Well, here's how you can start.
The first thing you must do is enable your navel center. Start by wearing shorts that you can tie around your waist at the belly button. Suck in your breath as much as you can and cinch it as tight as you can. This is the mechanism that allows you to practice mula banda breathing. This is where the stomach is sucked in on the inward breath and pushed back down through the diaphram which allows the chi(cerebral-spinal fluid) to flow smoothly.
The next step is to hang upside down as much as possible. This helps you reverse the force of gravity on your skeletal system. It also allows your internal organs to relax and increases oxygen to your brain. If you are shy and think you are too old to hang from tree branches or practice on the jungle gym then invest in a pair of gravity boots. Hanging upside down from your ankles is the best way. This is for people who are in relatively good shape. Please start with gentle yoga if you have any problems.
Your diet is very important as well. If you are not able to switch to a vegan diet at least try eating as slow as you can. This will stop you from overeating and makes life much easier for your stomach. Try and eat a salad before every meal. The roughage lets your stomach get ready for the heavier stuff. Try and eat more small meals - 5 - instead of 3 big ones a day.
Try and drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. This is probably the most important and easiest thing you can do. I know a guy who is 65 years old and drinks a half gallon of water to start his day. He make Schwarzanneggar look like and idiot. Dont forget he just had a heart attack. Too much weightlifting is a bad thing. A muscle is only as strong and healthy as what its attached to. If the ligaments and joints aren't functioning properly then you will develop problems.
Just to clarify-I am putting this in everyday terms that people can understand without going into the scientific definitions. No, I am not a physical therapist(no kidding some of you might say) but I have accumulated first hand knowledge from a lifetime of physical activity and research
Here are some of my qualifications if you are hesitant to try these things because you have read my other nodes and believe i am insane.
age6 Tae Kwan Do lessons-green belt-which is nothing, but had to quit
due to being poor. still continued to practice on my own using ninja tree climbing techniques and pretending i was a cat.
age8-14-played little league baseball, football, tennis, basketball, soccer. Because of my speed and hand-eye coordination picked things up right away. My favorite was beating this kid in a tennis tournament who was a spoiled brat from a country club. While all i had done was hit the ball off the wall at my apartments for a year and mostly practiced by myself at the park. These feelings permeated my youth. My mom and i moved into a nicer apartment in a nicer town and I was one of the 5 or so apartment kids. We had moved around so much already cause of my moms problems that I had gone to about 10 different schools already by the time i was ten, but this was different. all the kids here were well off. So i pushed myself to be physically and mentally better than these people but emotionally i was a mess.
high-school: got the state too send me to give me scholarship to a private school because my home life was messed up-fights with mom's boyfriend (kicked his white trash ass! he used to hit my mom. Finally i stole a car and drove it to Florida from Connecticut and then knew they should do something before i killed someone.) captain of baseball and soccer teams, started on basketball team. #1 sprinter on track team-11.00 sec. hundred meeter (for anyone who knows what that means). They gave me an athlete of the year trophy in my junior year.
In my senior year i stopped playing sports, realizing i didn't have enough formal training to become a pro in the two sports i really loved-tennis and soccer. One of two kids to study calculus in my senior year and i started obsessing about girls. Finally met my dad when i was eighteen and decided to go out to college in Sacramento, California where he lived. met a girl, fell in love. started up yoga, meditation, studied massage therapy and played alot of tennis. after two years she goes to Sorbonne and i am left with a broken heart. My grandmother has a stroke and becomes more and more severely disabled. My heart is completely shattered. I blame myself for leaving her and causing her condition. she was my life. completey drop out of school, not that i was taking it seriously to begin with.
immerse myself in the the psychedelic world of drugs and music and dance and poetry to try and stop from killing myself. start to use women for sex and do all i can to fill the emptiness and pain i felt. Break my foot playing basketball and support myself playing blackjack make trips back and forth to visit grandma to be with her.
age 25-move to Manhattan and start working with a friend in the-trying to start a band-trying to make a movie. every weekend taking the train back to connecticut puts alot of pressure on my work and dreams. I start obsessing about death and immerse myself in George Bataille. family starts talking about putting my babcha in a nursing home. meet a girl and become addicted to heroin. Not about to let her spend her last days lying in bed, covered in feces. lose everything and move in to take car of grandma on full time basis. spend most of my time screaming at god and watching tv with grandma. buy a motorcycle. learn about physical therapyand all sorts of information on how the body works-1 year. Grandma dies in 1997 and how that happens is even too painful to talk about.begged Jesus(in honor of my grandma to let me know her suffering was not in vain. From the nazis in Poland she escaped and spent her life trying to make up for the molestation and abuse of her daughters at the hands of her husband. Many times i have wanted to murder my grandfather, but how could i. I grew up thinking he was my own father.
28-30:travel back and forth between NY and California trying to decide what to do. Move in with my mom and become and alcoholic. hanging out at bars and causing all sorts of mayhem. all the girls said i was so byronic. that was until i put cigarette out in the palm of my hand to let them know where i was coming from.
Picked up a dog at the pound and spent half the day at the park and in the forest. started running and exercising a little bit. I became a mischievous creature of the woods. I am overcome by the power of natureand start worshipping the GODDESS. Then it all comes back to me. who i was why i am here. Why I think we all are here. Transcendentalism is a word that comes to mind. Realization of god through immersing yourself in nature. All the secrets are there to discover if you listen hard enough. i write this as my rottweiler/lab XENAwatches one of the cats eat her food with amusement. If you met her you would understand how strange that is.
age 32: last summer i had an experience which shook me to the core. I had gotten into the best shape since high school and had stopped drinking and became a vegan in honor of XENA and our furry and scaly friends. I cut down on smoking and started up yoga again.
Well, to be brief i totally freaked out. i mean, i didnt know what was going on. Everything was different. real different. I felt extra-sensory, but it was freaking me out and it happened so suddenly(I believe due to a tofushake with way too much tarragon-"artemisia draconulus-little dragon). I was trying to gain control of it and of course all the paranoia that I grew up, all the fears that i had about what life is really about came crashing down. I literally felt i was going to die. I had faced death before, but this was a different kind of death. Because i did not really fear death physically, I decided to let all these things run their course. If what i was thinking was related to how i was feeling then i would be dead]. Let me tell you, it was the rollercoaster ride from hell but I rode it out to the end. Even when my mom freaked out and locked me out of the house with my dog at 11:00 p.m. and, people were out to get me and kill me, I didn't panic. I threw away XENA's leash and said, ok, now i will follow you. Actually, it felt like somehow our souls had switched places and so i started jumping around the neighboorhood. i wasnt down on all fours or anything but i felt definitely more animal-like.
Proof that this wasnt just in my head - earlier, i had jumped over a fence that i couldn't possibly have done before and there were witnesses. I also was walking around in 95% heat and humidity with a heavy sweatshirt and didn't realize it till i saw everone sweating through their t-shirts.
I had gotten two blocks away before i had realized this and thought-oh no! I gave myself away! Now i am a dead man!
I literally thought I was going to get shot. By anyone.But then i thought i could dodge bullets. Of course i had just seen the Matrixand it effected me pretty deeply, so I felt i was caught up in the matrix.
To sum things up quickly cause i accidently submitted it before i was done. The cops picked me up and brought me to the emergency room. The doctors drugged me up and wanted to know what was wrong with me. I told them that i was having bad dreams and at this time had been almost totally convinced that i was being contacted by ufo's. They kept me under observation for 10 days and then let me get out after i promised to keep taking anti-psychotic medication. I stayed on the drugs for three months and then came upon an article in OMNI concerning ufo experiences and there links to "mental illnesses". Incest trauma and such. After doing more research into the paranormal; spending day after day on the net, i stumbled upon theonly thing that made sense. Many people around the world have had similiar experiences related to the spontaneous raising of Kundalini. I immediately understood and dropped the medication, started on st john's wort to ease the effects of withdrawal of the medication and after a few weeks felt better than i have ever before.
my point is if you listen closely, to music, to nature, to the silence within, you will here her. she is us. we are her. I am moving back to San Fran soon and will probably not have much time to spend on the net, but if are interested in finding out more link up and i will elaborate on things. I know most of you have been voting down my nodes and that could be based on my style or lack of formatting but i reach out to all of those who have an idea of what i am talking about and lay my soul bare in an attempt to help those caught in the eye of the storm. My entire family has been severely mentally ill and i have done quite a bit of research on psychology and metaphysics.
there is way out of the darkness and if i can shed some light on the subject then everything i've tried to do will not be in vain. I can be as erudite and pedantic as the next guy, but i don't think that is why we're here. do you?