Channel Stretch Yawn

One way of looking at how karma is stored is to look at the energy body. Karma can be held in the chakras, in the shape of your energy body. This energy body is not static. Imagine yourself as a column of chakras: one in the forehead, one in the throat, one in the heart, solar plexus, navel, groin or secret place, and others in the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

The word “chakra” means “wheel.” Think of a Slinky toy shaped into a circle—something three-dimensional, not just the flat diagrams you often see. These chakras, have little channels extending from them out through the skin, reaching just beyond an arm’s length, and then wrapping around you. They form a sort of egg-shaped swirly cocoon.

This wrapping is caused by self-focused attention by what you habitually pay attention to: your stuff, your friends, your work, your house, your relationships. This habit of attention wraps the experience of reality around you, forming a subjective filter. The way we perceive reality is projected onto the inner surface of this cocoon through the channels. But due to infinite lives, post-traumatic stress, deaths, births, and the countless experiences we and others have endured, these channels have become bent, kinked, frizzy. These kinks and distortions are karmic formations and obscurations, like smudges on a pair of glasses. They keep us from seeing clearly.

The Practice

Breathe in through your nostrils. Breathe in a deep breath and breathe fully out through all the chakras. The chakras are in the central channel, so the breath moves up around the ears and flows into the central channel. And each chakra rolls and rolls and reaches out—all the chakras, even the little ones in your palms, your elbows, your shoulders. All the channels in your body begin to unfurl and reach out—past the edge of the atmosphere, past the edge of the galaxy, all the way to infinity in as many directions as you can imagine. All nine local dimensions, if you can do it. 

And you stretch your body as well. Stretch your arms up and out, stretching your finger tips, your arms, your shoulders, opening up the chest and back. Lift your head upward, open your mouth, stretching the jaw and throat as you yawn. Stretch and elongate the body as you do this.

Then breathe out gently through the mouth. Relax on the out-breath. Just relax. Don’t try to bring them back. Don’t try to hold them out there. Just let go of the visualization. They’ll come back to your own personal pattern. But doing this gets the "lint" out, clearing out the kinks and smudges in our karmic patterns and is therefore very, very useful. This will shake off any recent unpleasant encounters you may accumulate through your day. You give them a good opening and shake. Do this throughout your day, taking short breaks and at the end of the day. But do it frequently. It won’t bother people and it doesn’t take hardly any time at all.