A friend emailed me these quotes below about healing with the hands and through other means from the great saint Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I really like them and they resonate with my own experience. I especially like the question and answer that talks about placing the hands on the patient for healing. Maharishi explains how the healing power flows through the hands and this is how the patient is healed. In my own meditation practice I often get the urge to do a Hand Mudra spontaneously and this helps with the energy flow that is running through my body.
Question: Some people have healing powers. They can cure other people.
Maharishi: Yes.
Question: Are these suggestive powers the strength of one mind over another mind, or someting else?
Maharishi: There is mental healing through the power of the mind. But this healing power is a quality of the body. Some rays are being emitted all the time through the body, sometimes through the hands or other extremities of the body. Some constitutions develop more of these energy rays in their body, and when they meditate, greater energy is produced and begins to flow through their body. It is just a quality of the particular body. Some bodies gather more of these rays.
Question: Placing the hands on the patient helps a great deal?
Maharishi: Because the healing power flows through their body. It flows through the hand, and if they touch the suffering part it seems to get relief. The healing power of the mind will not require any touching of the body; just a thought will do. There can also be healing through vision. A man comes before you, you look at him and he feels better–the same healing rays. Healing through speech–if someone has a headache one may say, ‘You have just a headache, go home, it will be all right.’ Some words are said and the headache comes to an end.
Question: It needs belief in the words spoken.
Maharishi: Belief or no belief, it depends on the force of the speech. This is a physical phenomenon. If he believes then he does not create a resistence. If he does not believe, then resistence is there, but if the power of speech is forceful it will break through the resistence. If the power of speech is low and the resistence is great, then it will not have any effect. Might is right in this case.
Question: If a person is born with an illness, can he be healed by Transcendental Meditation?
Maharishi: If the body is not healed, the soul will be healed. We cannot generalise, as it depends on the type of illness and the ability to meditate. But there is no doubt that psychosomatic diseases can be easily cured by Transcendental Meditation. We dont treat the disease as such; the cure is the natural result of Transcendental Meditation.
This comes from a new book from MUM Press called, ‘Transcendental Meditation with Questions and Answers‘.
Fifty years ago, Yoga was the province of a few isolated practitioners, who would hold local classes attended by a few dedicated enthusiasts interested in higher consciousness.
Nowadays Yoga is decidedly mainstream, offered as an option in all gyms and health clubs, and practised by housewives and businessmen who may have no particular interest in anything beyond improving health.
So what are the reasons for Yoga’s popularity? For one thing, the type of balanced physical movement that Yoga provides is more in tune with today’s sports science. There is a greater awareness of the need for gentler exercise that does not strain the body, and the importance of diet and generally healthy lifestyle rather than just ‘working out’ to develop muscles or lose weight.
Secondly the philosophy of Yoga, which aims not only at integration of mind and body but also alignment of the individual with the whole cosmos, appeals now to many people as a more suitable approach to the problems of the world. There is a far wider understanding that we are all interconnected, and everyone is aware of the importance of behaving in accord with the requirements of the environment, if only to safeguard the life of the planet and the human race. Old-style individualism is increasingly seen as selfish and potentially destructive: in its place, global citizenship is the order of the day.
Nowhere is this more relevant than in Africa, where the concept of Ubuntu emphasises that an individual is significant only in relation to others.
Of course, Yoga properly understood is more than just physical exercise. Yoga means union: the integration of individual intelligence with cosmic intelligence. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedic text of enlightenment and liberation, Yoga is described variously as ‘balance of mind’, ‘steady intellect’, etc. His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, points out in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that the description of Yoga given there is precisely the same as the process of meditation, which brings the individual mind directly to the source of the thinking process where the mind is restfully alert, completely at home in cosmic intelligence.
A state of restful alertness is also the goal of the physical postures of Yoga, but because this state can seem hard to attain through physical means, many Yoga practitioners have stopped concerning themselves with it, and prefer just to treat the postures as a series of physical exercises. For the mind, however, the state of restful alertness, is easy to achieve. This is because Transcendental Meditation doesn’t seek to control the mind but uses instead the mind’s own nature to move towards greater charm and happiness. Many doctors recommend TM for its health benefits, whether as general reduction of stress, or to relieve specific conditions such as anxiety, depression, or high blood pressure.
This article was written by a friend at the Transcendental Meditation center in South Africa.
Yogic techniques are being practiced all over the world now. With the ever-increasing pace of life in western countries, it’s great to see people using yoga as a means to turn within and experience some valuable ‘alone time’.
Despite the growing understanding of yoga in America, some skeptics still often regard it as a belief system – perhaps one that conflicts with their own spiritual or religious practices. Some even consider it a form of Hinduism. This always surprises me, because despite my long time love of meditation and yoga, I know very little about Hinduism. As much as I support everyone’s right to hold their own beliefs, I’d hate to see people missing out on the benefits of yoga simply due to a misunderstanding of what yoga really is.
The truth is, although yoga originated in the Vedic tradition of India, its techniques and benefits are universal to people of all ages, races, and religions. Nowadays, that fact is not only verified by the experience of millions across the world, but is also backed be extensive scientific research into the health benefits of regular yoga practice. As one friend put it, “yoga is as much Indian (or Hindu) as Einstein’s theory of relativity is German.”
Yoga literally means “union”, and all yogic techniques – be it meditation, asanas, pranayama, or others – deal with unity. They promote the experience of unified awareness, and deal with that aspect of life that is universal – that aspect not bound by race, belief, or religion. To me, the perfect definition of Yoga is given in the Yoga Sutras of Maharishi Patanjali, which states that “Yoga is the complete settling of the activity of the mind”.
The complete settling of the activity of the mind. That sutra always makes me smile… it’s so simple, yet so profound. This has become my own yardstick for effective yoga practice. During my deepest yoga sessions, all thoughts within my mind naturally, effortlessly dissolve into an unbounded ocean of silence. It’s not sleep though, it’s wakeful silence. The mind isn’t switched off, so to speak, it’s just completely settled. What’s left behind is yoga – just pure, unified awareness.
Although they might not have called it yoga, the same experience of unified awareness has been described by countless saints, philosophers and religious people, from all traditions across the globe. Is yoga a religion or belief system? Is it only for Hindus, or Indians? Not at all. If you’re after more proof, one experience of true yoga is enough to provide it.
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As a long-time advocate of meditation and yoga, no one is happier than me to see the rise in popularity of Eastern wisdom in the West. People are enjoying spiritual practices all over the world now – from meditation in Sydney to pilates in New York, and from yoga in London to pranayama in New Delhi. As more and more friends take up yoga, though, I often wonder about how their paradigm of “yoga” compares to my own.
To most, yoga means physical postures. They think of yoga as a particular style of stretching. Few people realize that the physical postures, or asanas, are very much distinct from other systems of stretching, and are just one aspect of a much broader field of spiritual knowledge. Yoga literally means union, and in the deepest sense, it refers to union of the individual self and the cosmic self.
The Yoga Sutras of Maharishi Patanjali, composed around 200 BC, are considered the most authoritative text on the philosophy of yoga, and they contain three sutras that I think every Western yogi should know:
1.2: Yoga is the complete settling of the activity of the mind.
2.46: Asana is steady pleasantness.
2.47: Asana is perfected by relaxation of effort and the dawn of unboundedness.
To me, these are the yardsticks for measuring up effective yoga asana practice. These are also what set yoga, and in particular, asana, apart from any regular system of exercise or stretching. Regular exercise actively engages the mind; Yoga results in the complete settling of the minds activity. Stretching is tough; Asana is steady pleasantness. Stretching involves strain and effort; asana is perfected by the relaxation of effort.
Next time you practice yoga, measure your practice up against these sutras – these yardsticks of true yoga. Does it result in the complete settling of your mind? Do you experience steady pleasantness? Does it involve the relaxation of all effort? And last but not least, the dawn of unboundedness… do you feel a growing affinity between your individual self, and the cosmos as a whole?
If so, you’re practicing true yoga!
