(This post is mainly aimed at people who don’t have much if any experience with yoga.)
We here all know that yoga and spirituality have been corrupted. One thing in particular is the ignoring of the lower chakras, ignoring the 6th chakra, and an over-emphasis on the 3rd eye. As stated on the ToZ, all chakras need to be open and functioning properly. The kundalini serpent cannot rise if chakras are left blocked.
Many Kundalini Yoga kriyas (sessions) actually do work each chakra on it’s own or in groups. One such is the Base chakra, where the focus of the movements should be on the Base itself. But instead, instruction is given to focus on the 3rd eye. This prevents the Base from being properly empowered. Energy goes where the focus is. If you work on your Base chakra, your focus should be on that chakra, not on another.
By focusing extensively on the 3rd eye, the practitioner remains spiritually weak and off balance. Especially as the 3rd eye is an extension of the 6th chakra, which is completely ignored in yoga. You cannot work heavily an extension while leaving the chakra it is an extension of, completely ignored.
The 3rd eye rules astral vision, etc, but it is the 6th that allows for wisdom, intuition, and true “inner sight”. Which, in my opinion, is why many yogis and new agers fully believe in enemy lies and dogma. They are influenced by the spells and thoughtforms, but cannot understand that they are spells and thoughtforms. For all their advancement through yoga and practice with meditation and pranayam, they cannot understand that Zeus is the True Creator God of humanity, or that we need to eat meat and have sex, or that having “christ consciousness” is sick and evil, that we are not supposed to be “absent of desire”, and so on.
When doing yoga (Hatha or Kundalini), focus on your chakras, or at least on your physical body in the asanas. Don’t put all your focus to just the 3rd eye, as yoga will work the entire soul and body.
For those who are not spiritually inclined at all, and have no sense of where your chakras are, simply doing yoga will help to open up your chakras and bring energy into them, allowing you to get a better feel for your chakras with consistency. The kundalini yoga spinal series are wonderful for this, even starting at just 18 reps per pose. Hatha is even more important in many ways, as it frees up energy blocks in the nadis, and there are 144,000 nadis in the body. Try new asanas every so often and see how they work for you :)
As for how to breathe in yoga. With Hatha, it is important to take full breaths. Inhale to 80-90% of maximum capacity, exhale to 10-20%, as a general guideline in most poses. Don’t just breathe shallowly keeping the lung capacity between 40-60%. Most people breathe like this due to a lack of exercise, too much sitting at desks or on the couch, slumped over.
A lot of Hatha calls for Ujjayi breathExternal ↗ also known as oceanic breathing. This is said to help with overall healing of the body, and helps to slow the brain waves, allowing for a more trance-like state during asanas. And of course always be careful with pranayamExternal ↗, increasing it gradually, never push yourself with it. The warnings are right on the ToZ. To build up, you can do a few rounds once you are in a comfortable asana, then switch to normal breathing, and then try it again in another asana.
Don’t ever stress out over your breathing, take it easy and relax into it. You might also find it very helpful to start your Hatha session by sitting on your mat and doing alternate nostril breathingExternal ↗ to balance the soul first.
As for kundalini yoga, it is heavy on Breath of FireExternal ↗. It is important to slowly build up to it. Many kriyas (excluding the more known spinal series) can last for an hour, with the breath of fire totaling 30-40 minutes of that. When following along to a video or in a class, never push yourself more than what you can handle. Always switch to regular breathing as soon as you need to. I started by doing breath of fire for about 5-10 seconds then switched to regular breathing, throughout. I slowly but steadily built my way up.
A really good book available in free downloadable PDF format that I recommend on Hatha yoga is linked below. You can skip the beginning of the book and go straight to page 61 and onward. It gives clear instructions for various parts of the body per pose, and shows pictures from multiple angles, giving a 360 degree idea of each pose. This book was a game-changer for my practice.
BKS Iyengar: The Path To Holistic Health
https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-path-to-holistic-health-e33410299.html
I’ve posted this recently already but why not post again. Here is a video showing the KY spinal series, it’s easy to follow along to and shows the correct speed. It includes a 15 minute shavasana at the end so you can just keep following along without wondering how long you’ve been lying down for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evmO1igrgyc
One last tip for doing yoga. If you don’t want to count numbers for holding asanas, you can mentally chant “SaTaNaMa” slowly on both your inhale and exhale, and do for example 4 rounds per asana. But don’t hold an asana longer than you feel comfortable, come out of it when you feel you need to.
Zeus gave us the knowledge of Yoga. Yoga heals, advances, and empowers.