The ancient teachings of Hatha Yoga and Tantra explain (quite brilliantly) a deep connection between mind and body, consciousness and energy through a variety of models and understandings.
Today I like to introduce you to the model of three main psychic/somatic knots - 'granthi's' in Sanskrit - that are described in the teachings.
Knots in the energy-channels of the body and mind where life force is blocked, like a kink in a waterhose.
Knowledge of these blockages will help you to understand your own spiritual process better, and will help you to work with your own consciousness and energy more skillfully and precisely, in the pursuit of liberation.
1. The Life Force Knot.
This first knot is located around the lower chakra’s and reproductive organs, and is associated with leaky and blocked sexual and creative energy, dullness or overstimulation, and symptoms like addiction to food, sleep and sense pleasures.
Working with this knot is a crucial foundation in anyone’s spiritual process. Sealing the leaks and releasing the contractions of this knot allows for the movement of life force (Kundalini) to begin flowing upward with fuller potential. Without this foundation it is like one is bringing water to the ocean.
Here we speak of methods like semen retention, hip opening, pelvic floor training and relaxation, cleaning up the diet, proper sleep, creative expression through art, and conscious work and management around all aspects of our most primal, animal nature.
2. The Heart Knot.
The second knot is around the solar plexus, abdomen and diaphram. It can be linked to trapped fear, low self-esteem, anger and sadness and blocks the energy from moving into the heart.
This knot is one that many people can feel in any moment if they tune into their state of body and emotion; many people walk around contracting their abdomen, not feeling very joyful, with the shoulders inward, stressed, and with undigested trauma and pain from being hurt by others.
By learning to release and relax this knot, the energy is enabled to open the heart and bring about its associated feelings of warmth, joy, and sense of unconditional love and appreciation.
Some methods that can help release this knot, are loving-kindness meditation (metta), forgiveness, internal lifting of the diaphram muscle (uddiyana bandha), deep belly breaths, the conscious relaxation of tension in the belly area, and an upright spinal posture when walking and sitting that expands the chest and opens the heart area.
3. The Mind Knot
The third knot is around the brain, pineal gland and higher chakras. When this knot is opened, our meditative perception awakens, we realize that we are not our thoughts, we experience the non dual nature of consciousness and we learn to work ever more consciously with the power of mind and attention.
Anyone that has spend time at a meditation retreat, satsang with a proper teacher of nonduality, or that has been meditating for some months or years will have a sense of what this knot feels like, and how explosive its awakening can feel, not only in the mind, but in the entire energetic system.
Of course, these are just models to describe something that is too subtle, powerful and uncontrollable to put into words and scientific models. Nothing I wrote above is definite knowledge.
Besides, this upward and downward movement of Kundalini energy is not a linear process that is predictable or bound by time.
However, this model of the three knots does guide us into better understanding and attunement to our own system, and can give us direction to what practices to do to go deeper in our journey.
Interested in more of this kind of knowledge and practice? Learn more about Hatha Yoga and practice with me live in the yogalap weekly Sunday live sessions.