Crown

Something's going on in my head!

I have to admit that what I like best about yoga is the workout. Each and every time, though, I am surprised by the after effects.

There is something spiritual about each practice. No matter the studio, no matter the instructor, no matter the style.

I’m not always conscious of how the practice touches my spirit; instead, I just know that I feel different afterwards.

After the practice, a kind of unconscious enlightenment happens. Gratitude rains down, and I feel expansive.

It’s as if each practice stretches my spirit another inch.

I am not too tall. I never have been.

And ever since I was little or, I should say younger as I’ve always been little, I’ve been patted on the head.

To this day, as a adult, I still actually get patted on the head.

Turns out, the head is where our Seventh Chakra is located. It’s called the Crown Chakra, and it’s tied to our spirituality.

Several times, I’ve been sitting on my yoga mat, waiting for class to start, and I get a pat on the head from the instructor going by. I can be sitting at my desk at work and get a pat on my head from someone coming in to say good morning.

Even my grown children pat me on the head.

I don’t know how I never grew out of this and, at this point, I guess I’m just kind of used to it.

It’s just that before yoga, I never knew about the Crown Chakra. And, even though my crown has gotten lots of attention all my life, I am only now just discovering it.

I have to say that anytime there is good news, or a coincidence when unlikely things line up, or I feel like I’ve just heard or witnessed something profound, I get goose bumps.

But, these days, along with those goose bumps, comes a feeling in my head. It’s at the top, on the left side, and it feels like a vibration or a tingling.

Sometimes, not always, I feel this at the end of yoga when we sit with our hands in prayer, letting the effects of the practice settle in. The left side of the top of my head tingles.

Now, ordinarily, I’d say I would not really ever go around talking about the top side of my head vibrating. It sounds hokey, but I made a deal with myself to be honest when writing about my experiences in yoga, and this is one of them.

I think what I’m feeling is the energy in my Crown Chakra.

For many young girls, a crown is pretty special, and growing up, I was no exception.

Every year, I was a princess at Halloween. I didn’t care about the costume or the mask. I only cared about the crown. I was a princess for the crown. I don’t remember much from nursery school, but I do remember laying on my mat for naptime, trying to look like I was the best napper, so that I could be tapped as the Sabbath Queen. I wanted to be chosen because the Queen wore a crown.

I didn’t know that, all along, I had a built in crown, already there.

Yoga has put me back in touch with my spirituality. It’s made me re-evaluate my beliefs in God and how I fit with the big picture that’s supposed to be my life.

I had no idea that moving around on a mat could do this to me.

When my children were in nursery school, as parents we joined them each Friday for something called Shabbat Sing, and really that’s one of the last times I was in touch with my spirituality.

 

Those Fridays would touch my spirits, just like the yoga practice does now. I’d sit with my children on my lap, singing the songs I had sung as a child, feeling connected to them, to my younger self and to something deeper.

But, the most important part of those Fridays was the visit from the rabbi. A kind and gentle man forever remembered, he would walk around the circle to bless each child.

Patiently, slowly and singing along, he would lay his hand on each child’s head, giving his blessing to each in this way.

Maybe this is sacrilegious, but I think anticipating the approach of the rabbi and his blessing on their heads was probably akin to waiting for Christmas and meeting Santa.

It was monumental for my children, a highlight of their week.

He was acknowledging their spirituality, and they’d sit there beaming.

I just never knew then that what he was doing was igniting the energy in their Crown Chakras, and I didn’t know that it would be another 20 years before yoga would do the same for me.

Energy

"We were born before the wind ... " ~ Van Morrison

It’s taken me a long time to figure out what yoga’s all about, and I still don’t think I am totally there yet.

Really, at the beginning, I just dipped in for some exercise.

I had no way of knowing that it would connect me, especially since I didn’t even know I was disconnected.

Some people refer to yoga as a moving meditation, and I sort of discovered this without even realizing it was happening. I would just reach the end of the practice with some new kind of energy.

All the while, I was not aware that I even stored any kind of energy, much less that the practice could shift it.

At the end of each practice, we sit with our hands in prayer.

Sometimes, an instructor takes us from the bottoms of our seats to the tops of our heads, talking about energy, talking about breathing into energy centers, talking about inhaling and exhaling and downloading positive energy.

In the past, I would just follow along, supposedly using my breath to move some energy through my body and not giving it too much deep thought.

But that was then and this is now.

Now I am awake; whereas, before, I think I was sort of asleep.

Somehow, moving on my mat has been like an alarm clock, jolting me from one state of consciousness to another.

This might sound like I’ve dipped in for some Kool-aid along with the yoga, but practicing has introduced me to more of who I am, to my own energy and to that of others, as well.

Before, my perspective was more of I am here, you are there and sometimes we are here together.

Now I see now that none of us is separate, even if we wish to be, because we are all made up of the same energy, the different levels of which impact our days, our moods and ultimately, one another.

I am never over here while you are over there. We are always in the same place.

How else to explain the instant connections we feel with certain people, the automatic aversions we might feel toward others, the light lift of our spirits when we see or think of someone we love?

It’s the ebb and flow of energy that marks our experiences. Sometimes, I can’t put my finger on why it’s a good day or a bad day, or why there might be a shift in my feelings or in that of another’s.

This is energy at play, and it’s more telling than any words I myself or someone else might say.

Meditation is supposed to help us tap into our energy, and the moving meditation of yoga seems to do this for me. The practice creates a shift inside, and I move from a singular space to one that’s intertwined with others.

I am still a beginner at meditation, and I’ve even attended a few workshops with a rabbi who has opened a mindfulness center. He has identified a tie to yoga, meditation and the ancient teachings of Judaism as a way to ignite his energy, and he is teaching others how to do the same.

Most recently, we sat in a circle, and the rabbi talked a lot about the breath, a big deal in yoga and in meditation. He said it’s what ties us to God, or to what he calls the Source.

The Energy Source. The Light.

I was surprised to have stumbled upon this same idea by way of yoga. After the workshop, I mentioned an article I had written about a recent realization that the breath ties us to some kind of greatness inside, so we are never really alone, especially if we just breathe.

You knew, this rabbi told me. The Torah is inside you.

Then, he just looked at me as if to say, Right?

And it was like he had blessed me with those words and the look that followed. I felt heartened because he validated a budding knowledge brought on by yoga, a knowledge that I am connected on the inside as well as the outside.

What he was telling me was that the Torah -- or the truth, or the Source, or the Light -- was one and the same as the energy that was me, and the energy that is all of us.

It seems that yoga has brought me back to myself. I think I might have been missing for a while. But if what this rabbi says is true, and I think it is, then I was never really gone.

My energy was just taking a rest, and yoga woke it up.