If we have a look at all animals in the animal world,
We will see that none of them have an erect spine except for a human.
Even ostriches and chickens and emus,
Their spine is still in the same way where it's horizontal as most other animals except for ourselves.
When human beings were more ape-like,
They too were still walking more like chimpanzees and gorillas where their spine was still in more of a horizontal manner in the way that they were not walking on two legs.
As soon as we started walking on two legs,
What happened was that our entire bodies changed.
Actually,
The shape of our nose is even related to the fact that we walk on two legs.
In Chinese,
They said that turbid chi fell downwards and created the earth and clear chi went upwards and created the heavens.
One turbid which formed the earth,
One clear which goes upwards,
One down,
One up.
The Chinese therefore believed that as soon as we started walking straight with our spine straight,
We were then able to receive more of this clear energy from the heavens.
This idea is different to the Indian idea where the Indian idea was more seeing the head as a flower,
The spine as a stem,
And the sacrum as kind of the area of the base of the roots where there is earth and soil and fertilizer and everything else the plant needs to survive.
When the stem is straight,
It allows the energy to go upwards to the brain or to the top of the flower where it allows it to bloom and blossom.
As opposed to many Taoists ideas where they want to bring the energy from the top down into the abdomen,
The ancient Himalayan masters had very much the opposite.
They wanted to bring the energy up the center of the spine to the brain.
By doing this they believed that you would reach the moksha that was their aim,
But also in many ways it came back to the fact that if you were able to do that,
You would be able to access the source of creation that is inside of you.
When you could access the source of creation that was inside of you,
You would be in full control of your life and therefore in full control of your destiny.
This is why they say when you've opened up all the chakras and the Kundalini is gone from the base of the spine all the way up to the top where it opens the channel called Sushumna,
That you would end up having a certain type of result.
So how do you know that Sushumna has been opened?
Because no matter how bad or good the external impact is on your life,
Such as the dying of a loved one or such as something on the very significant positive side,
That both would never affect you mentally,
Emotionally.
And in this way you knew that Sushumna was open.
So they saw the brain as the flower and the sacrum as the soil and they wanted to bring the energy up,
Sushumna all the way to the top.
The base of the spine we're referring to is the sacrum.
Sacrum of course comes from Latin,
Which came from Greek and means the sacred bone,
Because it was the seat of the organs of procreation.
So the sacrum has been seen as sacred in many cultures all over the world.
It is that area of the body that stores the Kundalini.
So here we come across one of the most important aspects of all ancient yogic training was having a straight spine and bringing the energy up it.
So the first step of doing this is on a physical level.
And on a physical level there are three primary adjustments to have your spine straight.
The first adjustment is where you tilt your sacrum slightly forward and up.
This is more of an action than it is something that actually happens.
But you can tilt it forward nevertheless.
It's just you can't generally actually truly tilt it up.
But it's that direction and that action.
Then once you tilt that you pull against the downward tilt by lifting the crown of your head.
When you do those you're doing one upward direction,
One downward direction.
And you'll tend to notice that the thoracic vertebrae tends to have a slight arc by which you have a slight inward movement of the abdomen which takes away that arc.
So you have a lumbar sacral adjustment,
A cervical adjustment and a thoracic adjustment.
It is this position that is paramount for us to stay in whether we are sitting,
Standing,
Walking or whatever we may be doing.
We're trying to keep that spine straight through these adjustments.
These adjustments are small and minor but according to the ancient masters this is the first step in the journey of spiritual enlightenment.
