AN EXERCISE FOR THE EYES, SOUL’S WINDOWS
The eye is an instrument in constant relation with the light.
Its presence determines the functioning of this important organ,
that, with the other 4 senses, allows a specific reading (bound
to human relativity) of information that comes from the
“external”. The “rational”, then, allows developing the needed
evaluations.
The most advanced yoga, generally, considers the senses as
deceptive, because they can only give subjective information,
related to the human condition, and it promotes the development
of inner instruments such as the conscience and the awareness to
realize an integral “knowledge”. Anyway, it goes without saying,
that the “integral” knowledge brings the improvement of all the
present instruments, senses as well.
This is why in Hatha Yoga (that is the Yoga considered more
“physical”) there are exercises as the Surya Prana Mudra (Surya-sun,
Prana-evident energy, Mudra-gesture). This exercise can help to
resolve some weakness, especially if it is done at the crack of
dawn when the sunbeams are still “sweet” and there is a
particular energy that Indians attribute to the dawn’s god (Usha
Shakti).
Here is the exercise: wake up early in the morning and go out.
Turn to East and sit down on your heels or, if you have
difficulties, cross your legs (elders can use a chair, a bench,
a little wall, etc.). Remember, during the whole execution of
this exercise, while you are looking to the sun, to quickly and
constantly bat the eyelids. As you can understand, this helps to
tone up the “micro-muscles” that regulate the opening and
closing of the pupil, making the eye more reactive to the
changes of sunny intensity. In that way, the “dazzling”,
considered very dangerous for the drivers, is less frequent,
because the eye will acquire a rapid ability of adaptation.
Join your hands and take them to the hearth, a mystic gesture of
Indian greeting, and put yourself in deep relation with the sun
and the energy, source of life, expressed by this celestial
body. Then, breathing in slowly, stretch your arms toward the
sun and turn the palms, keeping your fingers joined, the point
of thumbs and forefingers in contact to form a triangle with its
point upward.
This triangle represents, in the ancient Indian culture, the
divine male energy embodied by the sun that, in this case, it’s
associated to the supreme Self or Paramatma. Keep breathing,
always slowly, until you complete the breathing in, and keep the
sun in the centre of the triangle made with your hands, and fast
bat your eyelids watching the rising sun.
Keep the air into your lungs as long as you can, not with an
excessive strain. Keep watching the sun, even when you turn your
palms one against the other one and, breathing out, take your
hands to the hearth. Have a little abstention from breathing
with empty lungs and repeat the exercise until you feel tired.
After some of these exercises, you need to rest your eyes: first
auto-massage them by rubbing them, then fast rub you hands
together to charge them of energy and put them on your eyes, the
little fingers in contact with the nose.
Come down on your elbows. Contemplate the obscurity caused by
your closed hands for a moment, then keep your eyes sweetly
closed and stand up. The execution of these exercises often
provokes in beginners tension to the neck. It’s important to
relax it with some appropriated movement, sequence that I
normally advise to people who suffer because of the “cervical”:
take your chin to the sternum and slowly shift it up and down,
then repeat this movement now and again. Put back your head in
the middle and move it by taking the right ear to the right
shoulder and then the left ear to the left shoulder. Take back
your chin to the sternum and, keeping the position, let the head
swinging from the right to the left and vice versa, move it to
the middle and do the same right-left movement (like a sickle).
With bigger care, move now the chin upwards and, keeping the
position, do the “sickle” movement in this case as well:
right-left and vice versa. In conclusion, do complete rotations
of the head, alternate it so that you don’t make your head spin:
first from the right to the left and then from the left to the
right. The exercises are finished, now start your normal day,
trying to keep alive the relation with the sun and with the
positive energy that it represents on a physical, psychological
and spiritual level.
by Amadio Bianchi