The Asana Files: Mahamudra and Kundalini | Mark Whitwell

Mahamudra is known in the Yoga traditions as ‘the great sacred gesture.’ It is a highly revered asana that is placed at the conclusion of one’s vinyasa. Unlike a seated forward bend, the spine remains straight.

The posture earns the title ‘great sacred gesture’ because it is the literal enactment of the head/mind given over to its source: the Hridaya Heart; the first cell of life that appeared when you appeared; the portal through which Nurturing Source Reality flows and manifests as the whole body.

Mahamudra practiced correctly involves the activation of all three bandhas. Among asana, only two others share this feature: the others are Adho Mukha Svanasana (down dog) and Sarvangasana (shoulderstand).

The strength of the body base and the lower bandha — mulabandha and uddiyanabandha — rises to the Hridaya Heart as the ascending, male energy of strength. The head lowers to form jalandhara bandha thus giving over the descending energy of receptivity to the Heart.

The Heart resides at the place where the ascending and descending energies are perfectly merged. The whole body and mind is formed from the perfect flow of the Heart: nurturing prana blooming like a lotus flower that unfolds in all directions. This is kundalini.

As you practice, ensure that the breath the gauge to the asana. “Breath is guru.” The posture is organized by the breath ratio and the number of breaths that you are capable of doing without strain. “Obey your breath.”

Bandha is established in the retentions following the inhale and the exhale. The breath remains easy, smooth and full; never compromised by the length of retention or the placement of bandha.

As our practice develops and we become stronger it is likely that retentions with bandha will lengthen. By the same token, when there is less strength, retentions will shorten.

On exhale, lift the muladhara chakra to the agni, the fire of Life. All asana and pranayama exercises serve this cleansing action. The agni burns away the rubbish that has formed in the muladhara due to our reaction to experience.

The fire clears the nadis (the network through which prana moves). Prana now flows from Ida and Pingali, right to left, male to female, into the central spinal channel: the sushumna.

This asana is especially beneficial during pregnancy. The whole body is strengthened which supports the baby during birth and after.

In the Hathayogapradapika, mahamudra is praised as “like hitting kundalini with a stick, “she straightens.” That book however, was produced by a patriarchal male cult that had copied and distorted ancient Tantras in order to support their project that nature must be controlled and the feminine principle of Reality (the manifest, the Seen, the descent, the tangible) subjugated.

Its authors advocated for the sublimation of the “lower” gross chakras to awaken the “higher” more subtle chakras.

We can still easily detect this perspective today where the pursuit of the idea of enlightenement, “higher consciousness,” and the fixation on ascending energies, dominates and toxifies the public discourse on Yoga, meditation and religion.

Kundalini is awakened via participation in the intrinsic collaboration of he male-female polarity; participation, only; not a seeking. The ascending, male aspect of Life (felt through the exhale) is given over to the descending, female principle of Life; each empowers the other.

The primary method is the relationship embrace in the union of inhale with exhale. Asana and Pranayama practiced in a way that is right for you, reprograms the nervous system and the mind to give and receive, only.

Natural and perfect giving and receiving is the quality of the Hridaya Heart which is revealed as the source (seat) of the mind and of your Life.

Prana Shakti Kundalini flows from the Heart, the nurturing of all. In Reality, there is only the flow of nurturing. Kundalini arises from the heart not the base.

The primary Yoga is relationship itself. But if we have reacted and clogged our system with dross, mahamudra helps so that we can engage all experience with clarity and connection.

And so, we enjoy our life as the whole body, the whole person, where both male and female qualities of Life are entirely in Union and fully functioning within and without. All presumptions of limit dissolve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world for many decades, after first meeting his teachers Tirumali Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar in Chennai in 1973. Mark Whitwell is one of the few yoga teachers who has refused to commercialise the practice, never turning away anyone who cannot afford a training. The editor of and contributor to Desikachar’s classic book “The Heart of Yoga,” Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, which has sponsored yoga education for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to access it. A hippy at heart, Mark Whitwell successfully uses a Robin Hood “pay what you can” model for his online teachings, and is interested in making sure each individual is able to get their own personal practice of yoga as intimacy with life, in the way that is right for them, making the teacher redundant. Mark Whitwell has been an outspoken voice against the commercialisation of yoga in the west, and the loss of the richness of the Indian tradition, yet gentle and humorously encouraging western practitioners to look into the full depth and spectrum of yoga, before medicalising it and trying to improve on a practice that has not yet been grasped. And yet Mark Whitwell is also a critic of right-wing Indian movements that would seek to claim yoga as a purely hindu nationalist practice and the intolerant mythistories produced by such movements. After encircling the globe for decades, teaching in scores of countries, Mark Whitwell lives in remote rural Fiji with his partner, where Mark Whitwell can be found playing the sitar, eating papaya, and chatting with the global heart of yoga sangha online. Anyone is welcome to come and learn the basic principles of yoga with Mark Whitwell.