First in the series of Chakra Awakening Workshop was held at CIHS on March 27 & 28 inviting Mr. Takeshima from Japan and Paul & Suzee Grilley from Oregon. This first series of the workshop focused on Muladhara chakra. Located in the perineum or the base of coccyx, the Muladhara chakra is said to be the base of all other chakras. According to Dr. Motoyama, awakening of other chakras is not possible without awakening of the Muladhara chakra. It is, therefore, very important to focus on this chakra first. During the 2-day workshop Mr. Takeshima lectured on the basic theories of the Muladhara chakra and demonstrated important series of practices to safely activate/awaken this particular chakra.
    As some of the readers may know, Mr. Takeshima has been Dr. Motoyama's disciple for the last 30 years, and teaching yoga and meditation at Dr. Motoyama's center in Japan as a senior instructor. Mr. Takeshima is also an acupuncturist so that he is well versed in the TCM meridian theory and subtle energy system. In this workshop his sessions began with the practice of the meridian exercise followed by pranayama (breathing exercises). Body movements of the meridian exercise are more subtle compared to those of hatha yoga, but very effective not only to promote ki (prana) circulation in the body, especially in all joints, but also to prepare the body for deeper meditation.
   Mr. Takeshima then introduced the attendees to greater varieties of pranayama exercises and guided them through the 1-hour meditation. Those exercises included sushumuna purification pranayama, lower abdominal breathing, bhastrika, and ashvini mudra etc. According to Mr. Takeshima, those exercises are very important to balance the physical body and prepare the person for activation of the kundalini energy as well. Mr. Takeshima concluded the workshop with prayer chanting of the heart sutra and one of the important prayers for world peace of Dr. Motoyama's shrine.
 If you would like to obtain more detailed description of this workshop, I'd be happy to send it (pdf) to you. So please send me a mail with a subject line, "request workshop description."
   Most of the attendees gave us good feedback and said they'd look forward to the next workshop of the Chakra Awakening series. We are already planning the next workshop to offer next year. The chakra focused in the next series is Svadhisthana chakra, which is the second chakra located a few inches below the navel. We will inform the details on our website as well as in this newsletter soon after we finalized the plan. Please keep in touch with us.

Hideki