Ecopsychology

Warm-Up

After this, especially at the first few sessions, a very important element of practice would be a physical warm-up, which not only allows us to “cheer up” the energies within the body and to get rid of unnecessary mental dominants, but also teaches us to concentrate the consciousness in the working parts of the body. The latter will come in handy in the future when we will be working with the chakras.

Let us stand up. By making paddy movements with the legs and the trunk, we swing both arms back and forth and then rotate them simultaneously. Concentrate in the shoulder joints. Visualize light emerging and growing brighter inside the joints.

Tense the muscles of the arms. Bend and unbend the arms repeatedly in the elbow joints. Watch white light gathering from the entire body to the working muscles.

Extend the arms in front of the body. Move the relaxed wrists quickly up and down. Tense the fingers. Bend and unbend them. Move the wrists while tensing the muscles of the forearms and wrists. Then let go of the tension and relax the entire body.

Bend the head from side to side while keeping the neck relaxed. Roll the head over the shoulders making a circle. Turn the head to the right and to the left around a vertical axis. Imagine that the neck segment of the spine is an axle and the cervical vertebras are balls stringed on it. See a beam of white light coming up the axle. Tense the muscles of the neck. Repeat the same exercises but this time with the muscles of the neck tensed. Imagine a stream of white light diameter-of-the-neck wide rising through it. Again relax the entire body. Shift the head from side to side while keeping it vertical and without moving the shoulders, then rotate the head in the same manner.

Raise the arms over the head. Take the right hand with the left one by the wrist and pull it over the head while bending the body to the same side and stretch the side muscles of the trunk. Repeat this movement with another hand.

While holding the arms up, tilt the trunk to the sides first in the pectoral and then in the lumbar segments of the spine. Tense the muscles of the trunk and make tilts and turns of the body. Imagine that the trunk gets filled with light. Relax the body. Turn the trunk around a vertical axis while relaxing the muscles and keeping the feet on the floor, trying to turn the head as far to the back as possible, concentrating in the spine.

Shift the pelvis to the sides without tilting it and bending the legs, keeping the muscles as relaxed as possible. Concentrate in the area of the spine below the navel.

Raise the right leg so that the thigh is parallel to the floor. Rotate the ankle as if drawing a circle on the floor. Concentrate in the ankle joint, seeing white light and warmth emerging inside of it. Rotate the shin, concentrating in the knee-joint.

Swing the shin from side to side, keeping the knee in one place and concentrating in both hip joints.

Draw a circle with a straight leg, first in front of the body, then at the right side, and then behind the body.

Repeat these exercises with the left leg.

Relaxation Asanas

After the warm-up we should take some rest in one of the following postures (asanas):

The first of them is the so-called half-tortoise posture.

We sit on the heels with the toes looking backward and the knees moved apart. Put the forehead and the extended arms on the floor with the palms pressed against each other. Relax the body and mind completely. Watch the belly sag more and more as the relaxation becomes deeper. This is a wonderful exercise that allows one to get rid of physical and mental tiredness. It should be performed for about ten minutes.

The second asana is called crocodile posture. There are two ways of performing it.

We lie on the belly, protruding the elbows forward as far as possible, the chin resting on the palms.

The second option — we put the elbows forward and place one forearm upon the other on the floor, holding the head and the upper part of the body up by tensing the muscles of the back.

In both cases we feel ourselves happy little crocodiles, which have crawled out on a sandy beach to have a sunbath! The sun warms our backs — and we dissolve in pleasure under its tender warmth, which permeates our bodies.

Pranayamas

One has to perform the bioenergetic purification both of the organism as a whole and of its separate segments corresponding with the chakras. There are a lot of purification techniques, and each of them allows one to get rid of the next portion of impurity, which means elimination of diseases, overall improvement of health, and getting closer to the Ultimate Goal.

Now I will describe a few general purifying exercises of pranayama type.

We perform them in standing position. First, bend slightly to the right so that the right arm hangs freely without touching the body. Try to feel the arm thoroughly from the shoulder joint to the wrist. Imagine that a pump chamber, to which “air”-light is being fed through the arm like through a hose, expands in the chest with every inhalation and contracts with every exhalation. Special attention should be paid to exhaling. Try to achieve a high clarity of sensations. The “hose” must be as thick as the arm, and nothing should prevent the “air”-light from moving freely through it.

Then we perform the same exercise with the left arm, and then with each leg. The “hose” must come down from the chest to each leg through the corresponding side of the body.

Place images of two big barrels under the feet. Let one barrel be empty and the other full of white liquid light. Touch this light with the foot-hose and pump it through the body-pump into the other barrel. With each inhaling, the pump chamber inside the body and the head is expanding, drawing the light from the full barrel through the leg. With each exhaling, the chamber is contracting; the light pouring out through the other leg into the empty barrel. Thus we cleanse the whole body from inside.

When the barrel with light gets empty — fill it up again and overturn the content of the other barrel into an image of fire, so that all dirt that has streamed out burns. Turn the body around over the barrels — and repeat the exercise with another half of the body.

Then do the same, but this time placing the barrels under the hands.

In this way, we have to attain a feeling that the whole body is filled up with bright white light.

After performing pranayamas, we have to rest in one of the relaxation asanas.