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By Rudran Brannock
You know that delicious feeling you get when you have had a good sleep and you stretch your whole body when you wake up? The energy runs up and down the body, consciousness seems to be in every cell, an orgasmic feeling goes up and out of the top of the head and you relax into a kind of satisfied smile that lasts at least until breakfast. Bed yoga is built on this.
That whole movement of the stretch of the body, the arms over the top of the head and the head thrown back, stimulates the wakefulness centre of the hypothalamus. All yoga is designed around these effects on the body/mind. Yoga also pays attention to the time of day and other relationships of the body with activities such as eating and sleeping.
I discovered bed yoga the same way that everybody else does – in bed. One morning I just kept the stretch going and, to my delight, ended up going through a whole spontaneous yoga routine for about 20 minutes. I ended up doing this many times before I analysed why it was so good – better than most yoga sessions I have ever done.
When we are asleep, we are no longer creating our ego or our personality; so the body is not being ‘held’ in those frames of body/mind. None of our conditioning around how we ‘should’ move or behave is present in our motivation to move. So in sleep we have the same innocence of body as we have as a child. This innocence is in the sheer pleasure of movement as well as in the freedom of desire to move. There is also the same erotic sensuality of body that children are born with and is slowly repressed over years of cultural conditioning. This sensuality is still in us constantly; it’s just that when we are awake we have such strong conditioning to keep it hidden. This is very important. We are all still very sensual and erotic beings! This statement is easily provable if you try the bed yoga for a couple of weeks.
At the time we wake, we are still in the place that is not sleep, but is not yet in full wakefulness. We have not yet started to fill the mind with thoughts or to solidify into organisational mode. This is a perfect time to reconnect with the beauty and joy of being in the body. If you are having a hard time developing the discipline to love and be in your body, there is probably not a faster or more fun way to do it!
Here’s how
Go for the usual stretch of waking up. Pay attention very carefully and extend the time of it until you can’t wring any more pleasure out of it. Then do it again with another angle of stretch, and then another, and so on. Try expanding your ribcage as much as possible. This is an amazingly pleasurable stretch. Allow yourself to degenerate into writhing. Be careful not to get too excited and move too fast for too long. Some yippee is good but remember to stay conscious so that it stays in the realm of yoga (union), or it will cease being bed yoga and become something else (which is okay, but not if you want to study bed yoga).
Try it with your partner still in the bed. This can produce unforeseen consequences which may also cease being bed yoga and become something else (also good for starting the day with).
Oh yes. And make plenty of pleasurable sounds. Try this for at least ten days and see what a difference it makes to your love of body, your sensuality and sense of well-being. To get full benefit it needs to be practised as a discipline for 10 minutes every single day.
Have fun, love Rudran
Rudran is trained in yoga, aikido, rebirthing, counseling, energy and body work, shamanism and tantra. He is an acknowledged elder of the men’s movement in S.E. Queensland, being the founder/visionary of The Joining, a community and 3-day gathering designed to restore the balance of the feminine and the masculine internally and external relationships.
He works as a soul polisher, gardener and social artist
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