Kundalini.Tantra.by.Satyananda.Saraswati

Swami Vivekananda: Exactly, tightening up of the throat. It seems to be more related
to a lack of self-confidence rather than the feeling of anxiety. Simhasana works wonders.
When I was in general practice, I used to do a lot of spinal adjustments and
manipulation, and after a while I specialized in spinal problems. I did a lot of backs at
that stage. I found that patients came in clusters. I would get a lot of people with an upper
cervical lesion, migraine headaches, tightness in the neck region, with all the symptoms
of chronic sinusitis and all the other things related to upper cervical tension. I found that
all the people with upper cervical problems were corning in when the moon was full, all
the people with lumbar/sacral problems were coming in when the moon was new, and in
between all the others were spread out. This is interesting, because it is related to chakra
activation. Almost before the patient told me, I could pinpoint the exact spinal segment in
which he would be having problems. I knew according to the moon phase. This
relationship became obvious to me, especially towards the end of the time I was
manipulating, because I used to take on the symptoms of my patients.
Swami Shankardevananda: This means that we need a whole set of asanas working
on all the segments of the spine.
Swami Vivekananda: Yes, we have them, for example, surya namaskara. In Australia
we used to use the leg lock posture for mooladhara chakra, shalabhasana and
bhujangasana for swadhisthana chakra. Actually these asanas are supposed to be for
manipura chakra, but so many people have such stiff backs that they activate
swadhisthana chakra instead. Then paschimottanasana and dhanurasana for manipura; for
anahata, supta vajrasana and matsyasana; for vishuddhi, sarvangasana; and for ajna,
sirshasana and ashwa sanchalanasana. Halasana also activates because the inflection is
brought right up to the upper cervical area. However, people who have a stiff upper
cervical spine should not do any of those upper spine flexion practices, because the discs
are very tiny at that part and these asanas can be too much.
Swami Nischalananda: Khandharasana is good for this area. It's not so strong because
a lot of the body weight is taken by the feet.
Swami Gaurishankar: Let us get back to the subject of depression.
Swami Vivekananda: I think there are different qualities in the thing that we call
depression. The dread of the future is one of the symptoms of depression and I think it is
a mooladhara chakra problem. But the dejection, lack of joy and loss of sense of humor
that you find in many people is due to a low energized swadhisthana. With a low
energized manipura comes loss of appetite and low emotional activity.
In depression there is a vicious circle; the whole mechanism, the whole
noradrenalin/dopamine mechanism seems to slow down. It involves hormones. Most of
the anti-depressants act upon this noradrenalin/dopamine system.