Crossing the border to a first cosmic experience
The Maṇipūra chakra is known for fire, dynamism and resilience in humans. However, this chakra also has an intensive relationship with the air element. If the air is consciously perceived through the space in which it expands, an experience of vastness arises. In this consciously experienced expanse, the body fits into a larger environment and recedes somewhat in its purely physical dominance. The practitioner consciously transcends their physical boundaries and experiences themselves a little more cosmic.
The air as a space for development
Just as a fish swims in water, we are constantly surrounded by air. The air is close to us, it surrounds our bodies, we move in it and, last but not least, we constantly breathe it in and out. We are permeated by it and therefore intensely connected.
What is airspace actually? Although the airspace surrounding us is not visible, it can still be described as gross material. You can feel it in its fine air movement or in the wind. It carries dust particles and scents. It can therefore be perceived with the senses.
On a more subtle, psychological level, it is a carrier of moods and forms the so-called good or bad atmosphere. Interestingly, it is people themselves who create the atmosphere with its different qualities. Anxiety, tightness, threat or interested, open and connecting moods in social interaction are created by people themselves. They can be experienced both within oneself and in the external atmosphere.
The Maṇipūra chakra is an easily accessible center to cross the boundary of these physical and psychic feelings into a greater uplifting expanse. On the one hand, the dynamic impulses of movement flow from this active center of the spine far out into the airspace, creating an open atmosphere. On the other hand, the perception of the expanse from the surroundings is centered on this active middle at the level of the ribcage. They are mutually dependent and support each other. (1)
The skin is a contact organ
On the one hand, the skin separates people from the outside world, but it is also the organ of contact with the outside world. For example, the sense of touch allows us to feel how the air touches the skin. You can feel whether it is warm or cold, moist or dry, compact or thin. The skin relaxes with the sensory activity of touch, the pores open, the skin surface becomes larger. The skin’s boundaries are thus experienced as more open and sociable.
The skin is perhaps not generally given that much attention. In the yoga tradition, however, this aspect is very well known. In his exercise instructions and interviews, B.K.S. Iyengar repeatedly spoke of relaxing the skin.
A counter-image to the relaxed, open periphery is a defiant, closed attitude with a tendency towards psychological withdrawal and an outward defense, as in defiance, for example. In this case, the skin also tightens and deliberately isolates the person from the outside world. The person is then thrown back on themselves and the reciprocal relational impulses to the environment no longer take place.
The airspace opens up vastness
This experience of vastness becomes particularly vivid in dance. The dancers’ movements glide out into the space. They need the space to unfold and, as a viewer, you get the impression that they are almost spilling out into the air.
The choreographic design in particular requires this to expand the movements. The three dimensions of depth, width and height are traversed and filled with many different combinations of movement. Dancers are usually aware that movement does not end at the physical boundary, but flows outwards. Free movement has an aesthetic, light, graceful effect and fills the room with beauty. It creates atmosphere.
But exercise can also be focused exclusively on the body. Everyone knows this. This is the case, for example, when you want to strengthen and flex your muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints in gymnastics or yoga and at the same time are completely focused on your own success. You are “completely with yourself”, sweating and working. Awareness of your surroundings is not the focus here.
A first cosmic experience opens up
Without wanting to define the term “cosmic” (3) comprehensively, it can perhaps be guessed that the direction of movement from inside to outside does not turn into a constriction, but into an expansion and extension. The airspace that surrounds us – if we think of it in broader terms – refines and transforms itself into the various spheres of air, extending into the infinity of the cosmos. For example, if you look up at the starry night sky from Earth, you can sense that there are spiritual laws that keep the planets in order in their orbits and that these also have an effect on us humans. We are connected to the cosmos.
The differentiated perception of the surrounding air space forms the beginning of the first sensations of cosmic experience and its laws.
by Angelika
(1)
There are many exercise instructions on this in the New Yoga Will. For example in the book The Free Breath by Heinz Grill
(2)
The term ether is used here in a spiritual scientific sense. The ethers are a finer, living substance in the elements: the heat ether in fire, the light ether in light, the chemical ether in water and the life ether in the earth.
(3)
Cosmos comes from the Greek and means universe or the entire universe. This is understood to mean a world order with its laws.
See also the articles: The momentum of the spine and The healing effects of lifting the ribcage. All three articles arose from the topics of the study days at the Lundo School of Spiritual Science
