Hi, Anne Corbin, your Mind Body Spirit Mentor. I'm here with this week's episode of the mind body spirit connection. You are a complex being composed of 3 parts, mind, body, and spirit. Just get those 3 parts working together in harmony Anne upscale your life. I'm here to show you how. This is podcast number 12, and you could view it part 2 of the content that I introduced last week in number 11. Specifically, I was talking about the invisible central channel that runs up and down our bodies.
It's a channel of energy over which we can x a very great deal of control. And yet, we never hear anything about it at school. Not in the Western religions, at least. And why not? Why is there this huge divide? Between Eastern And Western Teaching. Has that question ever occurred to you? Had I died a few years back? Well, let's say 10 or 12 years back, when I still worked in an office Anne I was on the old hamster treadmill, it would never have occurred to me to question anything of that nature.
How many of us look closely at the religions into which we're born? I suspect a majority either comply and carry it on when their own families arrive, or for one reason Corbin another reject the religion of their upbringing because They've been turned against it somehow. Often this happens at school, especially boarding school, I intend to talk religions east and west. In more detail in a later podcast, if I hear that anyone's interested in that.
But right now, I just want to make the point that broadly the Eastern traditions put a lot more emphasis on spirituality Anne their children are taught meditation and yoga and so on pretty well from birth. As I became more interested in energy healing, I was introduced to this word chakra.
You'll be familiar probably with the image of a person in the Lotus position that is sitting on the floor, maybe on a yoga mat, legs crossed, feet tucked in, hands arranged, either in prayer, or with the thumbs touching the first or second fingers. And frequently, this image is used to illustrate chakras. You see a vertical row of colored circles arranged more or less evenly up the spine.
These are colored in order red orange yellow, green, blue indigo violet, violet being right at the top of the head Anne red at the base of the spine. So it's natural that these colors are the same as the colors in a rainbow because white light, which is energy, is what splits into these 3, 7 colors when a ray is bent through a through a prism, you know, basic physics that you learn at school. You might even learn that in general science.
So each color represents a frequency or speed of vibration, and the speed increases as you move from red up to violet. You might recall the electromagnetic spectrum from high school physics. White light is the tiny section right in the middle of the Anne, the the long line that represents the whole spectrum. Anne incidentally, that tiny part of the spectrum is all that's visible to most people. And this is one reason why our of life in general is so limited.
The rest of the spectrum contains all the energy waves that we can't see. On the red side, as the vibrations are getting lower and lower or the frequency getting lower and lower. You get infrared going lower still to micro waves and radio waves with gradually a slowing vibration and a longer wavelength.
Humans have a frequency somewhere between radio waves and microwaves Anne this possibly explains why we're so susceptible to 5 g. On the violet side, as the vibrations are getting higher, we get ultraviolet light, which as we know, begins to get dangerous under some circumstances.
And then the next lot, of waves are X-ray, These are definitely dangerous, which is why people who operate X-ray machines as their job, they wear lead vests, 2 or aprons, whatever, to stop the waves getting through to their bodies. And then finally, you get to gamma rays which is radio activity, extremely dangerous. Again, most of the waves are not visible. And sometimes we think we can see infrared and ultraviolet, but that's only certain conditions.
We see the colors associated with them, rather than the waves themselves. Now back to Chakra's, each of the 7 colored chakras is a vortex of energy spinning and vibrating within our bodies. Each one governs certain characteristics and abilities and they vibrate at different speeds. Hence, the different colors used to represent them. The central channel or Shashumna, that Sanskrit word, connects all the chakras.
And naturally, they all have Sanskrit names as well, but today, I'm only going to introduce one of those names because it's central to our breathing practices. This is the red chakra. The one at the base of the spine, and it's called Mueller Dara. You can locate where this is easily by just squeezing the muscles down there. Ladies, think pelvic floor exercises where you squeeze the kegel muscles And gentlemen, if you're not quite with me, just squeeze everything down there.
Internally, just think about it, clench the muscles. Anne do this just for a moment or 2 because we're just wanting to locate the position. Because this is the grounding chakra. It's a really important Anne. And the procedure of squeezing like this is called Mueller Bander. Or root lock. Anne is another Sanskrit word meaning lock. So the squeeze is just to locate it are more than to activate it, but we're reminding our mind where it is. Oh, I think I said banda means lock.
So if I say, mula banda, it means that position at the base of your spine squeezed a little bit, not too much. So I have some introductory diagrams on my YouTube channel, which I mentioned, Anne you will see the outline there of a human body with a channel marked out along its center Anne you'll also see 4 red dots along the length of the channel. These dots represent what we call anchor points along the channel.
Now, eventually this central channel breathing will become second nature if you put in a bit of practice. But whilst it's all new, if you aren't familiar with central channel breathing, Reminding your body of the location of the 4 anchor points will be very helpful because it ties you into the pathway of the energy from top to bottom up and down. I'll get into a little bit more detail shortly A great many people go through life, almost disconnected from their bodies.
I have a suspicion That's not the case for my regular podcast listeners, but I mention it in case you're new to these ideas, basically wonder what I'm banging on about? The fact is we spend our formative years at school being trained to use our minds. Not necessary to learn, but to memorize and repeat masses and of information. And whether or not it's going to be useful to us in later life is a moot point, certainly a percentage of is, but, what percentage?
And this learning and memorizing is not thinking We are not trained to think at school, at least until a level, and even then, how well is the procedure communicated? Is it too late to get started then? Universities. They used to be centers of genuine learning and thinking, but it seems a lot of people get churned out without that particular ability.
Maths and science involve a certain amount of analytical work Anne some people enjoy those kinds of subjects, but there's really not much time allowed, if any, for critical thinking, and it's very much shut down at the moment. If a person holds a view different to what everybody else is thinking, they're considered wrong.
Debating societies in schools were a great form of training, I don't know how prevalent they are today, but it seems to me that the curriculum is intentionally so full of trivia that very little time is allowed for learning actual life skills. Furthermore, I don't believe there's ever been any guidance or training included in how to steal the mind. That means how to relax, and that where meditation can help.
When you first try meditating, you'll notice how it's It seems just about impossible to control those thousands of thoughts that constantly occupy your mind. Some compare the mind to a ceiling fan whirring round and round so fast that you can't even see the blades, and you certainly wouldn't want to erupt the blades with your hand because damage would be done. Your mind is like that until you learn to manage it. And the advice for beginners attempting to meditate is focus on your breathing.
I've spoken in previous podcasts about belly breathing. In conjunction with breathing in and out through the nose, partly because this direct the breath, automatically down to the lower lobes of the lung, and partly because it tends to make it easier to slow the breath Anne take regular, measured, gentle breaths. So As I mentioned earlier, this podcast is a follow on from last weeks Anne I now want to combine belly breathing with central channel and involve those 4 anchor points.
Many find it a little bit challenging at first to combine all three practices. So before I go into detail about the other 3 anchors, which are very straightforward in comparison, let's just remind ourselves of belly breathing, together with the central channel. As we breathe in through our nose, air goes in and out of the lungs, obviously, Anne that's on the breath. The belly moves in and out as the diaphragm That muscle under your ribs as that flattens Anne the lungs expand.
Pull the belly in or relax it to let the air out. Now think about the central Anne. We're going to be drawing energy down that. From about 2 feet overhead through the body directing that energy right down through the body and into mother earth. So we do this alongside our breathing in and breathing out. So you'll hear me say, breathe energy down the central Anne, breathe energy up from the earth, and this is what I'm referring to.
So on the out breath, we send the energy down into the earth, and on the next in breath, we breathe that energy up through the root chakra up to the belly, change direction, and breathe the energy up right out of the channel with some force, if possible, this gets easier over time, and imagine that energy showering around the body, 360 degrees, like water from the waves, blowhole. Now we wanna combine Mula Anne, the root lock, with the breathing system.
So if you find all this a bit confusing, you will probably find it easiest to practice while sitting down. You're probably sitting down anyway, but you might be walking, for example. Anyway, squeeze mula Anne at the base of the spine. Anne you're connected with it, just relax by about 50% or even a bit more. You don't have to keep it clenched just hold on to the gentle squeeze as you breathe the energy down the channel and the belly expands.
Now change direction, breathe the energy out, write down through mala Anne, Imagine it traveling down about 2 feet into the earth below where you're sitting. Anne now reverse the process. Mueller Band is still gently engaged, breathe the energy up through the bottom chakra, into the central column as far as the belly. Enjoy the feeling. And now, breathe that energy right up the central channel and out of the head at the crown chakra or chakra number 7.
What we're doing here is using the body as a transformer because cosmic energy from up above is of such high frequency that we, as mere mortals, can't do much with it. So when we breathe it back up again from the earth, it's of a much more practical nature. And using this, We can clear blockages, limiting beliefs, emotional interference, however you like to think of it.
Anne what we're wanting to do is create a super highway of energy, connecting all the chakras, and gently clearing and healing them with this energy flow, intentional energy flow. So finally, today, I'll mention I'll just mention the other 3 anchor point so that you can imagine easily these points along the central channel. At the level of your heart is not surprisingly, the heart chakra.
You can open this by squeezing your shoulder blades together Anne imagining that you're opening your heart chakra, which is also known as the 3rd eye. It's the pineal gland, which is in the center of the head. Well, not the dead center, but imagine, the space between your eyes, move back a couple of inches, and that's where the pineal gland is. To engage with this, you just roll your eyes up gently Anne where you feel the pressure, that's where your 3rd eye is.
Finally, at the level of the throat is the 5th chakra. Anne, well, it's kind of halfway between the other two. To locate this, constrict the space at the back of the throat, or take an audible breath think of Darth Vader, that sort of connect with that floppy bit of skin at the back of your throat. That's not the chakra itself, but that's the the region where the chakra is located If you're familiar with yoga, this is called UJai Breathing.
So now we have 4 anchor points to remind your mind of this energy pathway, this is Shumna, that connects all the chakras. And mula bandha at the base of the spine is the only one that you need to keep gently engaged as you do the breathing. The more often you practice this breathing, the more benefits will accrue. The idea is for it to become second nature, The great thing is that as you're practicing, you don't need to set aside special time.
For example, you can be walking the dog are walking to the shops, pushing a trolley around the supermarket driving, sitting in a traffic jam, doing the dishes, unloading the dishwasher, wetting your teeth. You get what I'm saying. It's just simply about remembering to put in it on practice. So friends, that wraps up the mind body spirit connection for this week.
Let me know, please, if there are any specific subjects that you would like me to include In a future podcast, join me same time next week, or connect with me anytime on social media you.