In today’s fast-paced, high-stress world, relaxation is an essential practice for physical, spiritual and mental well-being. In our culture, we’ve mistakenly trained ourselves to relax by watching tv, eating, or by drinking or smoking. This really isn’t relaxation and neither relaxes our bodies nor our minds. Relaxation is an essential tool within Kundalini yoga after the dynamic, active kriyas that we practice. Balancing our systems after active movement with conscious relaxation brings us into physical and mental alignment. During relaxation, you are rejuvenating your parasympathetic nervous system, distributing the prana you have built up during the kriya, helping muscles release rigid patterning and adopt a more neutral state, promoting glandular shifts, centring yourself emotionally, releasing stress, and also assisting the body and mind in developing an understanding of its own ‘natural state’ so that it relaxes automatically throughout your day. Isn’t that reason enough to practice relaxation as a discipline?
Relaxation During a Kriya
For beginners, this is important. Unless otherwise specified, take 1-3 minutes of relaxation between exercises or after a sequence. The entire kriya or meditation is then followed by 10-15 minutes of deep relaxation, a process referred to as “yoga nidra” or yogic sleep. For advanced kriyas and practitioners, relaxation varies. Often there is no relaxation between exercises, other than 10-30 second pauses. Other kriyas build yoga nidra (often in savasana) into the kriya itself. Be mindful and aware of the energies in your body and the wording of the kriya as given by Yogi Bhajan in order to determine the best practice for you.
Commotional Living
Yogi Bhajan called living in states of inner conflict including anxiety, anger, and depression “commotional living”. This makes relaxation difficult, but especially valuable. When someone is deeply into a lifestyle of commotional living, what they need most is to relax. Relaxation releases patterns within muscle fibres that reinforce negative emotions. Consciously redistributing prana throughout the body can make a major impact on their lives.
Conscious Relaxation
When you consider that we are in reality souls who come to experience the physical, its easier to understand exactly why relaxation is so important in the practice of Kundalini yoga. Once you have done the work to connect to your own soul in a kriya, allowing yourself time to relax and feel this connection, to drop your attachment to the physical realm is at once beautiful and vital. This puts us in the eye of the hurricane of life and allows us a moment to breathe free from distraction. Quieting the mind and allowing it true rest, which does not come during sleep when we are actively engaged in dreaming, gives it a prolonged vitality and peacefulness.
