Chakra Sadhana Course

Month by month we have given specific practices for the awakening of each chakra, one after the other. These practices must be adopted systematically. For the first month you should only perform the techniques for ajna chakra. Then in the second month, add those for mooladhara. In the third month add those for swadhisthana. In the fourth month do those practices for manipura and selected practices for ajna, mooladhara and swadhisthana chakras.

(By this stage, due to the number of practices, it will be necessary to omit some.) In this way, you should continue, adding the practices for each chakra, until you reach bindu visarga during the seventh month.

The first month is concerned with awakening ajna chakra and not the lowest one, mooladhara, which is treated in the second month. It may seem more logical and consistent to start with mooladhara practices, but it is a rule of kundalini yoga that first there should be awakening of ajna chakra before the other chakras. Unless this is achieved, then the awakening of the lower chakras may rock the stability of the practitioner; he may experience physical, mental and emotional shocks which he cannot bear.

The awakening of ajna chakra brings a great degree of detachment, which allows one to withstand the lower chakra awakenings without excessive shock. One is able to observe chakra experiences with the attitude of a witness. This is most essential in kundalini yoga.

In the eighth month we have given some practices which influence the chakras as a whole. These should also be done for one month.

Please note that some practices influence more than one chakra, but we have only given each practice once as sadhana for the chakra it is most likely to affect. Also, it should be noted that nothing can be gained by randomly selecting one chakra sadhana program and just practising it for a day or two and then commencing another program. As each practice is a stepping-stone for another practice, the techniques should be performed systematically.

In each chapter, practices are given to locate the position of the chakra, and its counterpart, the kshetram (which is located in the front of the body). It is important that you can locate these points exactly.

All the practices given for the specific chakras are the building blocks from which the techniques of kriya yoga are constructed. As such, you should perfect them before proceeding to the kriyas. Ultimately, you will only need to practise the kriyas, but prior to this you must be prepared to devote at least one hour a day to the chakra practices for the next eight months.

Kriya yoga

In the final chapter we have given a full description of the twenty kundalini kriyas which are widely known as kriya yoga. At this stage, you can leave all the specific practices given in the previous chapters for awakening the chakras individually, or if you wish you can select a few to continue with.

The kundalini kriyas can be learned and practised one after the other, at the rate of one per week. That is, in the first week, perfect vipareeta karani mudra; in the second week add chakra anusandhana; then add nada sanchalana in the third week, and so on. At the end of twenty weeks you should be doing the entire series of twenty kriyas daily, with the traditional number of rounds for each kriya, or with a reduced number of rounds as indicated.