Approaching from the vertical central axis

Many similar videos can be found on Youtube, but I just want you to look at this one below introduced in a course I attended – ‘Bone For Life’ founded by Ruthy Alon. Looking at this video, I would like to express some thoughts about Hara and the natural body, which can be approached from awareness of the body’s central axis.

According to internet research, a person carries a load up to 20% of their own body weight in this manner. Moving around with such a load on top of the head without hand-support, we have to rely on the body’s instinctive balance along our vertical central axis.

Here is another extreme example of using the body’s vertical central axis: Mr. Iyengar is posing on the crown of his head. This is from a book titled ‘thus spake B.K.S.Iyegar’ written by Noëlle Perez-christiaens, and the comment says : you must keep the balance by the intelligence of the body (instinct, balance feeling or ability) not by strength. When you keep the balance by strength, it is physical action, when by intelligence of the body, it is relaxation in action.

In Okido Yoga, the words ‘Natural Body’, ‘Hara’ and ‘Tanden’ are commonly used. People who attend Okido Yoga classes all over the world may come across unique dynamic movements as shown in the book ‘KYOKA-HO’. However, to me personally, such continuous dynamic movements do not fit very much to cultivating my awareness of the ‘Hara’ location.

So like in this video, I have started using a head cushion for practice of awareness, putting it on top of my head with or without a small extra load, and moving up and down or around the house while I do some simple house work. Then I feel that, when I try to hold such loads at my highest point, my muscles work as those arrows in the image below are converging from all directions toward one point. Also, to keep working in such a state, I must try to relax other parts of my body. ‘The body’s forces converge to the very one point Hara or Tanden and other parts are relaxed.’ Tthat’s the sate of Natural Body.

It is almost impossible to grasp the exact sensation where Hara is, but when I practise this, I feel getting a bit closer to it. Cultivating such an inner feeling is an important training for yoga students.

More essential Hara-training

The Japanese word ‘Hara’ implies more than physical or physiological meaning. It implies a meaning of spiritually developed character through disciplines. So, another type of Hara-strengthening training is to sincerely face our daily life matters, and try to solve them step by step until they are solved, calling forth patience and determination when daunted by pressure, and thus allow our duty mind (or temptation to escape) to gradually shift to love to all people around us, and perhaps even beyond them, to Life itself.

How to make a head cushion

If you want to try improving your awareness of the central axis and Hara, here is how to make a head cushion.

First, make three paper patterns A, B and C as below. As indicated, evenly mark 6 points on A, 2 points on B, and 4 points on C.

Then, please follow the numbered photos below:

1.To make the inner bag, cut out two pieces of A from white cotton cloth. Sew the right sides together with fine stitches, leaving some opening to put the filling later. Sew the edge for reinforcement.

2.At each of the 6 marked points, sew about 2.5 cm as the photo shows so that the flat surface becomes 3-dimensional.

3.Having sewn all 6 points, it will look like this.

4.Turn inside out.

5.Fill this inner bag with 250 grams of linseeds, and sew up the opening with fine stitches.

6.Stitch the centre as the photo shows.

7.This is the completed inner cushion.

8.To make the outer bag, cut out one each of A, B and C from the cloth you choose for the outer bag. Double-fold the straight part of B and sew. Do the same for C. Put A with right side up, and on top, put C with right side down to line up to A, and then B with right side down so that B and C evenly overlap as well as perfectly line up to A. Pin them. Then sew as you made the inner bag without leaving any opening. Sewing about 2 mm outside the marked circle will make a good outer bag to easily install the inner cushion. Do as you did 2-4 for the inner bag. When you have done up to this stage, it will look like 8.

9. This is how it looks from the other side.

10.Turn inside out.

11.Put the inner cushion into the out bag.

12.Completed !! You can wash the outer bag as necessary.

How effective these exercises are is not measured by appearance; that somebody bends a lot and another looks stiff. Some people are naturally suppler than others. However, in a supple person, suppleness could be only in the partial body, not in the whole. So, let us move away from these words ‘supple’ or ‘stiff’ and respect our own unique reality. I think that, when we practise yoga exercises as bearing principle points with harmonised breath and mindfulness, everybody gets effects in a similar degree.

The video, during the first several seconds, shows important notes: Breathe through nose, Hamonise breath and movement, Flow at your own pace. I simplified these notes as much as possible in order not to make your mind busy, but these contain ‘Please do not force your body as holding breath’, that is to say, ‘Don’t do ‘push and push’ when you find your body not moving any farther against your expectation’. In this case, not all conditions may be fulfilled to move your body any father. A forcing action does not change a long-established status. Breath holding involves a conscious action and is used for a different purpose in yoga practice.

So, please let the video run by your side and practise at your breathing pace, and sometimes, visit this page to check the bearing points in each exercise, which will refine your practice.

So far I have been receiving very good feedbacks, and so I think the attendees have been receiving benefits on physical aspects. Readers, please put your comments as you wish. Here in this post, I describe my own feedback about ‘Effects in mind occurring through Online Lessons’.

Yoga ultimately teaches one becoming one’s own master through finding that one’s own innate divinity is no difference from the divinity of natural law, which is enabling all phenomena of the universe to exists and occur. Oki-sensei put this into his unique expression “The life force is God”. Thus as each individual practising to be his/her own master, we respect and help each other and develop together – This is the ideal human society in Oki-sensei’s teaching.

As running 90-minute online lessons, I am realising this way of yoga lessons can serve very well enhancing our awareness towards the above mentioned.

1. As an English saying “You  can  lead a  horse  to  water, but  you  can’t  make  him  drink” indicates, it is the most basic importance that we must prepare ourselves to attend anything consciously willingly, if we want to produce its best effect. To attend online lessons, you may have to reschedule your daily routine, have to ask other members of your family to cooperate to your ‘Me’ time, have to prepare comfortable environment which helps you focus on your practice, have to prepare yoga kits yourself, not like jumping out of your house into a yoga studio. In a few words, basically you have to organise yourself to get ready for entering a special realm even for just 90 minutes. But, you can guess what will develop if you accumulate such self-discipline.

2. In online lessons, I don’t come around to give individual advice or point out this or that in order for you to adjust positions, speed or general intensity. Instead, you have to observe my demonstration when I show differences of positions at this angle or that, carefully listen to my explanation about inner sense that would occur according to small differences, and finally you have to communicate with your own inner sense. This kind of mental attentiveness is really a good practice to polish our inner sense. I believe it is a very important element to make physical exercises to yogic exercises. Using the body as a portal and developing conscious mind, yoga is a method to integrate the balance of the body, mind and spirit, throughout all levels of our existence. Even while giving for a short lesson each, I hope I am viewing this direction.

Some may feel put off using technology to attend yoga lessons. However, with positive feedbacks from both the attendees and myself, I am very happy to run the online lessons.

I have picked up some more words from Oki-sensei’s Japanese lecture given on 1978.9.29, as follow:

“ I think that all methods to lead us to saving, enlightening, restoring health or making wishes true are concluded only as one way. It is that we search, devise and make efforts to practise a way of living to make our innate life force happy. For example, our life force is happy when the body is flexible, the breathing is deep and when we take suitable nutrition, but it is not happy when we have poor elimination.

The other day when I gave a seminar to many business people, one of the questions I was asked was how one could earn good money in business. You can’t know how because you see a situation only from your point of view. Say, if you as a customer stand in front of your shop, is it a shop you would like to enter, or a shop you want to pay your money to? Think like this in different perspectives.

This means: you must have capacity to listen. If you want to make your life force happy, you must listen to its voice. Otherwise, you cannot enhance your natural recovery power even if you want to do so. Your life force is constantly appealing to you about what it needs. Please try to listen to those requests.

Also, always make a ‘yes’ response. A ‘yes’ response means that you respond to anything with a thankful mind.

Also, interpret and treat everything as a divine blessing given from the universe. Cultivate your mind so that it instantly works in this way, for example, even in a simple action of drinking a glass of water.

Also, when you deal in a particular situation, if you imagine as if you are a divine being, you will treat the situation in a better way.

These are from yoga training in Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi, Bakthi, Prasad and Buddhi. ”