Become as a Little Child

Phoebe climbing on my brother.

I have been making some interesting discoveries in my work lately. My work and my personal spiritual study overlap quite a bit. In fact, I don't know if I have shared this on my blog, but I feel that God called me (almost commanded me) to be a hypnotherapist, so it shouldn't surprise me that I receive much insight and guidance from him about my career. The last 2 or 3 blessings I have had over the last 5 months have all given me very specific advice about my career--which was not my intended purpose for getting the blessings. So I've been listening. And the knowledge that is flowing to me has been accelerating at an exponential rate. I don't even know where to begin or what to share. 

But here is one insight I had and it is this: Jesus Christ taught that in order to enter the kingdom and become like him we must "become as a little child." That essentially means humble and teachable, which is what the hypnotic state is all about. The unconscious mind is often compared to a five-year-old. But interestingly, it is through that state that I almost always receive the most intense two-way celestial communication. I have found, and most hypnotherapists will agree, that an intentional hypnosis or imagery state are the most effective gateway to the higher self. It all makes so much sense. I not only help people change their behavior, but I help them tap into Source. To God. To inspiration and their spiritual guides. That can be difficult to do sometimes with all the overload of life. But hypnosis makes it easy. Especially with a loving guide who has your best intentions (like me and some of the wonderful people I know who do this work). Whenever I take someone into a therapeutic imagery journey, they almost always find strength or wisdom they never knew they had. Some have wild epiphanies and visions and others experience subtle, yet powerful shifting energy. It blows my hair back every time.

Then I had another prong to that thought about becoming as a little child. Not suprisingly it has to do with the body. I teach Kundalini Yoga (mostly to pregnant woman and I also teach mommy and me). The Kundalini yoga technology is very cool. Because it works on the back door of the body and all the systems, such as the endochrine system, it has amazing anti-aging effects. All you need to know about the endocrine system is that it secretes hormones that keep us youthful and healthy. Many researchers believe that the primary reason for aging is that endocrine system starts to wear out. And this begins to happen in our early twenties(!) not in middle age or later as some people used to think.

Scientists seem to think that the reason Kundalini yoga has such anti-aging effects is because of the specific pressures on some of the systems and the way the tongue strikes the upper palate during some of the mantras and that activates the hypnothalmus, which does xyz..... While I agree that could be the scientific explanation, I also think that there may be another reason why KYoga (and most yogas to some degree) keep us young. I think it is because:

1) we are breathing like children. If you look at young children and animals, they breathe fully and from the belly. As we grow and become less in the moment, we breath from the tops of our lungs and it causes all kinds of health problems. Studies show that roughly 1/3 of people don't breathe adequately enough to sustain normal health.

2) we are acting like children--in kundalini yoga we pretend to be dogs and cows and trees and snakes and frogs and we dance around and shake and flop our bodies like fish frying. If you leave children to their own devices, they get into all these poses naturally.

In fact, I watched my daughter wake up yesterday morning and I wish I had a video camera. She came in early to cuddle with me and as we both slowly woke up, she got into down dog and started pedalling her feed. I said, "are you doing downward dog?" 

"No. I'm doing foot sliding."

"Oh. Of course."

Then she saw that the sheets were tangled into a circle which made a nice pretend swimming pool for her to cannon ball into. Then she did about 5 other movements that would have made a great yoga set before she bounced off to make me breakfast in bed. Really. She did. 

And so I wonder, do we age because the endocrine system wears out, or does the endocrine system wear out because we age numerically and we buy into a consciousness about how one is supposed to act at that age. No more acting like a tree for the joy of it. No more believing in miracles. Forget those silly ideas about God and angels, and definitely no singing out loud. No wonder some people age so quickly.

I truly believe that age is a consciousness and that our body follows.I saw my brother age ten years in about 10 months time when he got his first "real" job out of college. It wasn't the job, per se. I think it was more his intensity. His seriousness.


So, to become as a little child means not only to become humble and teachable in mind, but also flexible in body too. This is how we become perfect or "whole." To steal a quote from Yogi Bhajan says, "You might die, but you'll never grow old."