In this part of Sadhguru’s exploration of the pancha vayus (five manifestations of energy in the human system), he throws light on udhana. Learn about the amazing ways in which it works in your body.
Sadhguru: Among the pancha vayus or the five manifestations of prana, we have already looked at prana, samana, and apana. This time, we will look at udhana, which is the aspect that can bring a certain lightness to your body. How does lightness happen? Udhana is not about physical weight. The lightness that udhana creates is in the sense that in your experience, the body is light and glides around. Have you seen that on some days, you wake up in the morning, and the body seems to go everywhere by itself? Another day, you have to carry it like a punishment.
Udhana is the aspect of the pancha vayus that reduces your sense of weight. It makes you less available to gravity, in your experience. Cells in the body transmit electricity. To what extent electric currents flow through your body determines how you experience your life, your level of sensitivity, and how effectively your neurological system functions.
If you activate udhana, the electric charge builds up within the cell before it gets transmitted to the next cell. Because of this dynamic buildup of electric charge within the cell, the lipid layer around a cell begins to dissipate. Because of this, the body becomes very sensitive and light – it becomes charged. Because of the electric charge in the cells, you feel buoyant, and your urge to eat food will decrease significantly. Because of that, some weight loss may happen – also because of the dissipation of the lipid layer around the cell, but that is very minor.
There are schools of Yoga that completely focus on udhana sadhana. To do something like that, you need a certain level of expertise. It is said that one who has complete mastery over udhana can actually fly. You may have seen popular movies like Crouching Tiger. The way they are floating around is exaggerated in the movie, but that is a school of martial arts which works with udhana.
Many martial artists and ballet dancers leap up to heights that seem to defy the laws of physics, considering gravity, body weight, and muscular strength. That is because if you activate udhana, you become less available to gravity. Since every cell in the body builds up a certain electric charge, your body will float. But doing anything in excess can damage the system.
It is very important that the three aspects of prana, apana, udhana, and vyana are handled in a balanced way. That is why the practice of Shakti Chalana Kriya is so important. If you learn to activate your udhana from a book or irresponsible sources on the internet, you can cause damage to yourself. For some time, you may feel great and then plummet. Such things have to be learned properly and practiced in a balanced way because you are playing with the fundamental forces of life.
Udhana prana brings a certain charge in the system that allows you to feel an extraordinary sense of physical exuberance. The body should wake up ahead of you and always glide ahead of you; then there is enthusiasm for life. If someone’s udhana is up for whatever reason, there is an exuberance to your physicality that naturally draws life towards you.
Udhana also helps you raise your ability to communicate. If you activate the udhana well, your ability to utter sounds will be greatly enhanced. Your voice will reverberate in a different way. Even if it does not come out like that outside, within you, it will reverberate that way, which can do wonders to you. Based on this fact, mantras, particularly bija [1] mantras, were created, so that you remember that sound as it was uttered, and slowly, it will reverberate within your system.
Udhana can bring a feeling like your body is somewhat porous or transparent. Or in other words, it brings down the sense of body in your experience. Suppose there was no gravity, your sense of body would be very low. If your sense of body becomes very low, the other aspects of who you are naturally play up stronger.
[1] Lt. “seed”; root sounds
If the body is sitting like a dead weight, it does not allow anything else. When the sense of body is strong, all you want is eat, sleep, and relieve yourself. That is part of the compulsive nature of the body. Only if you are fully alive and enthusiastic, will other things fire in you, including the subtler aspects of life.
The whole creation is a reverberation. To have this ability to hear everything that is worth hearing is called ritambhara pragna. It needs a keenness of attention that your body will not allow right now. It may be demanding attention in your ankles, your lower back, or your backside instead.
Life needs your attention. Death does not need anyone’s support – it is super-efficient, and it will happen absolutely. We want to keep life as up as possible with as many possibilities as we can open up, with as many experiences as we can create, with as much profoundness as we can live with. Intensity of our existence can be enhanced in so many different ways.
You should never think this life is never going to go, but you should feel like that. Then you will be enthusiastic about life; then you will do everything you can do. What we cannot do, no problem, but everything that we can do must happen in our lives. Everything that we can touch and experience must happen. The most profound point of experience must happen in this life.
This is why one of the greatest services I am doing for humanity is to dismantle all the heavens. The idea that life will happen better somewhere else is criminal. It is here that life should happen at its best; in its most profound, purest, and most wonderful way.
With such a magnificent creation, with these millions of life forms so complex and so fantastic, if the Creator is not dancing here, where else? It is here! Your problem is you are already in heaven and making a mess out of it.
If you do not want to make a mess out of it, one important thing is you have to keep your udhana high. Then you feel like you are floating around; the body is not so much of an issue. Whether you sleep, eat, or do this and that does not matter – the compulsions of the body will not rule your life. When that happens, naturally, many other unexplored dimensions of life will become a living reality for you.
If you want to become attentive to life and the source of life, the most important thing is that you learn to listen. This is not only about your hearing faculty – your entire body should listen and be perceptive. Because every form in the entire creation has a sound manifestation. You are supposed to listen. If you get too identified either with your body or somebody or something, then you cannot listen. Your identity determines how you interpret everything.
You must listen. You do not know what you are missing in this creation when you are overly identified with your own body, with little things around you, with people around you, and all kinds of ideas and philosophies. If you want to listen, you must simply sit here like a mound of earth – then life will become crystal clear.
