Practice of the Straight Path: Basic Methods

Relaxation Asanas

After the warm-up we should take some rest in one of the following postures (asanas):

The first of them is the so-called half-tortoise posture.

We sit on the heels with the toes looking backward and the knees moved apart. Put the forehead and the extended arms on the floor with the palms pressed against each other. Relax the body and mind completely. Watch the belly sag more and more as the relaxation becomes deeper. This is a wonderful exercise that allows one to get rid of physical and mental tiredness. It should be performed for about ten minutes.

The second asana is called crocodile posture. There are two ways of performing it.

We lie on the belly, protruding the elbows forward as far as possible, the chin resting on the palms.

The second option — we put the elbows forward and place one forearm upon the other on the floor, holding the head and the upper part of the body up by tensing the muscles of the back.

In both cases we feel ourselves happy little crocodiles, which have crawled out on a sandy beach to have a sunbath! The sun warms our backs — and we dissolve in pleasure under its tender warmth, which permeates our bodies.

Pranayamas

One has to perform the bioenergetic purification both of the organism as a whole and of its separate segments corresponding with the chakras. There are a lot of purification techniques, and each of them allows one to get rid of the next portion of impurity, which means elimination of diseases, overall improvement of health, and getting closer to the Ultimate Goal.

Now I will describe a few general purifying exercises of pranayama type.

We perform them in standing position. First, bend slightly to the right so that the right arm hangs freely without touching the body. Try to feel the arm thoroughly from the shoulder joint to the wrist. Imagine that a pump chamber, to which “air”-light is being fed through the arm like through a hose, expands in the chest with every inhalation and contracts with every exhalation. Special attention should be paid to exhaling. Try to achieve a high clarity of sensations. The “hose” must be as thick as the arm, and nothing should prevent the “air”-light from moving freely through it.

Then we perform the same exercise with the left arm, and then with each leg. The “hose” must come down from the chest to each leg through the corresponding side of the body.

Place images of two big barrels under the feet. Let one barrel be empty and the other full of white liquid light. Touch this light with the foot-hose and pump it through the body-pump into the other barrel. With each inhaling, the pump chamber inside the body and the head is expanding, drawing the light from the full barrel through the leg. With each exhaling, the chamber is contracting; the light pouring out through the other leg into the empty barrel. Thus we cleanse the whole body from inside.

When the barrel with light gets empty — fill it up again and overturn the content of the other barrel into an image of fire, so that all dirt that has streamed out burns. Turn the body around over the barrels — and repeat the exercise with another half of the body.

Then do the same, but this time placing the barrels under the hands.

In this way, we have to attain a feeling that the whole body is filled up with bright white light.

After performing pranayamas, we have to rest in one of the relaxation asanas.

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Vladimir Antonov
Ph.D. (in biology)

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