Not many people have heard of NadiPrana, an inner yoga
promoting self-healing & a panoramic kind of awareness, which is gradually
freeing the practitioner of ego-reference. Yet, it has
been taught and shared with quite a few people here in India as well as in some
other places since 1998.
The basic purpose of the system is to heal and stabilize the
bodymind by removing blockages from the energy body, which when negatively
charged, negatively impacts on our physical and emotional well-being via clogged-up
energy channels (nadi in Sanskrit)
plus via unbalancing because disharmonious winds (vayu or prana in
Sanskrit).
In other words, by enhancing and accelerating the flow of
energy through the proper channels, NadiPrana can eventually transform our by
habit grasping and clinging mind into its far vaster & even limitless
nature, which spontaneously expresses itself through awareness, openness &
naturally manifesting love & compassion. By practicing NadiPrana under appropriate guidance, we can
graduate from ordinary selfish mind to all-inclusive and all-pervasive wisdom
mind without getting hung up or unnecessarily proud about how ‘loving’ &
‘compassionate’ we have become.
After regular and repeated NadiPrana practice, hardened mental
& psychological patterns slowly tend to melt in the sun & moon of a
self-arising awareness that had remained hidden from our view & taste &
touch, thus far.
Yet after such words in praise of NadiPrana, a note of
caution is in order: there is a safety
I cannot claim that I have created or even developed the
system. In a way, many far greater
teachers than I have been using and plagiarizing or reinventing it since the
Buddha’s time. In my case,
NadiPrana sort of developed itself into the present form on the basis of a lifelong
practice of Buddhist yoga & meditation, which I learned from Tibetan
Buddhist lineage teachers both in the west, as well as in India and Nepal. In some way this inner & outer
journey may actually have started at birth, but definitely was set in motion in
1971 when I first spent full six weeks around the great stupa in Boudha or
Bodhnath near Kathmandu in Nepal.
There I got drawn into this magical place’s ungraspable & unnoticeably
ennobling & empowering circles.
By the way, as I am writing this today, I am sitting in the Himalayan Java Café, facing the east
side of the very same stupa.
However, this is not the time to go into my life story in detail. The focus here is sharing with you how
NadiPrana could be defined and how has been taught in a few select groups over
close to 20 years, and why it was taught in this way – rather than being loudly
touted or even professionally marketed.
This particular aspect of the journey with NadiPrana started
when I moved to India from the US in February 1998, almost exactly twenty years
after I had started practicing Buddhist yoga in 1978. In 1998 I was married to an internationally recognized
American Reiki teacher & workshop leader, who already had quite a few
followers in India. From the
beginning, we worked together as a team.
I also became the sometimes silent and sometimes acknowledged co-author
of her books. Through these
& other contributions, my ex-wife could see the value of what I had to
offer. As a result, she requested
me to share it in some of her 5-day to month long programs. So I started doing that.
Thus the first NadiPrana teachings came in the form early
morning sessions in what used to be called the Core Empowerment Training, as
well as in several 4-week bodymind therapy courses, taught between 1998 and
2005. Those of you reading this,
who have gone through Gagori’s trainings at Aithein
in Agonda can easily relate to this approach, because they have encountered
their bit of NadiPrana in the same way. My connection with Gagori, incidentally, started in a Core
Empowerment Training and additional bodymind therapy course, in 2002. She has been working with me ever since
for now fifteen wonderful and sometimes at least partially miserable
years.
That the years had both high and low points was
indispensable. Deep spiritual work
requires challenging all of our hideouts and misguided beliefs regarding ‘self’
& ‘others’, & sometimes the going gets a little rough. Furthermore, to believe that only the
student would experience the ‘low’ whereas the teacher would stay above it all
& always on the ‘high’ in this roller coaster unfolding, is one of the
greater misconceptions about the workings of any genuine spiritual
teacher/student or student/teacher relationship. When one of the two experiences heavy challenges the other
automatically feels them, too, & distinctly so. Most people have no idea how connected one can get in this kind
of teaching process. But, of
course, connected to each other in this way does not infer being chained to
each other. True connectedness
always conveys the taste of innate freedom.
Anyway, in the course of these sessions within the framework
of other teachings, some participants voiced their interest in retreats
dedicated exclusively to NadiPrana.
Thus they came about, & I have conducted at least one retreat
annually since the year 2000, most of them in India, one or two in Scotland and
Mauritius. I have also taught two
people in several month-long one-on-one retreats where we explored deeply.
Interestingly enough, a core group formed. Most of the retreats had some of the
same
Why? I probably felt the need to test myself as a teacher
working closely with only a few students, while I was being tested and worked
on by my teachers.
And yet these two processes of teaching and being taught
were not directly linked. My
teachers did not teach me NadiPrana.
Rather, they worked with me on traditional Tibetan Buddhist forms of
meditation & sadhana. They further permitted me to share some
of their teachings. They granted
me the right to give Buddhist refuge and bodhisattva instructions, which
traditionally is considered a rare privilege. They let me guide people through preliminary practices, even
through long traditional retreats, which for some lasted three months. My teachers observed how these retreats
impacted students & what happened in peoples’ lives when they worked with
me. How much I cared. How much I stayed true to the actual
essence and form of the teachings, while spontaneously manifesting new and
genuine ways of expressing them in the modern world – finding my own voice,
‘claiming my seat’ as the Tibetan phrase suggests. How much or how little people actually flourished while
occasionally being challenged to the core!
It has been a long and rewarding process, informing the
teaching of NadiPrana with far greater depth than otherwise possible, imbuing
it with a true spiritual lineage.
And in any genuine and real dharma teaching, lineage is everything. Lineage means being empowered to inform
the present with the accomplishments of the past – keeping such accomplishment
alive by re-enacting it now in our individual ways.
Does that mean that you have to turn Buddhist in order to practice
NadiPrana for the simple purpose of self-healing or finding some inner sanity in
world gone insane? No, turning
Buddhist for such purpose is not required, only being willing to unreservedly
explore your own bodymind is.
Why am I sharing all of this now? May be now more people are ready for this, or I am ready for
more people. Time to get the
teachings out and see how they benefit or don’t benefit more people.
To reiterate the key idea on how Buddhist NadiPrana may be
different from other forms of yoga, in Buddhist yoga, postures are not of
utmost importance and the perfecting of posturing not encouraged. What is important, however, is to feel
yourself, to feel everything that percolates through and bubbles up from your
own depths – without judging it or imprisoning it in fixed self-images &
concepts & worldviews.
In short, you liberate and free yourself through NadiPrana
mostly by feeling your bodymind moment to moment anew, not getting stuck in any
particular ‘feeling’ or ‘experience’ or ‘observation’. This sounds so simple but is one of the
most difficult things to actually do – even more so when you consider that the
awareness that is thus called forth is not bound to your ego & has no
center. It invites you to join into
your own vastness.
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