WALK WITH A SURGEON SANGOMA

YOGA
Stress Busting vs. Something More

Just before my trip to the San Bushmen in 1987 (next blog) I had begun an asana yoga practice which enabled me to gain some equanimity around the challenges of my surgical practice. Although this was mainly about stress busting, the active meditation also began to give me inclinings of a different kind of awareness.

I was reminded of this Zen story.

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in serving the tea poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?

I decided it was time to empty my "medicine" cup which had filled my intellect for the past many years - and begin from scratch. 

Chung Tau teaches the same thing, I had been a prisoner on my medical doctrine ... a wounded healer become warrior (and worrier.)

After a 16 day yoga intensive at the White Lotus Foundation and encountering many younger folks whose cups were filled with spiritual principles I did not know, I realized I was sadly lacking.  After the intensive Ganga White said to me; "Now you are an M.D. - master of your destiny!"

It did not hurt my M.D persona to know that yoga also appeared to lower cardiovascular risk factors, the heart rate and blood pressure, reduce stress, boost immunity and even increase life span by lengthening one's telomeres. 

 I also appreciated, however, that while opening the mind to New Age thinking was really useful it was till good to retain a certain amount of skepticism that I had learned in medical school. This was also to serve me well during my later shamanic excursions.

"Information is not to be equated with knowledge, knowledge not to be equated with understanding, understanding not to be equated with wisdom and wisdom is not to be equated with virtue."

The Ancestors 

I began to read avidly around yoga scriptures, energy anatomy and chakras. It was time for a different kind of anatomy. With time I confirmed that without a dedicated spiritual practice and energy balance, the way would be much more difficult.

I indulged in a vigorous asana and a "flow"Vinjasa practice but was well aware that there were eight limbs to the yoga path and I was circulating around and very far away from mastering just these few - asanas (postures,) paranayama (breath meditation) and meditation. I was aware that Kundalini was the gateway to samadhi (unity consciousness or the oneness experience) where the Knower-the Known-and the Process of Knowing all fused into single ecstatic phenomenon. I had not yet had anything like this nor did I expect to, since it seemed the province of truly advanced yogis. Also I had not yet met anyone on the path that had - teachers included - though a lot of talk centered around the concept of Kundalini yoga. The best I could describe was a tingling or vibrating feeling traveling up the spine which many other practitioners had experienced as well. 

I thought that maybe if I went back to watering hole of my South African birth place I might find those who had mastered this mystical energy.

I knew there were powerful sangomas who could access the world of spirit and that the San Bushmen could travel out of body during their spirit dance and trance state. I started to hear they had their own names for this feminine, Shakti energy that seemed similar  to Kundalini - Umbilini for the sangomas and Num for the San.  I came to appreciate that this energy was trans- cultural and it did not have to be as advanced and profound as samadhi.

Rock art depiction of Num traveling up the body of a San healer and eventually leading to Kia - an out of body trance state that allows the Bushmen and women to navigate the spiritual realms to bring back "non local" information and healing to the clan. The vibrational effect is implicit in the art.

Below is a description given to Richard Katz, a Harvard anthropologist, one of the team that spent several years with the Kung San Bushmen in the 60's.

Thanks to yoga my intentions shifted away from previous habituated patterns. My journey to the San was beginning to take form.

I was excited by the prospect that with drumming, dancing and chanting they achieved advanced states of consciousness without the help of entheogens - mind altering plants used in sacred ceremony by indigenous shamans in North and South America.

The Yogis say there are72000 energy channels or nadis in the body that converge on the three main channels centered in the spine. The Sun or hot or red channel expands and has to do with cognition and intellect which was where I had been focused the last many years. The Moon channel, however, contacts, is cool, blue in color and has more to do with intuition and receptivity to the unknown. Both these spiral around the chakra and the central channel in the spine. 

The Kundalini, Shakti, feminine power resides at the lowest root chakra near the coccyx. This profound energy moves upwards when sun and moon are finely balanced thus slowly creating what the Ancestors would call one's Becoming. We are never there - it's not an end point, possibly implied by the words Self Realization or Enlightenment. There is always more ahead.

My intention was to focus more on my Moon than my Sun channel but to remember the latter to keep myself from too much magical thinking.

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