Evidence for the Existence of Nadis

Of major importance for scientific acceptance of the existence of the whole science of kundalini yoga, is the proof for the existence of the psychic network of energy flows called nadis. The whole process of kundalini yoga rests on the premise that within the human body there exists a system of nadis, flows of energy, which conduct energy, both physical and mental.

There are three main nadis, ida, pingala and sushumna and there are said to be thousands and thousands of nadis spread throughout the whole body. Though these nadis are body-based they are not physical structures but rather appear to be functional. They are dynamic, alive, moving, powering the body and mind, intimately linked with nerves, blood vessels and all our body organs. While there is no known physical structural support system for them, yogis maintain that they definitely do exist and have even mapped their pathways in the body and their effects on the mind.

Correspondence of yoga and acupuncture

One man who has been working consistently to prove the existence of nadis and acupuncture meridians, as well as the chakras, is Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama, President of the International Association for Religion and Parapsychology. (1-9) A graduate from the Tokyo University of Education with Ph.D. degrees in philosophy and clinical psychology, he was recognized by UNESCO in 1974 as one of the world’s ten foremost parapsychologists. He has even invented his own equipment in order to elucidate the science of yoga and to make this knowledge scientifically clear and acceptable. He states:

“By studying a number of books about the nadis and chakras of yoga over the last two years, I have been able to establish that asana, mudra, pranayama and dharana were ingeniously evolved on the basis of knowledge of the nadi system.” Motoyama states that acupuncture and the yogic concept of nadis have the same foundations and have affected each other for over 2000 years. That is, we are dealing with systems that have been in operation for millennia. This in itself is reason to believe that there must be something firm and solid at their foundations for people to have accepted and followed their theories for so long. Systems which do not give results are usually quickly discarded.

As an example of the correspondence of acupuncture and yoga, Motoyama points out that the concept of the triple heater meridian in acupuncture and the five pranas of the body in yogic physiology are almost identical. In acupuncture the lower heater, the area below the navel, corresponds to apana, the middle heater corresponds to samana between the diaphragm and navel and the upper heater corresponds to the prana between the throat and the diaphragm. Yoga also states that the chakras act as transducers, converting psychic energy into physical energy and vice versa. They distribute this energy to the body via nadis. Several acupuncture meridians lie in the areas attributed to the chakras and nadis, for example, the governor vessel in the spine corresponds with sushumna nadi and the conception vessel running along the front midline of the body is used in kundalini kriyas. Several meridians start or finish in chakra locations.

Proof of nadis

One of the machines Motoyama has developed in order to prove the existence of nadis and meridians is the AMI, or ‘Apparatus for Measuring the Functional Conditions of Meridians and their Corresponding Internal Organs’. This is an instrument designed to measure electrical currents in the body. It measures the steady state current that exists all the time, as well as the current in the body in response to an electrical shock from DC voltage. He uses it to measure the charge at special acupuncture points alongside the base of the fingernails and toenails. These are called sei (spring, well) points and are said to be the terminals for meridians, where psychic energy either enters or exits from the body. In an experiment designed to substantiate the existence of acupuncture meridians and nadis, Motoyama placed electrodes on seven acupuncture points lying along the left triple heater meridian which runs along the back of the left arm and the front of the body, as well as a random electrode on the right palm, a point far from the area to be electrically stimulated- He then gave the subject a painful 20 volt shock to the “sei” or beginning point of the triple heater meridian, at the tip of the fourth fingernail. A few milliseconds later he recorded an overall and equal physical reaction in all electrodes caused by excitation of the sympathetic nervous system in response to pain.

To prove that nadis do exist he then gave a very mild, painless and sensationless shock to the same point and two to three seconds later recorded an electrical response only in those specific points said, since ancient times, to be connected to the triple heater meridian. No response was recorded on the palm electrode or in any other part of the body. It is an interesting fact that the greatest response was found in the electrode at the other end of the meridian, just below the navel. No physiological or neurological connection is known to explain this phenomenon, however, the yogic and acupuncture explanations are validated by this experiment.

It is very important to realize that the effect of stimulating the meridian electrically is not a neurological process because the movement of energy in the nadi and meridian is much slower than we find in nerves. The energy we are dealing with is something else, some other form that we have as yet not understood. This fact is substantiated by the work of Dr. Nagahama at the Chiba University Medical School in Japan who showed that the time it took for the sensation to pass along the meridian was hundreds of times slower (15 to 48 centimeters per second) than nerve conduction (5 to 80 meters per second). Therefore we have to postulate the existence of some other channel of transmission and nadis fit this description exactly.

In another experiment, Motoyama coated the arm of a subject with a special paint consisting of liquid crystals which react to changes in temperature by changing color. When the “sei” point of an acupuncture meridian was stimulated by heat for from two to five minutes, the liquid crystals in certain subjects changed color in a band along the meridian being stimulated. This not only further supports the above research but also substantiates another claim of yoga, that one of the characteristics of prana is that it generates heat in the body.

Motoyama has been able to visually demonstrate and measure subtle changes in the body that point to the fact that there is a flow of some kind of energy in the body which does not fit in with our present day knowledge of body mechanisms, such as in neurophysiology, yet which has a physical counterpart which can be recorded in laboratories. The exact nature of this flow of energy, the connections between the subtle and gross physical structures, the method by which prana acts on the body, these things await further clarification. What we do know is that we are dealing with a new phenomenon, and a very important one which has tremendous relevance to our present day needs in terms of understanding the body and mind and the relationship between energy and consciousness.

The nadis and disease

Motoyama’s experiments have also shown that the energy he is measuring is not just a peripheral phenomenon, some byproduct of electrical and chemical processes, but of primary importance to our health. He has developed a system by which we can use our measurements of the electrical state of the nadi system to know about our body’s state of health and even of each individual organ.

The AMI is supersensitive, able to record minute changes in activity. It measures three different states of the nadi system. The first is the baseline reading or steady state value, that which exists in our body all the time. This tells us about our general long term constitution. Secondly, it measures the body’s reaction to a very mild and sensationless electrical stimulation, which tells us how we react to events, And thirdly, it records the aftereffects of the stimulus, which gives information on the temporary functions of the body and basic tissue resistance.

Thousands of such readings have been recorded and it has been found that most of us fit into a “normal” range of values. If the value recorded is more than normal, the meridian is overactive relative to most people, while a low value indicates an underactive nadi. For example, one man whom Motoyama studied at Stanford University in America had lung cancer. Instead of the normal value of 1000, this man had a value of only 150, showing great depletion of energy in that area, and indeed, he was very sick. A number of hospitals in Japan are using Motoyama’s AMI machine to screen patients and the Kanagawa Rehabilitation Center in Japan is comparing the results of X-rays and biochemistry with it. So far the results have been very favorable. Motoyama has also worked out that by measuring values of electrical skin resistance at acupuncture points in response to a small electric stimulus on both sides of the body, and then comparing the values from the left and right sides, any imbalance in the readings indicates that disease is present in the organ linked to the meridian being measured. He found that any percentage difference greater than 1-21 indicated disease. For example, when the heart meridian value on the left was more then 1.21 times greater than the right, the EGG might show an abnormal rhythm. One patient who was found to have imbalance in the liver, gall bladder and stomach meridians, but who only had symptoms of stomach upset was found on X-ray to have gallstones. One of Motoyama’s laboratory assistants showed a large difference between the left and right bladder and kidney values shortly before being diagnosed as having cystitis. It is interesting to note that yogis are also found to have abnormally high readings, but without disease, and Motoyama states that this indicates a greater range of activity of the nervous system as a result of yogic techniques. These findings are very important because they indicate that pranic energy, or ki, which yogis have experienced as flowing in the nadis, is real. Yogis state that an imbalance in the nadis, especially ida and pingala, will cause disease and that yogic techniques can rectify this situation by action on the nadis. Motoyama’s work substantiates this. It points to the fact that not only is prana real, physical and measurable, but that its balanced activity is vital to our health and that we can use our measurements of pranic activity in the various organs of the body to diagnose impending or existing disease and thereby either prevent or treat the condition before it becomes too far advanced. Such research is paving the way for new diagnostic techniques in medicine. We are beginning to absorb the subtler aspects of our existence into our modern scientific understanding of the body and are utilizing this knowledge in our armamentum against disease to better our lives and to uplift society. Imbalance in the nadis Motoyama’s research supports the claim by yogis that within our body are flows of energy with physical and psychic properties. Yogis aiso tell us that the nadis are intrinsically related to the flows of breath in the nostrils. The breath in the right nostril is related to pingala function (left brain), and in the left nostril is related to ida function (right brain). This fact is the basis for swara yoga, the science by which we can know about the state of our body and mind in relation to the outer environment by watching the flow of breath in the nostrils.

The fact that the nadis are related to the nostrils is the basis for the science of pranayama, one of the most important and basic ingredients in kundalini yoga. For it is by manipulating the flows of breath that we can learn to control the deeper and more subtle aspects of our body and mind, to release energy and to send it to areas of the body that we wish to energize, heal and awaken. This relationship between the flow of breath and the nostrils has been demonstrated by research from Rumania. Dr. I.N. Rige, an ear, nose and throat specialist from Bucharest, Rumania, studied nearly 400 patients suffering from one-sided nasal obstructions due to distortion and deviation of the nasal septum. (10) He found that 89 percent of cases breathed more through the left nostril and were more prone to certain types of respiratory diseases such as chronic sinusitis, middle and inner ear infections, partial or total loss of the senses of smell, hearing and taste, recurrent pharyngitis, laryngitis and tonsillitis, and chronic bronchitis. He also found these left nostril (ida) breathers were more likely to suffer from one or more of a wide variety of more distant disorders, such as amnesia, intellectual weakening, headaches, hyperthyroidism, heart failure, poor liver function, gastritis, colitis, peptic ulcer, constipation and reproductive problems, such as decreased libido and ovarian irregularities. Patients whose breath flowed predominantly through the right nostril were predisposed to hypertension. Riga found that correction of nasal deformities helped to relieve the disease situation. Riga’s research supports the yogic theory of nadis and indicates that the nostrils and the flow of breath in them are much more important than we previously realized, having many neurological and psychic connections whose function we have not yet appreciated. It supports Motoyama’s work which shows that imbalance in the nadis is related to disease states and points to the fact that the nostrils are, as yogis have said, windows into the state of our body and mind, a fact which medical science can utilize in diagnosing many disease situations.

More than this though, the nostrils and the science of pranayama allow us to influence the body and mind by influencing the nervous system and psychic energy at the more subtle levels of our being. The nostrils are switches which can do more than merely alleviate disease. By controlling the speed, rate, rhythm, length and duration of the breath, by altering the ratio of inhalation to exhalation in the nostrils and by stopping the breath, we can activate or tone down neurological and mental processes so as to achieve heightened awareness and altered states of consciousness. Yoga is a science of self-regulation which is a priceless gem in today’s disease and worry-ridden world. It bestows knowledge about internal flows of energy and thereby mastery over the inner processes of our being and autonomy, independence and confidence in our ability to deal with the constant demands and pressures of modern living. In the long run, regular, sincere practice and proper guidance by a competent master balances the nadis and eventually awakens kundalini.