Dear Ed,
There is a very common condition that modern medicine doesn’t address at all. The symptoms are treated, but not the cause. Perhaps, because it is such a daunting and intimidating prospect. Only the brave dare to even comprehend this condition let alone attempt to heal it. It is so much easier to simply live with the suffering than rise up against such a condition.
I’m talking about the condition where the central core nadi, or energy filament of the body, in the spine, called the “sushumna” in traditional hatha yoga, breaks.
A “nadi” – which literally means river is also an ancient name for the energy pathways in the body, also called “meridiens” in modern times. Just as rivers crisscross the earth bringing water to dry areas and therefore making the earth fertile, so the energy meridiens or nadis of the body carry energy all around the body.
All ancient systems of healing consider the energy meridiens the simplest way to heal the body because no matter what a problem is, if you can get energy going to where it’s been stopped from going, the body will heal itself.
It’s real healing. Everything else we do is basically emergency support. This is the real deal.
Now, about these meridiens, I’d like to give you an idea about the reality of them. I know you probably already know all this. I can tell. But it took me so long to really understand, so I’d just like to summarize it neat.
It’s like this. There’s flowing water and there’s the path it’s been flowing in a long time. That path is called the river. It can change, it can shift, it can dry up and disappear.
In the body, we have the nervous system, which is a network of actual physical filament, in some places as thin as the filament in a old light bulb.
These nerves are an extension of the brain and run right through the body like the transport network of a country.
Now, at the center of every nerve is space. Space. Like a river bed. This space holds a form of water called Akasha. “Akasha” means sky. But sky is actually water. The universe is made of this sort of space, which is actually a form of water. Let’s call it non-liquid water.
Now this non-liquid water, conducts electricity. And that is how nerves work and carry messages from the brain to the rest of the body and back.
So this is essentially a bio-electric network.
Now, that path of space or Akasha or non-liquid water that’s in the core or center of the nerve; that’s the nadi or meridien or river path.
So although it is technically just the space through which bio-electricity travels from cell to cell, it is in fact a critical, vital thing for the body, just as a river is, for a country. Or a highway or train track.
The nadis or energy meridiens of the body can break.
Like electric circuits can break, they break. Little fuses blow all the time around the body, rest, cool down and fire back up again. Overheating blows the fuses, actual movement or cutting of the nerves through injury, and in some cases out of long term deprivation of fat, which is the lubrication of the nervous system, the nerve can wear out, exposing the electric core, making it get too hot too quickly, evaporating the water it depends on, and thereby blowing or cutting the nadi.
In all these cases, the body has self healing mechanisms to restore the nadi, the nerve and the area to balance.
This happens naturally all the time as we go through life. There’s no need to over-science it, as Granddad used to say. It happens.
But why I’m writing this is because there’s a sort of break of the electric core of our bodies where recovery in our times is unsupported and un-understood. And it is painful, painful painful for those who live through it.
It’s when the very central core of the body, the electric core of the spine itself that is the central highway of the body breaks. This highway is called the “Sushumna”. It runs from the brain to the tail bone in all living beings.
In the picture below, of the nervous system, on the right you can see the central column, the spinal cord running from head to tail bone.
This sushumna is the central core of the Caduceus, the universal symbol of medicine and healing from ancient times to now. It’s basically the vertical axis along which the human body manifests. The two serpents on either side represent the two polarities of energy, male and female in the movement up and down the axis.
This basic movement of energy up and down the central axis of our bodies gives rise to our bodies and keeps us living.
From ancient times, all illnesses have been seen to be caused by an imbalance between the two polarities and that’s why this is the very symbol of healing.
However, this whole game of life, requires the central axis or sushumna to actually be there. No sushumna, no nothing.
What a thing therefore, it is when the sushuma breaks or cuts.
It’s such a horrible thing Ed, you’d think no one would survive such a horrible thing. It’s the cutting of the spinal cord.
On my way to school when I was in high school, one morning I passed by the scene of an accident. A dog had been hit by a car and its back broken. I was there the moment it died. It just brought home to me in one second how our whole lives are dependent on the spinal cord we have inside our back bones. This cord, this thread…. The bone around can heal, but when the cord breaks the person is split into the living and the non-living.
Yet Ed, that which even the spinal cord is a protection for, the filament of energy that is the highway of our existence, that breaks and people are expected to get on with life, go back to work, keep functioning.
It is such a sad thing and such a thing that humanity is so low in quantity, that this happens in our times.
Everyone who has experienced the cut of their core, their sushumna will know immediately what I’m speaking about.
Your fuse is blown. You’re still here, you’re still moving and working and cooking and eating. But energetically you’re zapped. You’re functioning off old reserves. Living on sheer mental energy and will. It’s not easy. It’s an effort. And you know one day you’ll run out.
There was this person on a train once, who asked me to help her with some long term health issues. I asked her when she last was able to live without having to prop her own self up through the day. She said she couldn’t remember. It was some time in her childhood.
She’d lived so long on reserve energy, but there she was a week before her wedding, looking every bit like any normal healthy young woman; enviably good looking too…. the most beautiful skin…. going on a pilgrimage to pray for health! It really made me think late into the night…. She knew subconsciously that her energy reserves would run out soon and was apprehensive about getting married, and only God would understand that, because modern medicine has no consideration of such matters.
Another woman I met in the bank one time, also was going to get married soon. She too looked normal on the surface but had several underlying issues and a feeling of apprehension because she knew subconsciously that she did not have the ability to carry on for very long the way she’d been managing.
I could tell you so many examples, Ed, of people who will not get into relationships, not get married, not get involved in things they really want to, because they know subconsciously that they are living off reserve energy. Their sexual energy core, which is the sushumna, is cut or blocked. They don’t want to get into a commitment because they know they’ll disappoint. They’re just using all their reserves to go to work and cook and clean and survive from day to day.
I feel so bad because basically that means, their body does not support the longing of their heart. What’s the point of life if our body does not support us in expressing our soul? What else is life for if not for that?
No, Ed, no matter what anyone says, without that, life is not worth anything.
So how does the sushumna break?
Electric surge due to shock.
The shock can be delivered, physically through force, through chemicals, emotionally.
Just as a surged filament of a bulb breaks so the sushumna breaks. Nine times out of ten, it’ll reconnect by sheer magnetism. But this is for the times the shock is so huge and recovery so hampered that it does not reconnect.
How do we repair a cut sushumna?
Treatment for shock. Facing whatever caused the shock and treatment for shock.
The big part of the healing is knowing what you’re dealing with. As time goes by and you don’t turn away from it by trying to pretend you’re not hurt using the “fake it till you make it” ideology, you will begin to bring to the front of your consciousness what caused you the shock that left such an impact.
Sometimes those who love you will remember it. Other times you may have only very vague recollections because you were so shocked you buried the memory.
But as you go on, facing your own truth, the energy begins to flow. You have ups and downs, flow and stop and flow. It’s a process. But you get better and better.
Ed, I would not write this to you if it weren’t the truth I have tried and tested. My sushumna has been cut many times in my life. And I have recovered.
The Practical Aspects of Healing the Sushumna
It’s about treating the nervous system for healing for LONG TERM BURIED shock. Not immediate shock. It’s a whole different ball game.
It requires:
1) Irritants
2) Nervous system support
3) Sleep support
4) Sexual identity support
5) Emotional environment awareness
6) Energy field support
Most people are already doing some of these, but might be missing something important.
1) Irritants
Irritants are herbs that irritate or agitate the body and consciousness to provoke the body to stop accepting the status quo and start trying to actually address the problem. Poison Ivy or Rhux tox, Nux Vomica or Poison Nut, and even Mistletoe are all irritants.
If you’re already trying to heal yourself you don’t need these.
But if you have the tendency to get comfortable with a half life and live like a worm hiding in a dark corner under the kitchen sink hoping no one will force you to come out and fight for your life or get killed, an irritant can help.
2) Nervous system support
Good fat, and nervine herbs. Taken everyday.
3) Sleep support
So many herbs do that. My general favorites which seem to work for everyone are:
Passionflower – Trauma happened in childhood
Spikenard – Trauma accompanied by restricted imbalanced sexual development
Snakeroot – Rauvolfia Serpentina – Trauma that’s showed in nervous weakness that shows in muscle weakness or atrophy
Scullcap – Scutellaria – Trauma with memory problems, betrayal by close relatives/ friends
Mugwort – Trauma where the person has had to not speak about it or allude to it for a long time, forced to pretend like everything’s ok
Haritaki – Sleep trauma that shows in stomach and digestive disturbances, IBS/ IBD/ Crohn’s disease etc.
There are others. Whatever works for you.
One thing I’d like to put in here is that, for years now I’ve recommended with a lot of success, that people change the light bulbs in their house to have dim lights after sunset instead of the glaring white lights. And to install software like “Dimmer” on their computers and turn on “night light mode” on their phones. These all help us regulate our bio-rhythms which are triggered as much by darkness as light. This supports sleep, which support nervous healing.
4) Sexual identity support
There are two sorts of sexual identity. The first is male or female. The other is, as a male or a female, your sexual expression pattern.
One of the easiest way to know if someone’s sushumna is cut, is if their sexual energy expression is restricted or blocked. It means an identity has been imposed on them which dictates and imposes on their energy expression.
Sexual expression starts in our small choices everyday – how we take care of ourselves, our lifestyle, our habits and so on. When we have an identity or a pattern of behavior and being imposed on us, it stunts the flow of our sexual energy and the development of sexual expression identity.
It so happens that when the sushumna is cut, our sense of identity is shaken badly and recuperation difficult in the face of the onslaught of suggestion from all around us about how we’re supposed to be.
To start from the ground up, building our selves and lives up, living by what feels right to our spirit, rehabilitates sexual energy flow.
It is a big deal and it takes time and has its ups and downs, but people do it all the time. That’s a fact as sure as I’m here typing this.
The difference between those who succeed and those who simply keep trying every now and then and then backsliding, is details. Little things matter. If you have stuff around you that pulls you into a false identity your spirit doesn’t agree with, it’s going to be hard to emerge into being you.
To this day I’m still discovering over and over, how everything carries consciousness and subconsciously delivers messages to us all the time. The pictures on the wall, the experience around the time you bought the sheets on your bed, where you were when you first heard that song. We’re getting these suggestions all the time.
Clearing our lives up by asserting our simple natural truth, rehabilitates our sense of identity to allow sexual energy expression.
I like this:
“Be true to your secret inner knowing.”
5) Emotional environment awareness
I knew this person who was very social and not just in an ephemeral say-hi-to-everyone way, but really involved in people’s lives. I was really surprised one day to hear he’d had a nervous breakdown. You just don’t associate nervous breakdown with someone like that guy.
A few months later someone told me that he’d gone on a trip with friends to a picnic spot, trekking and camping, and had had the nervous breakdown there.
I was even more mystified. Who breaks down on a camping trip! With friends that too…. I could’ve understood if it was family.
Some years later on the internet I found out that he’d fallen in love with someone who’d been his girlfriend for a few years and then gotten married to someone – a marriage for financial gains. It had shocked and devastated the guy and for all his friendliness and care for others, when he’d needed support he hadn’t got it.
I know this must be a common enough story, Ed, but it made me think of the “nice” people out there who have no one to support them when they need support.
You see it’s so easy to misunderstand our emotional environment. We think if we know a lot of people and have a lot of friends someone or the other has our back. In reality, it might not be that way at all.
I don’t think emotional support from others, is a necessary requirement for healing. But awareness of our emotional environment is a must. Because when we’re hit by a shock, to recover, we need to know what’s where. We need to know where we can rest that will hold us, we need to know where we can cry and not be taken advantage of for it. That sort of thing.
Recovery from shock, requires us to come to terms with our real emotional environment and learn to live and thrive with it, or change it.
Whenever I’ve heard or seen a real success story; a turnaround from a sorry miserable existence or a recovery from a horrific shock, I always see that the person changed their emotional environment. Many people now look to nature as they see that nature does not betray them. Many find spiritual support inside. Some change their friend circle.
The beautiful thing is, Ed, a lot of people find true love, on the way up, where before they were too surrounded by the noise of shallow society.
6) Energy field support
The sushumna is an actual electric circuit. The energy field is a real magnetic field in which our body is like a seed in a fruit. I’m a bit of a natural expert in energy field healing as I’ve seen the energy field naturally from birth. I consider it hands down, the most ignored part of us.
I see people – so much attention given to their appearance, carefully chosen perfume, hairstyle, shade of nail paint… whatever. And it’s obvious to me they’re just as conscientious about their diet, take whatever supplements they believe they need. And yet there I see the energy field ripped open, spilling their guts out, trailing like a tail behind them. Or I see huge patches of dark – blind spots in their field – and the parts of them not in the blind spots pushing like crazy to try and get past those blind spots but draining instead.
The things I’ve seen Ed…. One woman had something like a huge sideways gash and some deduction led me to ask her if she’d had a bad accident around the age of 17. She had, and a shard of glass had gone through her sideways under her ribs. The shard was out, the tissue healed but the energy field hadn’t healed yet.
Why hadn’t it healed?
Because the energy field records trauma as both physical AND emotional or spiritual.
If we consider an accident as only physical not emotional, or a disappointment in our lives as only emotional and not physical, we leave bits of trauma unresolved and the energy field literally preserves the wound until we resolve all sides of the trauma.
I have this burn on my finger. I got it in 2014 peeling garlic. I was peeling a LOT of garlic for two or three days to preserve, because I’d found real wild organic mountain garlic, and you don’t find that often. It’s very rare. And you can’t take the risk of keeping it dry, because in those mountainous places there’s a lot of rain and the moisture in the air can always increase so much, nothing can stay dry.
So I peeled a lot of garlic and that particular point on my finger developed something of a burn where the garlic rubbed against it. I ignored it, thinking I’d put something soothing on it later and it would be fine.
But it didn’t heal. All the way into 2020 it was forming scar tissue, burning and so on. The never-healing wound it was. And while I was busy recommending emotional awareness and so on to others, I was ignoring this little wound.
A few weeks ago, it stopped forming a new scab and new scar tissue and covered up, started healing for the first time since 2014. I realized that it happened about the time I faced a particular deception and betrayal I’d experienced around the time of my garlic trip of 2014. It took me SIX YEARS to begin facing it. And it’s taking time healing too. It’s not like it’s instant.
I’m writing about it Ed, because it’s a small example of how the little things that make up our lives are never just physical or just emotional. We’re holistic beings and everything has significance.
The things that happen in our lives, are messages from our spirit. Sometimes nice, sometimes nasty.
But we aren’t here to just keep earning and eating and paying bills and bringing up our kids to where they can earn, shop and pay bills and make children to bring up to earn, shop and pay bills.
We’re living beings on a path to joy and bliss. Our daily lives MEAN something. Not one bird sings “accidentally” outside our window. The path of the clouds above us means something to our soul.
Our soul is living a life that may or may not run parallel to the existence our mind knows.
But our body is semper fi (always true) to our soul and reflects what’s happening inside. It’s our natural way of healing to move towards happiness by facing whatever’s holding our soul back.
It’s difficult healing from a broken sushuma. It’s like learning to live all over again, having a childhood all over again, or maybe having our childhood for the first time.
Granddad used to tell me, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
I asked him once, “What makes a happy childhood?”
He said, “Real things.”
