Yoga kriya exam day was here! For this, we visited our university campus where we could perform the kriyas. Raja Yoga lists a set of cleansing practices called Kriyas. These techniques, unlike our daily kriyas like brushing, bathing etc, are meant to cleanse the internal organs, developed by the yogis. Among several kriyas available in the yogic lore are six major kriyas called shad Kriyas are quite comprehensive.
They are:
- Trataka for eye sight
- Neti for upper nasal tract (throat to nostrils)IMG_0899
- Kapalabhati for lower respiratory tract (from nostril to lungs)
- Dhouti for uppergastrointestinal tract (GIT) upto stomachNauli for abdominal viscera (Agnisarais the preperatory phase for Nauli)
- Basti for lower gastro interstinal tract (GIT), especially the rectum (for Sankapraksalana the entire GIT)
Our batch was made to do just 3 of them – Neti (Jal neti, Sutra Neti), Dhauti (Vamana Dhauti) and Kapalabhati. What initially looked like a scary demostration to most of us, later seemed more natural to the body’s mechnics. (watch video below: Sutra Neti)
The beauty of yogic practice is that each of them has numerous benefits. A few significant objectives of the above mentioned Yoga kriyas are to:
- Cleanse the inner tracts – optical path, respiratory tract and GIT and thereby refresh the inner passages. Tardiness is removed therby.
- Develop and inner awareness
- Desensitise the possible hypersensitivereactions in the pathways
- Build stamina and forberance capacity
Post completing the kriyas we also felt like superheroes B-). It is almost a ritual that the kriyas, after being done on a completely empty stomach (mind you, no water consumption as well until you begin them) you need to neccessarily have khichdi (rice and yellow lentils or moong dal thouroughly cooked) with ample amount of ghee. This ensures you have a light, healthy & non spicy breakfast while the ghee lubricates the GI tract which was just flushed with saline water.
Post this, we took a tour of the entire campus. I was amazed to see the many applications of yoga such as Yoga and Humanities, Yoga and Psychology, Yoga and Manangement etc.. They also have a Centre for Advanced Research in Integrative Medicine called Anvesana. You could check out more at http://svyasa.edu.in/academics/. Will add some pictures below to pique your curiosity 🙂
Highlighting my favourite area on the campus, the pebble walk for accupunture. This was pretty cool, you can almost feel the soles of your feet like never before! See Video.
We ended our day with some super fun awareness games to get the mind to focus, an awesome cyclical meditation for a duration of an hour which equals six hours of quality sleep as per research. Having experienced it, I can soooo vouch for it! A lecture on Panchakoshas (in generic terms, the many sheaths/layers of the aura or energy body), practicing some age old breathing exercises and exploratory shopping at the book store. I bought a couple of them before heading home. Ahh! cant get enough of the healthy spree that i’m on. Grateful.
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