***The methods described below, while safe for almost anyone in decent physical shape, should not be undertaken without a physician's approval if you have any kind of health issues. As with any exercise program, use common sense and always speak to your doctor if you are starting an exercise program.***
I’ve been using Primasounds for about 15 years, and I have certainly had some great experiences during that time. I like the fact that this forum can serve as a place for an open exchange of ideas, insights and experiences… There are many ways to use Primasounds, but what I ended up doing with it was born out of two and a half years of experimentation while I was trying to introduce a number of people from various backgrounds to the benefits of Primasounds. It started as an attempt to systematically demonstrate that you could literally use these tones to experience and work with the chakras… I used my understanding and practice of Chinese internal martial arts to create a simple way for people to feel the effects of Primasounds rather quickly and efficiently. What it became for me during this process was in many ways more profound than what I initially set out to do, so I want to offer both of the experiments I came up with as methods for Primasounds exploration. The first method is in this post, but for the second method you will have to wait for post two in this three part mini-series. I encourage you to play with these methods, and adapt them or adopt them if you find benefit.
In retrospect, it should not have been surprising to me that there was a huge potential cross over between Buddhism, Qi Qong, and Chakra work… The Indians invented Yoga, which is where (and how) the most serious study of the Chakras grew up, and the Buddha was an Indian prince. Bodhidharma (Ta Mo) brought Buddhism to the Shaolin Monastery from India, and became the first patriarch of Zen. The single-pointed concentration of the Zen-Mind mixed with the Taoist energy arts, and from the Shaolin Temple sprang many, many martial arts. There is some history that fades to myth here, and I have seen Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists all claim the origins of Chinese Qi Qong. My hunch is that they are all correct in some ways and that it was ultimately this incredible cross-pollination that gave birth to some of the more profound insights… but that is neither here nor there. There is a wonderful (if contested) history to this myth in the Tao of Yiquan, by Jan Diepersloot, if you are interested.
Jing-Qi-Shen-Void. That is the basic alchemical process of Buddhist / Taoist Qi Qong practice as it is used for martial arts and spirituality alike. It is really very simple to understand in its structure: Jing is the sum total of physical energies and the free movement of fluids in the body; Qi is the energy that flows through the meridians of the body (there’s more to Qi than this, but start sensing it and then we’ll refine the discussion – this holds true for everything… Now, and likely forever); Shen is the ‘spiritualization’ of that energy when it is mixed in meditation (circulated in the brain and used to sustain an investigation of Awareness); Void is the vast field of Awareness that is being probed by bringing all these energies to bear at one time. In Wisdom Wheel terms, there are Body Realm, Soul Realm & Spirit Realm aspects to this process and the integration of all three (along with the 4 Functions) takes place in Awareness, stillness, spacious luminosity, or simply the ‘zero dimension’… There is one more correspondence that will become helpful when we get to the second experiment that I am going to describe, and that is the ancient notion of the 3 ‘Minds’… there is the ‘belly mind’, the ‘heart mind’ and the ‘brain mind’ in these traditions, and it is important to point out that the brain, the heart and the gut all have neural structures, and all have substantial energy fields associated with them. In Chinese medicine they talk about the ‘Triple Warmer’, and in Qi Qong we talk about the 3 Dan Tiens… These are not the same as the chakras (they are the ‘fronts’ to the chakras’ ‘backs’), but they are profoundly inter-related, or at least by stimulating the nearest chakras while working with the three Dan Tiens (energy fields) you can create a multiplier effect… But we’ll return to that later in the second experiment.
There are no hard and fast demarcation lines when we are discussing energy. The body is constantly converting matter into energy in interesting ways. We take in (and give off) energies of varying degrees of subtlety from (and to) our surroundings, but much remains a mystery to us - energy flows and the totality of an integrated (and coherent) human energy field remain largely unconscious until we start to work with them in earnest. In fact, despite tremendous scientific capabilities for using and transforming various types of energy, we still have very little ontological understanding of ‘energy as such’… Asking the question “what is energy?” engenders basically the same problems we encounter when asking “what is consciousness?” The whole contemplation of these topics leads off in some interesting directions.
If you look all the way back to the origins of the universe, immediately following the big bang, there was all of this super-hot, plasma-like energy… It was too hot to form into the structural components of ‘matter’ that went on to self-organize, over billions of years, into physical reality as we know it. But as space expanded, and energies cooled, the basic elements did eventually become possible… And as these basic elements were gathered together by the ‘force’ of gravity and the swirling, spiral motions of an initial asymmetrical distribution of ‘matter’, we gained in complexity and found new forms of energy – stars were born. In fact, at every new level of complexity – from stars to planets to single and multi-cell life; from plants to animals to humans; from hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial to informational societies – at every new level of complexity there is a new form of energy that comes into existence to sustain the emergent structures… For a time this ‘new energy’ sustains the structures, but with each new level of complexity we introduce a new meaning, a new constraint, or a more nuanced expression of ‘time’ itself. You could say that a new form or structure takes hold in space, requires a new form of energy to maintain its structure, and introduces a new type of temporality during its emergence. What did time mean before stars were born, exhausted their fuel supplies and died? What did time mean before planets revolved around stars or rotated on an axis, exposing the planet to ‘seasons’ and alternating periods of light and dark? And what did time mean before self-aware consciousness with abstract cognitive abilities realized that they are born, live awhile and then die?
The point I want to make here is that the entire universe can be seen as one big energy conversion, or energy transmutation, endeavor. Once seen at least partly in this way, it is no longer much of a surprise that people would model spiritual practice on a transformation of energies. As above, so below… As without, so within…
The Jing-Qi-Shen-Void method I described briefly above can be seen as an ascending, upwardly directed, Fire or Yang process. There are certainly corresponding Yin, descending and dissolving, Water methods. You can use Primasounds with both methods to advantage, but I prefer the ascending method for these particular exercises – you are encouraged to experiment for yourself.
The 1st Method: Jing-Qi-Shen-Void with Primasounds & Specific Chakra Tones.
What I did when I created this little experiment was to make a couple of custom CD’s of Primasounds tracks. I left a nice 10-20 minutes of actual Primasounds composition at the beginning, then isolated the chakra tones in a specific order, and closed each practice session with 10-20 minutes more of integrated music. As you can see, this will be limited by the length of the CD. What I found easiest was to loop the CD if I wanted to spend more time on the specific Chakra tones, because no matter how long I focused on the specific tones, it seemed highly beneficial to both begin and end the session with a more fully integrated composition of some kind. As you can likely also imagine, I gained some real flexibility of experiment when I got my IPod into the mix.
What I did was create a CD (or playlist) that had maybe 2 songs in the beginning, then the individual chakra tones from bottom-most chakra to top, (and then back down again sometimes), and either closed with another Primasounds song selection or let the CD loop back to the beginning. The practice session goes from warm-up to standing Qi Qong, to seated meditation. (Jing-Qi-Shen… Void / Awareness is an aim, not necessarily a process in the beginning)
During the warm-up time we would focus on Jing-type exercises. Stretching, loosening the joints, some quick cardio, and a method I was taught for stimulating the bone marrow were all used during ‘Jing’ time. You can do whatever you want during this time, but stretching and joint loosening are both highly recommended warm-ups.
Before the end of the second Primasounds song, I would begin the core standing Qi Qong work. Standing is an art form. There is so much depth to this practice that I couldn’t possibly hope to capture it in a single post, or a single book, or even a series of books and videos… But there are a handful of instructions and insights that go a long way towards helping somebody begin a practice for themselves with confidence and precision – something that works and can be built upon solidly, going forward. We’ll focus on the five components I find to be most necessary at the beginning, and then layer some insights onto the practice in another post. The amount of information that has been shared regarding this practice in the last 20-30 years is nothing short of amazing. I have personally benefited from a few masters’ good will and kind instruction, and I also have benefited from my fellow travelers’ insights… Several excellent books have been written on the topic. It would be great to expand that conversation here in a meaningful way… But let’s start with some specificity around the basics.
1) Rooting. In order to use standing as a practice, you have to first learn how to align yourself and ‘root’ into the ground.
- Stand with your feet shoulder width or just a little bit wider apart. Bend your knees slightly. Notice how the spine can be moved up and down without it deviating left or right, forward or backward simply by bending and straightening the knees. (do all of these things s-l-o-w-l-y) We will be starting with just a small bend in the knees – sink in about 2 inches or so. Should you choose to develop deeper power and stronger energy flows by sinking lower, remember not to let your knees extend forward past your toes. Widening your stance will help with that alignment.
- Keep your feet in a straight line with each other and keep your toes pointed forward. Do not let your feet open outwards to form a ‘V’ and do not become pigeon-toed by allowing your toes to point inwards so that they would meet in front of you if you drew an imaginary line in the direction your feet are headed.
- Notice how you can shift your weight from side to side. Do this a few times and feel how the spine stays straight, even though you are shifting from your right leg to your left and back again. Find the center point where your weight is evenly distributed between the left and right feet. Sink in a little and relax.
- Notice how you can flex your knees inwards and outwards and feel how the inside and the outside of your feet take different proportions of your weight. Keep performing micro-corrections to keep the weight evenly distributed across your feet. The pressure should not deviate too far to the outer or inner ridges of the feet. It helps to imagine a balloon between your knees that you are holding gently in place… Also feel how this opens up the hips ever so slightly. Good. Sink in and relax.
- Feel how you can rock forward and back to the balls of your feet and back to your heels. Do this a few times and then find the middle point where the weight is distributed evenly. Spread your toes a little and gently grip the ground.
- Lean from your waist – forward and back, and then side to side. Find the center point and maintain it consciously. Feel how that affects the alignments and weight distributions you have already set. Make a note of this as you reset your total alignment.
- Finally, rotate your waist left and right. Feel how the knees flex and the weight of your body moves across the feet. Do this a few times and then set yourself to the middle ground of all of these instructions. Feel yourself as rooted strongly and firmly to the earth.
2) Lengthening the Spine. Straightening and lengthening the spine is perhaps the most important instruction for detecting the Chakras. The spinal cord is an incredibly complex tube of nerves that passes from the lower brainstem down the back of the body. The spinal column consists of boney vertebrae, cartilage (discs), ligaments and deep muscles that control the movement of the spine. The spinal muscles form two snake-like tubes that run up the spine, one on each side. These muscle groups are called the spinal erectors. While it is outside the scope of this post to delve into this in detail, I point out this structure generally so I can tell you that almost no muscle building is ever engaged to deliberately strengthen these super important muscle groups… And the cartilage in your spine receives its nutrients from synovial fluids that are not circulated by the blood flow and require that you move the ‘joints’ in order to get rid of waste and get fresh nutrients delivered. I have, in recent times, suggested that anyone interested in this work begin a practice of “bridging” to develop these muscles systematically, and stimulate the synovial fluid to help protect the discs… Unless, of course, you are one of the many people with a good solid Yoga habit… The neglect of these muscles seems to be a mostly western oversight. But irregardless, we need just a few core instructions for lengthening the spine in order to practice basic standing meditation correctly:
- Bamboo Pole – One of my most accomplished teachers in this area used the ‘Bamboo Pole’ imagery in his teaching, and it has just sort of stuck with me. Imagine a ramrod straight, but somewhat flexible pole running down your back. I like the imagery, but here are three of the essential components in more specificity.
- Tuck & Suck – from your rooted position, gently rotate your pelvis under and back a few times. Many people have tightness here, so do it a few times to loosen it up if you need to… Continue to remain mindful of how this movement affects your previous rooting – keep making micro-adjustments back into position. Also suck in the lower abdomen muscles – the girdle effect… Not so much that your belly can’t expand when breathing from your gut, but enough to help the spine lengthening process. Experiment a little, then sink in and relax. Keep coming back to this point during practice – almost everyone has an initial tendency to rotate the pelvis backwards after a few seconds.
- Chin Lock – Tuck your chin downwards ever so slightly. Tilt your head all the way to your chest and then tilt it back to look upwards at the sky. Feel the difference that makes on the upper area of the spine. By keeping your chin tucked slightly downwards you will assist the natural lengthening of the spine.
- Simultaneous pulling from top and bottom (with the mind) – When you have mastered the initial instructions, try to imagine heavy weights pulling upward on your spine from the top of your head, and downward from your tucked pelvis in order to increase the stretch of the spine and begin getting your mind more deeply into the practice.
3) Breathing. Breathing slowly, deeply and evenly is the ideal beginning breathing method. Simply breathe into the belly first and let the lungs fill up as much as is comfortable for you. If you want to imagine breathing directly into the lower Dan Tien area, that is fine also. You will fill up the lower and then the upper region of the lungs, but try not to let your chest expand or your shoulders rise in any exaggerated fashion.
4) Hand / Arm Position. There are seven essential points to maintaining proper hand and arm positions. Keep in mind that we are generally looking for the middle ground between these things, in a dynamic sort of relaxation… Although the founder of YiQuan gave up prescribing specific hand positions, he still taught the varieties of movement so people knew what they were doing when they experimented for themselves.
- Stretch your arms out in front of you. Now pull them back. Notice how the elbows want to bend… Now slow it down and notice where the elbows want to bend in the process. We will be settling in the core ‘holding the balloon’ position right about half way between the two extremes.
- Rotate your forearms. With your arms stretched straight out in front of you, bring them back so there is an elbow bend and your shoulders don’t feel extended. Without making an extreme wrist bend, face your palms towards you… There are facing towards, and facing away positions, but we will only be using facing towards positions for this exercise. With that in mind, and from that position, feel how your forearms can rotate without allowing any other part of your arm to move. Flex them a few times and then relax, with palms gently holding a balloon against your chest.
- Bend your arms at the elbow. Now notice what happens when your arm only can move along the elbow plane from this position. If you can pivot forward and back without pivoting somewhat downward and upward, you are holding the position incorrectly. Feel around for the right position, and keep your armpit open.
- Lift your arms up and down (create the sphere in front of you). Once you have that down, we are almost done. Sink all the way in and align yourself, now trace your arms from that position up and down without breaking any of your previous alignments. You will trace a sphere in front of your body if you are doing it correctly. This is a sphere that you should keep in mind while standing – there is much of advanced work hidden within this sphere. Come back to the middle ground, palms facing in, elbows bent, armpits open…
- Open and close your shoulder joints. Now open your arms out to the side. Do and do not let your elbows bend. Do and do not let your wrists break. Feel how the shoulder joint can be open and back or closed and to the front of your movement. Find a happy medium.
- Gently flex your fingers open. Stretch them all the way out and then relax just a little.
- Relax your shoulders. Shrug your shoulder up and down from this position. Feel the tension when they rise up, feel the tension when you force them down as far as they will go. Now breathe in and shrug upwards, hold, and exhale while you let them drop to where they want to go. You are now holding the balloon. Sink in and retrace your steps. Find the points that feel right, and micro-adjust the ones that don’t.
Before we go into the three positions I would show people during this experiment, it is important to acknowledge that the hand positions vary from school to school and teacher to teacher. The point is to bring awareness to your body on a micro-level and to promote the free flow of energy. The three positions I chose are a starting and stopping position with the hands hanging loosely at the sides (Wuji), a slightly elevated position that can serve as a starting point for deeper energy (holding the belly) and the core position in many of these systems, a chest high position that finds its equilibrium in all of the above core hand positions (holding the balloon).
We start and end in Wuji. Find your rooting and align yourself properly during Wuji. When you are ready to move into the ‘holding the belly’ pose, do so and feel yourself rooting more strongly through your legs and down to the earth.
After a few minutes, allow your arms to rise up further into the ‘holding the balloon’ pose. This is where you should spend the majority of your time, but if you find this position to be straining, simply move back down into ‘holding the belly’ until you feel that you can move your arms up to the higher position again. You can cycle back and forth while you are building endurance in these positions.
I also would place a chair behind everyone that was standing. A CD can over an hour long, and while that is not an unreasonable amount of time to stand for, it certainly is not going to be easy for beginners. Don’t over-due it. Ego-standing is completely unnecessary, and counter productive in a number of ways. Feel free to sit down at any time you need to… And certainly sit down for at least the length of one Primasounds composition after you have stood through the ascending or descending sequence of Chakra tones.
5) Using the Mind. In the beginning of your practice, simply going over all of these instructions in your head and making micro-corrections will be enough to fully occupy your mind. As you get more comfortable and feel stronger in these positions you will also want to keep the mind engaged in what you are doing… Focusing on your breath is always useful. Relaxing your eyes and focusing on peripheral vision is also a good place to anchor attention. But cycling through the body from the top of the head to the tips of the toes, and slowly trying to use your mind to relax any tension you find should be a consistent practice during standing work. Just the right amount of tension to keep everything aligned and in place. Feel the flesh hang off the bones, so to speak.
Considering that the whole point of this experiment is to help people locate and deal directly with the Chakras while using Primasounds, the simplest and most useful way to direct your mind is to attempt to sense that energies of the Chakras directly – at their sources. Especially when you have a single tone playing, attempt to keep your mind fixed on that Chakra’s location while keeping it open and probing for sensations.
That concludes the first part of my little experiment. Remember that while standing is an easy enough method of exercise, it can be taxing, and you should not start an exercise program without consulting your physician. Always listen to your body and remember to take it easy on yourself in the beginning. Most people are surprised at how taxing standing meditation can be in the beginning.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with this or similar uses of Primasounds. If you have any questions about the instructions, please feel free to send them to me. Next time we will get into the second aspect of my little experiment, and show how we learned to use Primasounds to enhance a core Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, almost by accident.
As always, we encourage your feedback, insight, argument, accolades, indulgence, and continued self-exploration.
Namaste…
Solvitur Ambulando,
Ian
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