u/Famous-Respond-8243

Shanmukhi Mudra is a simple but subtle practice that brightens and rejuvenates the face and eyes and brings about a state of balance leading toward increased awareness and meditativeness.  

Benefits:

Improves vision

Brightens the eyes and rejuvenates different parts of the face

Helps with ailments related to nose, ears and eyes

Helps relieve Vertigo and Tinnitus

Brings about mental balance and enhances awareness

Helps turn a person inward, prepares one for Pratyahara

Sadhguru:

"If you turn inward, you will find a space where there is a solution for everything"

Travelling all over the world, I see too many people walking around with bitter, depressed, or resentful faces. There are many problems in the world, but every problem is a possibility. Only if you grab each problem by its horns and see how to turn it around will you unlock your genius. Only then will you touch the inner dimensions of intelligence that every human being holds. If the deepest dimension of intelligence opens up, you are as good as the Creator. You can do just about anything that can be done within the laws of Nature.

If you resist, there is no possibility of transformation and growth. A seed that does not sprout is a wasted seed. To sprout means to be willing to shed everything that you were and become something new. There is safety in a dormant seed because there is a shell. If you become a tender sprout, you are vulnerable. If you are not willing to be vulnerable, you are not willing to transform. Whatever does not transform, whatever does not change, is as good as dead. Anything alive is always changing.

Being on the spiritual path but building your own silly attitudes and philosophies to seal yourself off from the rest of existence means wasting your life. Coming in touch with this Grace is an opportunity of many lifetimes. It pains me to see people wasting this possibility and their lives by building walls against everything around them. Walls of self-protection are also walls of self-imprisonment. This is what this poem is about.

Question: What is the role of karma yoga in sadhana?

Sadhguru: It is not needed really. Yoga does not need karma. Yoga is to go beyond karma. Why karma yoga has been brought in is to bring about balance in a person. Whatever we call as our awareness, our love, our experience or our glimpses of our reality, if it has to be sustained, the path of non-doing is a very wonderful path, but it is very slippery. Extremely slippery. It is the simplest and the most difficult. It is not difficult but it is not at all easy, because it is simple – right now, here and now. But that here and now , how to get it? Whatever you do, It is never going to be in your hands. But your hands need something right now, you need to hold something. That is why the crutch of karma yoga.

Sadguru: A whole lot of people have come out of it with Hatha Yoga practice, no question about it. But this is a pretty widespread manifestation of thyroid imbalance. See, we must understand this. What you’re calling as thyroid - in Yoga, we don’t look at the glands like that but , medically, what you’re calling as thyroid is that secretion within you, is trying to calibrate your system on a daily basis. It’s just calibrating how much digestion should happen, how much energy should be produced, how much fat should be produced, how much muscle should be built, everything, it’s trying to calibrate your physical structure. Your physical structure is very closely related to your psychological structure. Today, there is substantial evidence to show you that if you sit here and think of the mountain, your glandular function will happen in a certain way, if you think about a tiger, it’ll happen another way, you think about a ocean, it’ll happen another way, you think of a man or a woman, it’ll happen another way. Just a thought ,nothing, no contact with mountain, no contact with tiger, no contact with man, woman or ocean – just a thought will fluctuate the glandular function. I’m saying that is how fine the system is, that it is trying to calibrate everything. You need a bullock cart, but they gave you a fine spaceship, tch. Every little thing will do a world of things. Simply if you touch it, it’ll go boom, waves of stuff happening in the system. Simply if you look like this (Gestures) and make one conclusion about the tree, this (Referring to oneself) will go into many varieties of chemical and other kinds of variations. Glandular functions will change. None of them are conducive for this life (Referring to oneself).

Glandular dysfunction is just one manifestation. A very highly calibrated function of glandular function, one thing is the thyroid. It’s easily noticeable, the first thing, your physiological and psychological parameters get thrown off a bit, simply because of disturbance. And another dimension is the disturbance that’s happening from within you – your own psychological patterns.

Another dimension of disturbance is what kind of food is getting into you. There is no way you can eat anything today, which is not chemically infested. If you’re eating very organic food, it’s little organic chemicals they’re using. It’s come to that place. It’s very difficult to eat something that’s just grown in the wild forest, you can pluck out something and eat. That’s very, very little. Not even a small percentage of people are capable of eating that anymore. It’s all from the marketplace. And what goes into the marketplace is all about More, not about What. And also this, in this country (Laughs) All these things are gone now, don’t worry.

My grandmother, every day the vegetable-seller, you know, they used to come home with a basket, just then in the morning they would have plucked, by 7:30, 8:00 they are at the doorstep. When they come and she will look at this. When she wants to buy it, she won’t allow the vegetable-seller to touch the vegetables. They plucked and brought it, it’s fresh, just now it’s come off the plant but if it has to go into the balance or if she has to choose one, two, three, four, like this, she won’t let them touch it. “You don’t touch my vegetables.” This is not to keep bacteria away. She doesn’t want that woman or that man to touch the vegetables that her children and grandchildren will eat. She will touch it in a certain way, tch, she will fondle it, she’ll caress it, she’ll look at it like this, like this (Gestures) and then she will cut it and make it. Don’t think this is all funny. If all these things are missing in your life, you have to take pills to manage your glandular function. And there is no way by popping a pill you can get it into balance. You can suppress it, you cannot get it into proper balance, no way, because every day it’s different, every moment it’s different. This is calibration, a very active calibration that’s happening. You kill it and just take a pill and somehow manage – you are a little dysfunctional machine. With this dysfunction, this dysfunctional machine will manifest in so many ways. And you will only know it when you stretch it.

At least you must equip yourself, so that those things don’t have too much impact on you. It’ll anyway have impact, but how much is the question, how much impact? At least within your home, surround yourself with some plants. If there is no space, fill your room. This is going to have some freaky bedrooms . Open up half the roof. “Oh, but there’s another floor above, Sadhguru”. Okay, open up the damn wall, so that some sunlight comes into you. Yes. Not everything is closed and just one air conditioner is going brrrr all the time. This is one thing. The reverberations around you are freaking this body completely. All the time brrrr,

When you walk, you must always be conscious of the life other than human life. Most people are not even conscious of the human beings, so I am reminding you, you must be conscious of everything that is alive. A tree, a plant, a blade of grass, a grasshopper hopping and the people that you don’t like are passing by, all kinds of things. You must be alive to everything. Don’t need to do any “Oh, I love the tree”! You don’t have to love the tree, you have to be nourished by it, that’s the only way to live. You like it or not, it’s nourishing you right now. Consciously if you do it, everything will work better.

Something as simple as being alive to everything around you indiscriminately may regularize your thyroid problems. Tch, of course, morning hatha yoga is there, kriyas are there, all these things will definitely help. And the powerfully consecrated spaces are there, many things. One of the main reasons is, human beings are becoming less and less active as technology grows. In a day, an average human being, how much activity, physical activity, they used to perform in the past, previous generations of people and how much physical activity all of us are performing right now, is abysmally low. With such a low level of activity, keeping the balance in the system is difficult.

So a little imbalance, don’t go to bed. If you feel little imbalanced, you must get… jump into activity. Wherever activity is happening with some vigor and joy, you must jump into that activity, and do more and more of it if you’re feeling sick – really, because the moment you go back, you are empowering that. Well, if you’re very ill, that’s a different thing but otherwise, We’re talking about essentially glandular dysfunction of various kinds, activity is a simple solution for everything.

Activity is - if you do not know how to sit here and be exuberantly alive, just go and play a game, run around simply. Just imitate the grasshopper when you’re walking. Try. Why not? You never did this? This’s the problem with you. When you go now, I want to see you because you’re going to walk on the grass, you better grow like a grasshopper, chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk (Gestures). You will see how much aliveness will happen with you. Essentially, you your fundamental problem is you have become bloody serious about your life. So, we have to again remind you, you will die anyway, don’t be so serious about it, because it’ll get over in no time. You must loosen the grip. Now if you loosen the grip, that last scene can be different. Otherwise, people see you (Gestures) That’s a great thing that happened to you you loosened the grip. Now itself if you loosen the grip, you will see life will happen wonderfully well for you.