ways...
The above doesn't suspend out duty to teach, nor the value in will training (and overcoming personality lock) of beginners swearing their fidelity and even obedience unreservedly to a selected master. (It doesn't even matter if the master is any good - since that's not where the miracle occurs.)
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dar, your comments about school and the institution are very different than my experience with it. reading yours (and i realize that message boards are flat and lacking) i am reminded of pink floyds "brick in the wall". i'm from california, so it maybe a bit more liberal than the u.k. version of an education system. my understanding is stereotypical: dark, damp, and mean. is that how it was? curious...
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HIERARCHY
Hierarchy exists in all school systems.
Hierarchy also exists in school yards.
Hierarchy exists in Poem's rhythm.
Hierarchy: structure and form by the yard!Hierarchy exists within your own mind.
Hierarchy exists within your pocket.
Hierarchy exists for all for all time.
Hierarchy: title I give this sonnet.Hierarchy exists among the planets.
Hierarchy exists betwixt blades of grass.
Hierarchy exists, take it for granted.
Hierarchy: more than what is in a class.When you have learned that it needn't frazzle,
Hierarchy is totally natural. -
@Dar said
"It will never happen. No man or woman can adopt the sovereign authority of another and call themselves a Thelemite."
I fail to see what the surrender of ego control within a student teacher relationship has to do with identification as a Thelemite. Unless indentification with that label is just another ego game?
@Dar said
"The only time to give it up is when you're.. giving it up.
"And if you can't even practice "giving it up" with a guru, how will you ever really give it up to the Angel?
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@Dar said
"It's something you already know how to do. You've had plenty of practise! Everyone has!"
So if we're all so good at it, how come we're not all consciously basking in the light of K&C?
@Dar said
"No-one get's an instruction manual to tell them how to be obidient because everyone remembers being a child. And like a child - that's how you give it up to the Angel. Giving it up to *anyone else *is a betrayal."
But if we really had free access to that skill in adulthood it wouldn't be so hard to open up to the Angel. As it is the adult ego is more developed and hardened than a childs. Simply remembering that child-like state is not enough. Most of us only re-connect with that state when we fall in love with another. But even then it is limited. (Otherwise we would be able to fall in love with anyone and everyone.
) But for K&C to occur we must be able to go beyond that limited opening up.If giving it up at the lower student/teacher level generates ego resistance, what resistance will be met at the higher level with the Angel?
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@Cygnus said
"Right, so, uh, spiritual masters and self-sovereign rebels, can anybody answer my question?
"How would one know the stages of this [kundalini awakening through pranayama], warning signs, and how to manage properly without f'ing oneself up." "
You're missing the point: You don't track this yourself. You do practices and maintain a diary and stay in communication with someone overseeing your work.
Some of the warning signs - especially the psychological ones - you are simply not capable of seeing in yourself. (Nobody is.)
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To the original topic, I will share this.......
When I was barely a teen I experienced with breath work......
And my brother found me passed out on the floor.My sister is a level 3 Iyengar teacher/yogi, and teaches at the institute in Los Angeles
She swears that the book Light on pranayama by bks Iyengar
Is the best. In that tradition a yogi must be at least a level 3to begin breath work. -
@Veronica said
"To the original topic, I will share this.......
When I was barely a teen I experienced with breath work......
And my brother found me passed out on the floor.My sister is a level 3 Iyengar teacher/yogi, and teaches at the institute in Los Angeles
She swears that the book Light on pranayama by bks Iyengar
Is the best. In that tradition a yogi must be at least a level 3to begin breath work."I actually contemplated giving very similar advice near the beginning of this thread. I studied paranayama with a senior Iyengar teacher in Southern California, Bob Metzler. I would be surprised if your sister has not heard of him.
I just want to add one point, almost a point of contention, sort of. There is a very serious tradition of pranayama that is a whole yoga unto itself, complicated and not generally what is indicated by people who are committed to the general aim of Raja Yoga. Rather, it is an extension of Hatha Yoga. It's confusing because there is overlap between all of these approaches.
Chances are, if you are practicing some recommendation from an official instruction of the AA, you will not find a teacher in any established school of yoga that will be sympathetic to what you are doing, and this includes Iyengar, for which I have only the highest praise.
Clearly, the bare-bones instruction in AA documents was intended to be enough of an indication for experimentation. Nevertheless, without access to someone who is, by dint of personal experience and access to other individuals using these precise methods, qualified to comment of your practice you are pretty much left with one overriding recommendation: take it slow and avoid straining.
Love and Will
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Thank you all, that's very clear.
Yes, I've basically found myself in this position—all of the yogis out there teaching pranayama (i.e. Iyengar) may be safe and technically correct, but don't go nowhere near Liber E levels.
I actually find this to be pretty true across the board for all of Crowley's instructions—he gives you the straight, no-training-wheels practice in blissfully economical language, practices that people have spent whole careers building books and schools out of putting slow, often pointless training wheels on. Not to be Luke in the beginning of his training with Yoda, but there's just not time for that slow approach for somebody who wants to learn and integrate many techniques to essay the Great Work, instead of just spending epic amounts of time on basic feel-good practices.
So it's a bit of a pickle. In fact, considering what we now know about Kundalini Syndrome, I'm curious if it would be smart to dump Crowley's kundalini-raising techniques—Liber E, Ru, HHH, etc.—for a more direct Indian approach. Say, Kriya Yoga.
It's just frustrating, because people are in general just not willing to go as hardcore as Crowley did with casual Western shopping-mall-of-spirituality students.
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@Cygnus said
"Yes, I've basically found myself in this position—all of the yogis out there teaching pranayama (i.e. Iyengar) may be safe and technically correct, but don't go nowhere near Liber E levels. "
Just to clarify my understanding and my point of view. What the Iyengar peeps are about is technically different than what the practices in Liber E and Ru have in mind. To be fair, they are good at what they do, but it is Hatha Yoga all the same, not Raja Yoga. Raja Yoga is pretty much the training Crowley undertook in India. Comparing Liber E to Iyengar Yoga is like comparing apples and oranges. They are both fruits that grow on trees, but that is where the similarity ends.
If you read Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekenanda you will find a perspective very much in alignment with the methods espoused by Crowley, and also I'm pretty sure, the AA as well.
Love and Will