The positions on the head
It’s a popular belief that to stay head-down is
harmful. In fact, when mothers find their children in that
position, they scold them:
Stand up because blood goes into your head.
With this ritual sentence, the child learns not to do it,
because it hurts. Of a different opinion, instead, is Yoga, in
which the positions on the head are practiced and considered
beneficial, just because they help the presence of blood into
the head. In according with the Indian tradition, seven are the
brain’s areas, that correspond to seven conscience’s qualities,
and they have to be awakened and brought to fully operate to
give man a total awareness.
These areas have their fulcrum in as many points, called Bindu,
one of which, considered in the Indian culture more important
than the others, is highlighted and marked with a colored sign
that, especially women, have in the middle of the eyebrows. Even
the West knows that this area corresponds to the discriminative
capacity, that makes man able to understand what is right and
what is wrong to him.
So, into the head, areas and important points can work better
thanks to a larger presence of blood and oxygen: this is the
most evident reason that should stimulate men keen about Yoga to
practice the positions on the head. Harmful, instead, for the
bloom of a correct and harmonious personality, it’s to consider
these positions acrobatic or balanced ones because, in this
case, they can stimulate the ego and the defects that originate
from it.
The main purpose, therefore, is exclusively therapeutic, or to
stimulate the intellectual qualities. For that reason they enjoy
great respect in Yoga. Anyway, I have to warn the reader against
some contra-indications: these positions, for example, are
absolutely prohibited to people who suffer from cervical or who
had the “whiplash injury”; for people with high blood pressure,
big smokers, who suffer from glaucoma or other eyes problems;
for women during their period and anyway for everybody before
the digestion.
In conclusion of this short analysis, I want to
expose another religious/spiritual interpretation that India
offers about the position on the head, also called Tree of
Brahma: in “ordinary” life, man physically raises to the sky.
His feet are posed on the more material element while the body
erects itself to the thin and the head is higher and close to
the sky. For gods it’s exactly the opposite: they are in the sky
and because of their goodness they come to the Earth. The Tree
of Brahma, therefore, has its roots in the sky and its head on
the Earth. By practicing this position the adept can test a
state of divine nature.
by Amadio Bianchi