Controlling the Nadis and the Brain

The human brain is truly one of the most awesome and amazing of creations. Housed
within the skull, it contains some 12 thousand million cells, and each of these cells has an
estimated 5 hundred thousand possible interconnections; there may be even more that we
do not know about. When the mathematics are computed there are more possible
interconnections in the brain than there are atoms in the universe.
The brain has an almost infinite capacity, and all within the two kilograms or so of
amorphous, pinkish grey brain matter with the consistency of jelly or cold oatmeal
porridge. How this quivering, pulsating, jelly-like substance remembers, thinks, analyzes,
feels, discriminates, intuits, decides, creates and directs all the countless functions of the
body, integrating the whole so that we synchronize action, speech and thought, is
something that each of us should contemplate daily.
Meditation on this miracle of creation, and any attempt to understand how the brain
and mind function, can lead to an understanding of the total process of kundalini
awakening. Indeed, many of our theories of how kundalini works are based on the brain,
and this research can help us to better understand the basis for kundalini awakening, the
nadis and chakras. This is because the brain, housing as it does the master control
systems for the body within its unlimited circuitry, must contain the physical circuits for
the nadis and chakras.
The brain is also the interface between the body and the mind. All sensory
information travels to the brain via the gyanendriyas, the sense organs of knowledge, and
is then fed into the mind, and all decisions in the mind are then translated into the body
via the karmendriyas, the organs of action, in a continuous, synchronous, dynamic
process. Thus within the workings of the brain we can see the workings of the nadis as
described by yogis, and research is deepening our understanding of this. Yogic
techniques utilize this knowledge to stimulate the body so as to achieve higher and better
states of being.

The nadis in the brain

Important research from neuroscience has shown us that the brain fits into the dual
nadi model of man's personality as handed down to us by yoga. In a radical and last ditch
attempt to cure severe, unremitting epilepsy, Roger Sperry and his associates divided the
brains of their patients down the midline structure linking the two brain hemispheres, the
corpus callosum. To their surprise, not only did the epileptics cease seizures, but they
came up with startling new findings which are radically altering our neurophysiological

understanding of how the brain works and are revolutionizing our whole concept of man.
We have always known that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the
body, and vice versa. Sperry's findings, though still in the initial stages and requiring
more research, show us that each side of the brain handles a completely opposite but
complementary mode of consciousness. This finding is extremely important as it verifies
the yogic viewpoint.
Yogis and scientists, using different terminology and different approaches, have come
up with the same conclusions, that man is divided into two main modes of functioning.
The circuits of the brain are based on ida and pingala, consciousness or knowledge, and
action or physical energy. We see ida and pingaia at all three major levels of the nervous
system :
1. Sensory-motor nervous system (SMS) : all electrical activity in the body moves in
one of two directions, into the brain (afferent), ida, and out of the brain (efferent),
pingala. Yogis called the sensory nerves which are governed by ida, gyanendriyas, and
motor nerves, governed by pingala, karmendriyas. These nerves are concerned with
perception of and activity in the world.
2. Autonomic nervous system (ANS) : the autonomic nervous system is divided into
the outward directed, stress handling, energy utilizing, pingala dominant, sympathetic
nervous system, or the inwardly directed, rest handling, energy conserving, ida dominant,
parasympathetic nervous system. These two systems control and regulate all the
automatic body processes: heart, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, liver and kidney
and so on.
3. Central nervous system (CNS) : this consists of the brain and spinal cord and
contains the controls for the SMS and ANS. The brain contains much more than this
though, for it is a huge, ultimately complex computer, which stores and integrates
information and puts our decisions into action in a superbly synchronized and
orchestrated performance. Its functioning is definitely much more than its parts. Within
the infinite circuitry of the brain resides more potential than we can realize in one
lifetime, however, the techniques of yoga systematically clear and strengthen these
circuits with regular practice.
This is what yogis have been telling us, that the circuitry for nadis and chakras exist
within the CNS, along the spine and in the brain. If we can tap, purify, strengthen and
reconnect these circuits via the various yogic techniques, we can totally transform our
mind/ body complex. The basis for yogic techniques lies in the fact that there is a
nadi/chakra system which can be seen, at the physical level, as being the sum total of the
input and output of the various sections of the nervous system and the parts of the body
which connect to it. This total body/mind complex functions on the power of the three
basic types of energy- ida, pingala and sushumna. We can therefore begin to understand
why so many yogic techniques are specifically aimed at balancing the ida/pingala flow
and increasing our awareness of its fluctuations.