Functional SUNNING Meditation
The Sunning Functional Meditation is not about being or going out in the sun; it is about energizing your endocrine system in a very directed way. It is very focused and directed. It is best to do at dawn, noon and twilight. Performing other activities like gardening, walking, running, etc. in the sun is not the same!
Sunlight is the fuel for all life-giving metabolic processes, and its influence on the endocrine response is strong and immediate. Sunlight stimulates the pineal gland into triggering the production of serotonin and endorphins while inhibiting the production of adrenaline and other stress related hormones and neutrotransmitters. This is why the daily practice of the Sunning Functional Meditation is so important, on its own, in supporting any other kind of treatment.
The Sunning Functional Meditation is a must for anyone going through any kind of transition time, growing, healing, or both. It helps replace our usual stress related adrenaline response, that ends up weakening us, by the calming and healing serotonin response that makes us mentally stable, physically stronger, and healthier. It awakens and uplifts the spirit. It is impossible to function in the serotonin mode and remain depressed.
The Sunning Functional Meditation also transforms the water in your body into what is known as the 4th phase of water that was discovered more than a half-century ago. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680624/
The radiant energy of the sun separates the positively and negatively charged molecules of water, creating a battery that delivers energy throughout the body. This energy is the driving force behind the circulation of blood throughout the circulatory system. Circulation is crucial to the optimal functioning of our bodily eco-system. Scientists have known for a long time that the pressure created by the pumping heart does not reach the capillary beds where there is arterial and venous exchange with the cell. They are now determining that the radiant energy from the EZ water to be the driving force that moves it into the cells.
This 4th phase of water, created through photosynthesis, forms a crystalline structure of purified, negatively charged water, enveloping every macromolecule within the body of animals and plants, forming what is known as an Exclusion Zone (EZ) protecting the cells from harmful substances. No salts and no bacteria (it isn’t know whether it excludes viruses).
The buildup of the 4thphase occurs naturally and spontaneously. All that is needed to create EZ water is water, energy from the sun or electromagnetic radiation, and a hydrophilic surface (cell membrane). Water absorbs the infrared energy freely from the environment and uses that energy to convert bulk water into liquid crystalline water where it is stored. The more stored energy, the better the flow.
Being out in sunlight is critical to ignite human photosynthesis (I wonder what the effects of sunscreen have on this process). Radiant energy and all wavelengths, from UV to infrared, can build this ordered zone with near infrared energy being the most effective.
The functional sunning meditation brings this energetic charging down the front of your body, through your endocrine glands and chakras, and up the spine.
1Pineal gland2Pituitary gland3Thyroid gland4Thymus5Adrenal gland6Pancreas7Ovary(female)8Testes(male)
Functional Sunning Meditation
If you wear glasses, remove them. (Sunglasses aren't to be worn except in instances of glare on concrete, water, snow or ice. You send confusing messages of the day and time and season with sunglasses.)
Feel with your finger for a little indentation in the forehead between the eyebrows and above the nose, generally known as the third eye. Imagine a line inside your head from here directly to the back of your skull where you can feel another indentation.
Face the sun and with your eyes closed, let the sun’s rays slowly penetrate your third eye (don’t invite the rays to aim at your eyes, even when they are closed). Allow the warmth and the light to slowly penetrate your third eye into the middle of your brain where your HYPOTHALAMUS resides. This gland is about the size of an almond but plays a very important role in linking our outside world to our inside world. Allow this bright white healing light to sink to a place just below the hypothalamus to the PITUITARY GLAND. This gland secretes the hormones that allows your body to maintain homeostasis in the body. Let the bright white healing light send its energy into the pituitary, lighting all aspects.
Once you are feel the energetic fullness of the bright healing light of the sun, bring it down to your THYROID GLAND located in the middle of your throat. Your thyroid sends the metabolism signals in your body. Let the bright white light ease the tension in your throat and energize the thyroid. Breathe and stay there with the light.
Next, draw the light down to the THYMUS GLAND just below your collar bones in the middle of your sternum. This is your immune stimulating gland. Let the bright white light warm you. Breathe.
Embrace the bright white light and bring it to your HEART, the "Queen" of the organs: 'The heart commands all of the organs and viscera, houses the spirit, and controls the emotions.' Allow it to fill your heart and surround it. Once you have completely warmed your heart, let the light filter to the STOMACH, which rests below the heart, separated only by the diaphragm. The stomach takes in the outer world and gets it ready for our inner world. Allow the warmth and light to penetrate it. Give thanks to your heart and stomach for all they do.
Draw the light and warmth into the PANCREAS, which is cradled by the duodenum located just above your navel and underneath the stomach on the left side of your rib cage.
The pancreas secretes hormones that harvests energy from the food that we eat. Let it fill with the peaceful and warm energy of the bright white light until it spills over to the ADRENALS located just on top of your kidneys and at the bottom of your rib cage on each side. These glands regulate our stress coping hormones. Be thankful for the work they do.
Allow the light travel down to your SMALL INTESTINES that do the work of separating the pure from the impure and to your LARGE INTESTINES that help spin the remaining bits into gold, providing much needed chemicals and recycling much needed energy, as well as to eliminate what you do not need.
And lastly, bring the sunlight and warmth to your REGENERATIVE GLANDS, the ovaries or the testes, and let the light shine where we summon our creative energy.
Smile and breathe.
Now slowly turn around and face your spine to the sun to allow the bright white light to travel down the body, this time along your spine and the nerves that span this pathway from the brain to the coccyx. The vertebrate central nervous system is packed with enigmatic photoreceptors that help adjust circadian rhythms to the local light environment. There have been claims that humans had photoreceptors behind the knee as bright light shone there shifted human circadian rhythms.
Allow that light to come the center of the back of your head. Close your eyes and again feel with your finger the indentation in the forehead a little above and between the eyebrows. Imagine a line to the back of your head and feel for another indentation on the back of your skull. Focus on the spot in between the front and back of these two indentations – this is where your pineal gland lies.
Connect the energizing light from your hypothalamus and pituitary with the PINEAL GLAND located just behind the pituitary. This gland is the key to our sleep/wake cycle. It is also said to be the seat of enlightenment and is known as the "third" or "spiritual" eye. and pineal triad in the center of your brain.
Take a breath while the light connects these three glands. Enjoy and give gratitude.
Allow the energy of the sun’s light to travel down to your 7th cervical vertebra, located just behind the thyroid, to the nerves that control metabolism and respiration. This is a major crossroad for every yang meridian in your body that allows you to do and express yourself.
Once the light has warmed this area that allows communication and expression, allow the light and energy and warmth to travel to your 4th thoracic vertebra, located between the shoulder blades and just behind the heart. The nerves from this vertebra feed your heart and thymus, where you sense what is wanted and not wanted for your health and survival. Allow the energy to radiate out.
Follow with your mind’s eye as the light travels down to the 11th thoracic vertebra, just behind and below the xiphoid process located in the front of the rib cage. This vertebra allows you to be flexible, to bend forward and backward, and from side to side. The nerves here feed all your digestive organs, providing information to and receiving information from and between all your internal visceral organs. It is a place that absorbs many of your emotional traumas. Allow the sun's energy to warm and embrace this nerve complex.
Next allow the sun's energy to travel down the spine to your 3rd lumbar vertebra. This is located just behind the navel, and it is known as the door of life where you generate and store your energy. Follow as the light travels all the way to the tip of the coccyx, where you receive your support and enjoyment for life.
Stop and concentrate the healing light of the sun where it is needed, stopping at each nerve complex until the nerves that feed your endocrine glands experience the full healing power of the sun. Feel the warmth and the light travel in a continuous loop up and down the back and front of your body, energizing each vertebra and endocrine gland from the cranium to the coccyx.
Expand the feeling all the way to the surface of your skin. Feel your skin becoming translucid and absorbing the light directly from the sun.
When you are ready, open your eyes. Look around you. You will find the world much more sharply defined and richer in color. Sense your place in it. Keep this feeling deep within you so you can call it back whenever you want.
What happened? In order not to be affected by sun glare, your pupils shrink. To shrink your pupils, you have to be in the parasympathetic mode in your autonomic nervous system. To switch from the initial sympathetic, stress response to the parasympathetic mode in three minutes you have to have had a raise of serotonin in your bloodstream. This is how you can train your body into making more serotonin.
After some experience, you can do this even when it is a cloudy day or when you are inside by generating heat by rubbing your hands together and placing your heated palms over your eyes follow the same meditation.
To begin with, do the Sunning at least three times daily to get the body into the habit of producing more serotonin and less adrenaline. Get into the habit of going to bed earlier and earlier as the serotonin production turns into melatonin production at night. 8 hours minimum recommended time of sleep during summer and up to 12 hours and more during winter. This might include daytime naps.
Sleeping repairs nerve damage. There are laws in Chinese medicine based on the flow of the life force into the meridian system that explains the need for the body to be asleep between 11pm and 3am to rebuild our nervous system, to be asleep between 3am and 7am to process emotional charges through dreams, and to take naps in the afternoon between 3pm and 5pm to recover from exhaustion.
At the beginning you might feel tired or without energy. It is because, in fact, you will have less energy from adrenaline. So, you will be slower. Being driven by frenzy, especially when you get used to it, is not a healthy attitude. Losing the frenzy habit might feel awkward first, but soon, you will be able to appreciate your newly acquired solid presence and calm efficiency.
An added bonus! Our bodies use sunlight to make Vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually a hormone not a vitamin.The definition of a vitamin is something that exists outside of the body and we need to ingest to get it. Our liver and kidneys synthesize this hormone from cholesterol in our bodies. When the molecule of cholesterol in our skin gets exposed to sunlight, its carbon bond gets broken and the cholesterol molecule is absorbed into your bloodstream, travels to the liver where it picks up hydrogen and oxygen molecules, then back into the bloodstream to the kidneys, which convert it into “Vitamin” D (it is actually a hormone). Just like plants, our bodies are photosynthesizing!
Vitamin D helps regulate your immune system in two ways. It turns parts of it up and other parts of it down. Vitamin D will make the macrophages stronger so they can protect you. But it also slows things down the production of cytokines when they go into overdrive and trigger a cytokine storm, making your immune system go haywire and attack the body's own vital organs like the lungs and heart.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations. It also belongs to society and to all the other living beings. All of them have come together to bring about the presence of this body — the trees, clouds, everything. Keeping your body healthy is to express gratitude to the whole cosmos, to all ancestors, and also not to betray the future generations.
We practice this precept for the whole cosmos, the whole society. If we are healthy, everyone can benefit from it--not only everyone in the society of men and women, but everyone in the society of animals, plants, and minerals. This is a bodhisattva precept.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7450_supp/full/497S10a.html
