quote:

Originally posted by KundaliniTherapist:
Maybe Phil can shed some light on the question if there is anything resembling chakra exercises in Catholicism.

I can't think of anything similar in Catholicism/Latin Christianity, but there is the hesychastic tradition of Orthodox/Greek Christianity, and especially St. Symeon the New Theologian's "Three Methods of Prayer," as given in the Philokalia, volume 4:

Sit down in a quiet cell, in corner by yourself, and do what I tell you. Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from everything worthless and transient. Rest your beard on your chest, and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intellect, upon the centre of your belly or your navel. Restrain the drawing-in of breath through your nostrils, so as not to breathe easily, and search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside. To start with you will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when you persist and practice this task day and night, you will find, as though miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as the intellect attains the place of the heart, at once it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within the heart and it beholds itself entirely luminous and full of discrimination.

Derek
that is a kundalini awakening exercise as taught in Hinduism or Buddhism to the tee!!

Also, the effects of being more aware and luminous could not be more similar to the effects described in Buddhism.

There you go - not so different, after all!

All in all, though, this (what St. Symeon describes) has not been a common practice in Christianity. It's somewhat confined to the Hesychast tradition, with outsiders using the term "navel-gazing" to describe the practice. Hesychasm is more established in the Orthodox tradition of Christianity.

There's no emphasis on this kind of posture in the New Testament nor in most Roman Catholic mystical writers. Even the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, who describes a similar meditative practice, says nothing about the posture. Christian mystical theologians like William Johnston, S.J., whom I was pleased to know for a few years, considers "navel-gazing" a "psychosomatic technique" to facilitate energy integration during the prayer. My own hunch is that the discovery of this posture came about through something like spontaneous yogic asanas experienced by monks undergoing kundalini arousals.

All of which goes to show -- if you shut down reflective and intentional thinking, reduce the stress on your spine through the posture described above, and gently let your awareness come to rest in your heart, the energy dynamics of the body/mind will change, after awhile. Psycho-somatic energy moves along patterns established by habitual attentional states, and so if one practices this prayer regularly, the energy dynamics will change. Of course, if this is also going on with a person of faith who is offering the practice to God in surrender, there would be additional sensitivity to God -- apophatic contemplation.

- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm for a good discussion of the practice, including its fruits and some of the controversies surrounding it.

Phil, I agree. When you are surrending to
your Lover, you're going to learn what your
Lover desires of you. Lets not get over
analyical here. This is about, "Taming of
the Shrew". Your Lover is going to punish
the parts that aren't cooperating. That
of course is the,"surrender".

Hi Mark. Welcome to the forum, and thanks for your insightful comment.

Rather than continue the discussion on posture in prayer, which is not the thread topic, I will begin a new topic on posture and Christian prayer in the Spirituality Issues forum. On my way there now . . .