Course XIX - Teaching 15: Ancient Postures (Numbers 11 to 20)

Posture 11. Lying down, in supine position, your face looking upward. Bend lightly your knees by forming a 150 grade angle. Join your ankles together and keep your soles of the feet and toes in straight angle outward. Lean your feet on their edge (ankle-little toe). Hands lightly contacting sides of the body. Keep this posture during 12 breaths.
Do not stay extremely loose, but think that your body is a line. This posture is named “Figure of Dead Man” and relaxes totally your body like any horizontal position. It is excellent when you apply it after strong mental or physical challenges.
Posture 12. Put both feet between knees and thighs, hiding your feet as much as possible, and stay seated on both ankles.
This posture is called “Hidden Seat”. You can practice it only if your breath flows throughout long and deep cycles.
Posture13. It is equal to Ancient Posture number 2; both elbows on your feet, and your face leaned on your hands.
Its name is “Posture of Fish”.
By constricting the breath, a stronger pressure is produced on the body. In Sanskrit, “it kills any disease”.
Posture 14. Seated on the ground. Your feet should be lightly stretched. Put your right foot, with your hands grasping strongly the inner area of the thigh. Displace totally the weight of your body to the right thigh.
Keep your right knee lifted from the ground as much as possible. Grasp your left foot and put it on the right knee. Now set your hands free, or hold one foot that cannot keep alone its position. While you are leaned on the right thigh, displace the weight of the body toward all sides not touching the ground; forward, backward, and laterally, with no fall.
This posture is difficult but very effective because grants a substantial and steady balance to your body. It is called “Posture after Matsyendra”.
Posture 15. Standing, rotate your legs strongly outward from the hips. Bend your knees and stand on tiptoe by joining the soles of the feet together and coming close to the scrotum. Cover carefully the ankles with your hands (the back of your hands forward), contract your neck, and look at the point of your nose.
Goraska’s Posture (in the antiquity, a well-known master of breath). It grants magical powers.
Posture 16. Seated on the ground. Put your legs vertical in front of the body. Bend the body forward, with arms stretched forward, and put the forehead in the midst of both knees. Your hands should grasp carefully your feet (over the toes, and touching as much as possible about a half of the soles of your feet).
After certain respiratory development, try to keep this posture during 12 breaths.
This posture is named “Position with the back above”.
We are told that this is the seated posture of the “Kings of Breath”, and ad litteram “it grants thinness and good health to men”.
Posture 17. Lean on the extreme point of your feet, your knees bent, open and quite apart, until 180 grades if possible; your thighs on your ankles, which are on the air. The soles of your feet meet together in a flat form.
Its name is “High Seat”.
Posture 18. Cross your feet (like in the Ancient Posture number 7), but lead this crossing further inward in order to put your feet behind your thigh. Put the hands forward, on both feet, and your thighs forming a 45 grade angle approximately.
It is named “Dangerous Posture”. If unduly made, you run the risk of losing your balance and falling forward.
Posture 19. Lean both hands on the ground, and put the area of your navel on your elbows. Lift lightly your head. Your spine should form a horizontal line. Legs properly together; bend your knees in a 90 grade angle upward. Your entire body is only leaned on the palms of your hands.
Its name is “Posture of Peacock”. According to the Sanskrit text ad litteram, “if you have eaten certain quantity of bad food, the Peacock Posture converts this food into ash, vivifies the digestive fire, helps to digest poison, removes quickly a fever and dispels disturbances and juices”.
Posture 20. Legs placed as in Ancient Posture number 2. Pass your hands between legs and thighs respectively, raise the whole body, and keep this posture; the body remains free on the air, leaned only on the palms of your hands.
“Position of Poultry.” It is very difficult and its achievement demands much exercise. Once you achieve it, it grants a sense of freedom and unity as no exercise ever before.