What is a bandha anyway?
I mentioned in Monday’s post about connectivity and creativity a bandha. In case you didn’t have time to check that out let’s do some kinesthetic learning right now.
Not while you are driving, but then again you shouldn’t be reading this while you are driving so we should be good.
Okay, imagine that you have a cloth napkin open and flat in front of you. Then pick it up from the center. So you pinch the middle of the fabric, and then the four corners are still splayed, but eventually follow. Make sense? If not, pull your shirt out from you for a moment and you will see the same motion. Got it? Great.
Now settle into your chair relax and pull up from your pelvic floor, for women that would be between the vagina and the anus. It’s not either, it is the smooth muscle between. This particular bandha is the root lock, or in Sanskrit, it’s called Mula bandha.
For me, typing this in a lovely little coffeeshop with the best vibe, I just did it and it cinched my energy, readjusted my tailbone and elongated my spine. I already have a relationship with this posture, so perhaps that is why I felt such a ripple effect. But, you want to know something? It also showed me where I was holding. Meaning, when I went to engage it, I realized I was not fully occupying my body (which by the way is the locus for the name of my women’s online journey, Sit In Your Center). Did you know that you can feel that, if you tune in a bit? For me it feels like I am hovering just about two inches away from my true seat of center. Similar to the feeling when you go into a pool, but it is too cold, so you are physically in the pool but you are kinda trying to hold yourself, or your upper body up and out, away from the cold and then eventually—you know, if you just plunge, in it will be fine, so you dive under and then you come up, cool and happy and back together? Yeah, that’s what we want to return to: cool, happy and together within ourselves. Not afraid to dive deep into our own humanity and divinity. The yin and the yang of it.
So about that bandha. There are three listed in the Yoga Pradipika, and they are connected to pranayama (breathing techniques) to help regulate the flow of energy through the body. Here’s their names if you are curious:
Mula Bandha – मूलबन्ध – (root lock)
Uddiyana Bandha – उड्डियान बन्ध – (navel lock)
Jalandhara Bandha – जालन्धर बन्ध – (chin lock)
Source site here if you would like to know more. To really delve of course, you’d have to practice and orient yourself in the vast and accessible knowledge of yoga.
The constraint or the employment of the lock can regulate energy, illuminate where you maybe have an energy leak….this can happen in a number of ways. People are comfortable with the idea of losing urine retention of having a prolapse, meaning they understand the physicality of it, not that they are comfortable having it, but actually this can (often is) co-mingled with energetic disruption, and these physical discomforts can even start as energetic disruption. Back to the constraint, when we set a container, make a commitment, step out of a normal pattern (the locks are a subtle employment that offers a differentiation in body placement to illuminate the life force that we kinda don’t talk about), we can observe something new. We can learn where we are holding instead of flowing or being in are full power (which I would say is the flow state, full alignment) What we can see can empower us to celebrate or make change.
Knowing our boundaries and our bodies can greatly serve us in regulating the environment we live in. We may be physically sharing space with someone,and still be certain to maintain the equilibrium we have decided to claim. Or we could be making a commitment to our own creativity and think we are uncertain of direction mentally, and the key may be to tune into our bodily internally and subtly and take stock of our internal landscape and help bring us back to our empowered center.
If you are looking to learn more about bandhas, effort to find sturdy teachers to read or learn from.
If you are curious about learning how to observe and regulate your internal landscape, Step Into the Spiral, an online class of energetic practices for chaotic times could be helpful.
Try it out. Who’s going to feel brave enough to let us know?
It’s all connected my friends.