What happens when we become ill? Maybe have the flu or suffer a heart attack. If you are fortunate there will be medicines available to deal with that problem and, hopefully if you take them you will get better. It has become popular to criticise the drugs industry, or “big pharma” for trying to capitalise on our health misfortunes but, that aside, they do provide those drugs which we believe will keep us alive.
The medical industry is working flat-out to come up with drugs to counteract lifestyle habits and in the end it may succeed in giving us greater life expectancy – maybe another 50 years, who knows? While a health problem can be fixed relatively easily by taking drugs, the medical industry frankly doesn’t bother too much about “why”. It’s main concern is getting rid of the symptoms and hence the illness. This is actually a problem with modern medicine. Causes are of less interest than superficial cures, and drugs overcome symptoms rather than curing the fundamental causes of problems. What if the cure for one ailment is the cause of another? Knowledge of this is perhaps more limited than it should be.
The modern medical world takes a guarded, or even a dim view of traditional medicine systems around the world. For instance, the Indian medical association refers to the Indian traditional practise of Ayurveda as “pseudoscientific quackery”, despite 80% of the population there using it. The Chinese government takes a similar view with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)) although it is very well established in use in China. There is, undoubtedly, a lot of truth in these views because traditional knowledge has become diluted by the addition of extra practises rooted in superstition. What this overlooks though, is the fundamental difference between the approach to health taken traditionally and that used now.
The traditional approach is generally holistic. In other words, ailments are seen as being caused by imbalances in the “subtle system” in the body and the approach is to cure the whole system rather than just the symptoms that are apparent when we become ill. It is believed that outside the physical body, there is a “subtle body” which cannot be seen by eye but exists in the form of vibrational energy. It is this system that reacts badly, leaving us open to illness when we do things that conflict with the balanced framework that underlies the whole of the natural world. Most people would agree that this thought could make sense, provided the evidence for a subtle system was clearly there. This is where Sahaja Yoga has enabled a giant leap in human understanding of illness.
How so? Well, when we get our inner awakening a change happens immediately. The Kundalini energy which is part of the subtle body and is normally situated at the base of the spine in the sacrum bone becomes awakened and travels up the spine, through the energy centres in the body and in to an area extending above the head called the “Sahasrara Chakra”. When this happens we begin to notice feelings on our fingertips and other parts of the body of heat, coolness and tingling. If we put our hand above our head we will feel a sensation like a cool breeze coming from the top of the head. We feel this because the central nervous system has become activated and is now sensitive to changes in our subtle system. By using our hands we can determine the state of our subtle system and put right the imbalances in it from the roots. The breeze above the head shows us the flow of the Kundalini energy on our hands.
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This alone is great, but there is even more to it. We can work on ourselves, and we can also work on other people to help them. The guidance comes from the sensations in our hands and body, and we can actually be doing this within minutes of achieving our inner awakening. Many consider this to be so radical and unexpected that it is “mind-blowing”. As well as experiencing the sensations in the hands when we put our attention in to the Sahasrara Chakra area above the head, we become very calm and peaceful inside and our thoughts stop so that we experience a state of “thoughtless awareness”, which has been the goal of meditation practices for thousands of years. What’s not to like? We get all this because it is built in to us and is ready to happen.
So, how does this help our health? Before we get our inner awakening, the subtle system in most people is in a state of tension, and sometimes that tension becomes too great, causing illness. When we get inner awakening, the Kundalini energy soothes the whole system and removes this tension, therefore bringing about a cure of symptoms from their roots. While we are in a state of meditation, we feel calm and relaxed. When we stop meditating in this way, some problems return, but every time we return to a meditative state, the problems abate. If we meditate every day for a short time, those problems gradually subside as the subtle system in the body comes back in to balance. At the same time, we find that our perception of life changes for the better and our mental state improves dramatically.
This is different to any other type of meditation! The difference is that you experience your inner awakening right at the beginning, even if you have never meditated before. This enables you to meditate and experience the “thoughtless awareness” state effortlessly. Without inner awakening it is almost impossible to meditate properly and thoughtless awareness is almost unattainable. Many people benefit from the act of meditation without inner awakening, but in reality they are calming their mind by mental effort rather than letting it happen spontaneously as it should.
There are so many benefits to Sahaja Yoga meditation, and it’s even simple to find somebody who will take you through that first experience of inner awakening. Sahaja Yoga is practised by millions around the world, and any one of those millions can do this. It works like one candle lighting another. To make it easier for people, small groups of Sahaja Yoga practitioners offer sessions in many towns and cities and also online (which works just as well). Everything is free-of-charge.
Find out about inner awakening here