Of Spines and Crosses

Across many religious traditions are similar symbols or depictions of straight staves (the plural of staff!!), poles, stakes, crosses, and the like. This includes the Christian cross, Kundalini rising, totem poles, and any other straight, vertically-oriented line, object, or religious fetish.

Some interpret this as symbolic of something that comes from and relates to the body. In fact, there is an entire school of thought often associated with George Lackoff and other cognitive scientists, that suggests nearly all knowledge is often just extended from body-knowledge. For example, "10" is an important number in math, simply because we have 10 fingers and toes!

So these vertical lines we see in religious symbol systems is thought to be represent the importance of a straight spine, which is maintained or achieved through sitting postures or meditation.

An ancient piece dug up from Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization (one of the oldest known), depicts a figure in what looks like a full lotus posture (asana).

Interestingly, as ancient as many of these are, they are decidedly different from religious fetishes from a more goddess-oriented religion, which depicts round shapes as in the Divine Yoni or rotund female figures, often featuring prominent and exaggerated genitalia.

So, this phallic symbolism seem to be associated with male-dominated civilizations, whereas, round shapes seemed more associated with female-centered societies that dominated our earliest human history.

I can only speculate, perhaps the deviating spine is symptomatic of increasingly complex and stratified societies that sees greater and greater amounts of sedentary and isolated cultural behaviors. Perhaps increased alienation leads to increasingly twisted spines (and minds) that is more typically of male-dominated heirarchical socieites, thus making straight spines an important enough issue for it to be permanently embedded into its symbology...

Breath and Spirit: "Yoga Breath"

When anxious, nervous, stressed out or whatever takes you outside of the present moment, will inevitably be accompanied by a shallow chest breathing.

"Yoga Breath" typically refers to a way of breathing in which the stomach is pushed out on the on the inhale and letting it fall on the exhale. Breathing should NOT be up in the chest- inflating in and out.

"Prana" is "breath" in Sanskrit, and it is related to to "Pnuema" in Greek "Baruch" in Hebrew all of which can be translated both as "spirit" and "breath". Pranayama, often translated as "breath control" is the restricting or restraint of breath originally for meditative practices.

In Taoist Religion, breathing is considered to be one of the primary ways that we absorb Qi (Chi "energy") through the air. As a result, breath techniques in this tradition are some of the most elaborate I have come across. (Micro and Macro-cosmic orbits can be dangerous and should be done with a teacher). There is also the closing or locking of the "Four Gates" (the perineum, neck, stomach, and .... the other one) which is coordinated with the inhalations and exhalations and is often taught in so-called "internal" martial arts styles, such as Taichi, Qigong, and Bagua.

In tantrism, this is referred to as Kundalini (Rising), depected symbolically as a serpent rising up the spinal cord), though the Chinese Taoist and Indian Tantric practices are not identical, nor interchangeable, they do however appear to actually have common historical lineages.

It suffices, that during the day, whenever we can remember to "watch our breath," we can check to see if we are anxiously (even hysterically) breathing shallow in the chest up high, and whether we can remember enough times throughout the day to gently bring that breathing to our stomach, lower down in the abdomen.