Tantra Yoga Therapy & Celestial Honey: Vedic Astrology + a 75-Breaths Practice

Discover how Tantra Yoga Therapy, Vedic star wisdom, and the Honey Doctrine meet in a single healing arc. After exploring Ashwini, the celestial physicians, the celestial “honey” of Madhu Vidya, and the paradox of deceleration, Brooke offers a guided 75-breaths relaxation practice to help you slow down, reset, and receive.

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This community will offer a space to connect with other seekers and wellness practioners in a manner that will inspire your practice and education in all things Tantra! visit www.thewildtemple.com/community and/or download the Circle.so App & find us there.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let's start today off with a paradox. And to just define a paradox, it means something that can feel like a contradiction in terms or is contrary to expectation, however, can often be felt as true. Welcome to the Wild Temple. If you're new, I hope that you enjoy this episode. So our paradox is this term decelerate. And what I find fascinating about the etymology of accelerate and decelerate are these are terms that came about in the late 1800s in proportion to our transportation system blooming. So namely the railroad. And at first the term was accelerate, right, to rapidly increase pace and progress. And then just by definition, it needed an opposite to decelerate, to be able to slow things down, and as the definition stands, to reduce progress. Now, let's expand this aperture to feel into today's modern standards. We don't want to slow down. We don't want to reduce progress. But in healing, in the fine arts of healing, it is actually necessary to decelerate, to slow down, to increase the pauses, to even go fallow. This is that wintering, that hibernation, to heal, to integrate, to make sense of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

We the omnipotent fermentations of time, thinking ancient dreams and technological prime. Weep the stories of the old right through the soul. And so they told and told until they start to transform. The born again into the next era with the modifier. But the message still bears the one in the many, many in the one. So come on in, cause you're most welcome to the temple of earth, the sun and the moon. Reclaim your power is the place we commune. A place with the mind, the body, and soul. Deceited through the ages become infrangible. Welcome to the Wild Temple. Welcome to the Wild Temple.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Welcome. I'm Brooke Shannon Sullivan, founder of the Global School, the Wild Temple School of Yoga and Herbal Wisdom, and the host of this Wild Temple podcast. Through shared inquiry with myself and guests, we explore embodied wisdom in the subtle realms with a focus this season on desire as a generative force, Shakti and motion, and its role in Dharmic living and conscious evolution. This space is for practical mystics, heart-led seekers, and wellness professionals drawn to the Vedic and Panthetic sciences and in cultivating a deeper relationship with Mother Nature. New episodes arrive every new and full moon as we follow the wheel of time. And in the spirit of reciprocity, you're invited to follow this podcast, to leave a comment on the platform you're listening on, and to share with others. Thank you so much for being here at the Wild Temple and to stay connected. Please visit theWildTemple.com or we're on Instagram at the Wild Temple. You well. As strong and as tough as the world is right now, I just have to say we are in a very beautiful time. We are in this wave spell or a lunar spell, a lunar phase that is dedicated to healing. So when we began the new moon just a day ago, I am recording this a little bit late, and I can explain why. It is an ode to my own need to decelerate. We're in this lunar wave spell that began with the Ashwini nakshatras. So the nakshatras are a cluster of stars that where the moon travels in the ecliptic will land for every two, two and a half days. And it signifies what the collective consciousness and a deeper subconscious realm is going through. And so this is the first of the nakshatras. There are 27. So we're back at the beginning, which means we're at the beginning of a cycle, which means that along with all the fire in the air, we are able to lean in on new beginnings, setting intentions, setting goals, starting projects, starting habits, spring cleaning, all the things that are wanting to be initiated, now is a good time for that. And what I love about looking at a lunar phase instead of just the one day is that you can get a sense of the arc of this time and it stretches time. So we're no longer having to fit everything in into this, you know, two-hour window that you may have to design a ritual. But instead, if you miss the boat on the new moon, you can realize that oh, well, this phase is of this quality, so I'm gonna catch that wave, and then it allows you some breathing room. So the wave that we're in is, as I said, called Ashwini, and Ashwa means horse. And I want to share with you a story many years ago, I won't say the year, but it was a really strong one for all of us. I was spit out of California due to just a number of unfortunate climactic events and wound up here in Asheville, North Carolina for the first time in almost a decade. Landing on the soil of this beautiful fecund small mountain town made me remember who I am and my wholeness, but it took a hot minute to get there because I was a bit ruffled. And when I arrived, literally the morning that I woke up. So I arrived in the evening and I woke up with a lot of stress, highly activated, and a big full plate ahead of me because I was starting my apprenticeship the very next morning. It was on Zoom, and it was the first time that I was doing this online with this large of a group, and it was a year-long group. So I was like, oh my goodness, here I am initiating this first experience with this people with these people that I will be with for a year, and I'm barely holding it together in my energy. My heart was there, and I've taught this many years, so I knew I could do it, but my energy just wasn't there. I was really depleted. And so I guided them through this practice, and at the end of the practice, which in yoga always ends with shavasana, you should not skip your shavasanas. I told them, you know, I'm gonna rest with you. I'm really needing this. I need to rest. I hope you're okay with that. And so I did. And uh I heard back years later from this woman who actually works very intimately with horses, and she said, Brooke, you know, one of the reasons why I just fell in love with you, your work, your style, and how you approach strength and how you approach dharmic living is this time when you showed up to teach us and you did shivasana instead of sitting up and guiding us through shivasana because you were exhausted and you made sure we all knew you were human. And that honestly, that really sticks with me. Not that I'm not human, because I absolutely know I'm human, but this idea of pushing ourselves to appear to be one way or another in front of people when in truth, maybe something deeper, a deeper truth is happening. And if we were just to show up as our as our authentic selves, how much change we could make, how much permission we can give others to also show up as their authentic selves, and then we would really start to see how beautiful the network of humanity really truly is. So it brings me back to this accelerate and decelerate and the paradox of society feeling that, you know, in order for us to really survive and to thrive, that we have to be in a constant constant movement of progression. Now, if we watch the cycle and the seasons of nature and time, what we realize is that there is an expansion and a contraction. This is called spanda and tantra. There is a blossoming outwards and then a movement into seed, and then a withering into the detritus that gets composted back into the earth. And this is the fallow season where everything goes to dust and it's quiet, and we go back to the womb and then we begin again. And so if we're constantly doing and we're not slowing down or even just pausing, or not giving ourselves the permission to understand, whoa, I need a moment here, then we're never gonna be fully operating from our whole authentic selves. So we can use the word healing in this, right? We'll never truly be able to heal. But I think many people don't realize that they need healing. I think many people think they're just fine. And so we have to work on all of the ways that we can frame the language so that the healing does occur, whether we know we need it or not. And in that healing, we can start to fully show up as beautiful, empowered, loving humans that can tend to, can nurture, and receive nurturance from the world. Along with this lunar phase that begins us in this initiatory nakshatra called Ashwini, which at its root means horse, and it's governed by the deities called the Ashwini Kumars, the celestial physician. So this whole wave is about healing. We are also in just this day where I'm recording right now called Akshaya Tritya, and this is where the sun and the moon are both exalted. It's a very auspicious day according to the Vedic calendar. It's actually the most auspicious day according to the Vedic calendar, not only due to the sun and the moon being exalted, but because many beautiful beginnings have occurred throughout time that have changed the world. One was Parasharama was born. He was a sage and a very beloved sage of our Himalayan tradition. We also have the god Kuber, the god of wealth, was born, and this is the type of wealth that actually creates financial stability, not the wealth that runs through your fingers, is here one day, gone the next. It is also when the Ganga descended to the earth through the dreadlocks of Shiva. Many myths associated with this time. And so you can think, okay, here we have this new moon of initiation, and then we're moving right into this exalted sun and the moon. What myth or narrative can I create in my own life? And maybe today you're you're a little fuzzy. Maybe you're in menopause and the head's foggy, and you're like, I don't feel like my moon and sun are exalted right now. It's okay. Just decelerate, start to turn inwards to feel not only what's most vital within you, but what would help you become most vital. I think this is the key. When you can turn your compass, your orientation into being aware of what would actually serve you the most so that you are prosperous in your health, in your wealth, and in your ability to thrive. It may be that you need to let go of something. It may be that you need to recontextualize how you are seeing your life and start to be a little more positive. Turn off the news, you know, by five, or only give yourself a half an hour of news and make sure it's a good source. Or XYZ. I don't want to try to attempt to fill in the blanks for you. We have so many different scenarios. How can you listen to yourself, your own inner D, your own inner wisdom? So D-H-I-D comes from Buddhi, the higher aspect of mind where we get bodhi sattra from. How can you awaken your D that can land you into Dharmically living? So D is also one of the roots of Dharma. And when you do so, you really start to make these steps of healing, like the old haunting experiences, baggage, woes, sadness, grief, shame, guilt. It's time to rid ourselves of them. We want to clear them from our psyche. We need to move forward empoweredly and we need to do it soon, sooner than later, so that we can really meet the world as the world needs to be met, which means Mother Nature needs us right now. She's asking us through all of these very obvious ways with the droughts and the floods and the fires and the winds to pay attention and to start to tend, to start to care. And even, you know, we look at our neighbors and we look at people in our communities and even in our families, and even if they are not recognizing that they're probably needing some healing, and often we don't even recognize that there is some healing needing to be had. If we start to do practices that we know will lead towards healing, so daily rituals, eating well, sleeping well, all of this allows the body's intelligence to heal itself, right? Our cells are intelligent. When we start to do that, then the healing that is needing to happen starts to occur. And we are back in this game of the web of life, playing our part. Now we're when we're avoiding it, when we are in apathy or frozen, when we are overwhelmed and we're, we know our pedal is to the metal, and we I love that. I do say pedal to the meadow like a freaking flower growing in a field, and I do it accidentally all the time. But when our foot is on that gas pedal and we're just moving through life quickly, we're not allowing ourselves to heal. Same thing. Today, maybe you aren't your most bright and shiny, clearest self. But if you were to just pause and dig deep and feel into what would align you right now, energetically, physically, spiritually, and you do that thing, even if it takes a little bit of courage. Now is the time to do it. Now is when the celestials are like, hey, honey, got you back. Do the thing, got you back. Okay. So along with this, two days after the new moon, which was Ashwini the healing, and then Akshay Tritya, which is this these exalted moments of when good things really begin. We have Matangi Jayanti. So if you've been with me for a while, you know that she is my girl. This is the deity that is the, and one crude way of saying it, or one explanation that would make sense, is that she's kind of like the tantric saraspati, but she is actually an indigenous tribal goddess from Kajuraho, from the area of the world that my heart is, that I go study at all the time, and I just love learning from the land. And we have a Sri Vidya shrine there on our Kajuraho campus. Matangi is the deity, the energy, the divinity that helps us to reclaim our exiled parts of fear, doubt, shame, our fragmented self to remind us that we're actually whole. And when we do this, we're we're in that realm of healing again. When we have reclaimed our parts, we are no longer separated or fragmented from who we are meant to be, or who we know ourselves to be deeper down, or who we know we have the potential to be, but maybe we've never quite felt her. When we bring into when we bring in ourselves into that wholeness, or we're tapping into that matangi energy, we are being brought into the cellular intelligence of health and creativity and artistic expression and inspiration. And so this is why she is associated with Sarasvati, the goddess of fine arts. But matsangi is the deity of the compost heap. It's she who has risen up from the ashes because all of the things that have been suffering and pain and woe and areas of her life that have made her feel broken or less than clear, and she remembers her wholeness or get patched back together, Kinsugi style, and she rises up from the ashes. So that is tomorrow. And so we have this really beautiful trinity of energies in the calendar, this lunar calendar that we can align with to really aid us in the healing, the recontextualizing the initiations that we're trying to initiate, trying to bring forward in a manner that leads us towards more wealth, more health, more stability, and into our wholeness so that we can find our voices and be the voices of inspiration, of creative expression, of artistic passion. Right? So let's just pause here and feel how does that land for you? Do you think you can set aside some time just over the next few days to write in your journal, to create a practice, or to create a ritual? Even if it's like just a daily ritual, you're getting outside 20 minutes a day, you're gonna walk under the oak trees and by this particular body of water because you know it's so deeply nourishing. So, lastly, I'm going to give you a practice called 75 Breaths that I'd love for you to bookmark for later. You can write down the timestamp. And it's just a very simple practice that can help you relax and create that space to feel the healing force that is within you. And it also helps you to feel the healing force that is the same intelligence that moves all through nature. We call it prana. And when it's alive and like beyond vital, it's like it has this intelligence. You'll know it when you've experienced it. It's called prana shakti. This is awakened kundalini. So people listening that maybe have had kundalini awakening experiences, I know that that is also happening right now, by the way. So part of this is for you if you're experiencing this. The energy that's moving through you is a healing energy. Prana is a healing energy. And so it's just aiding your cellular intelligence to come back online. It's aiding your parts to find their wholeness, to not be exiled. Jai Matangi. It's aiding your ability to recognize that the healing power does lie within you. And often you just need to decelerate to access this. So the 75 Breaths practice assists you in this healing. And so this could be maybe your whole lunar phase practice. Maybe you want to do a 28-day sadhana from the new moon to the new moon or a 40-day sadhana of this relaxation practice. I welcome you to do that. I think that would be really magical. But before I give you the practice, I want to go back to the Ashwini Kumars. These are the celestial physicians that are the deities of this particular nakshatra that the moon phase began in. And it comes from this Upanishad. So the Upanishads are teachings that the sages gave their students that help them to understand the world beyond the senses. And this particular Upanishad is known as to be like the biggest. It's the largest compilation. The wisdom that is held in it is very vast. And even you can find some of the parts of the wisdom from this particular Upanishad in other Upanishads. So it's like a great collection called Brihad. And this collection, Brihad, Aranyaka, Aranyaka is the forest. So it's like these teachings that arrived from the forest yogis that are these great teachings that teach about the world behind the worlds. And there's this particular cluster of verses called the Madhu Vidya, the honey nectar, the honey teachings or honey doctrine. That is one of the first places that we hear about the Ashwini Kumars, these celestial twins. And in this Upanishad myth or Upanishad truth, Indra, one of the gods of the storms of the weather, one of the ancient main gods in the Vedas, learned from this sage, or in some cases, the sage learned from Indra this truth of the honey doctrine. But Indra forbade the sage to tell anyone else. And he said, if you tell anyone else, I'm going to chop off your head. And yet the celestial physicians found out that the sage had this particular knowledge that they knew also would serve them in their healing. And so they convinced the sage to tell them about the honey doctrine. But in order to do so, the twins decided okay, you can tell us about these. Truth is secret. And what we'll do is we will chop off your head, and then we'll place a horse's head on top of your head. So when Indra comes around to chop off your head, he'll actually be chopping off the horse's head. And so that's what happened. They agreed, or he agreed. And so as he began the story, he started to tell the story. The twins chopped off his head, put on the head of the horse. Indra could feel that this truth was being expounded. And so he found the sage and he chopped off his head without, of course, seeing or noticing that it was a horse's head. And I guess he just went about his business. But the twins then safely put the sage's head aside. And when the full truth came out, which was actually from the mouth of the horse, which I'm curious if that's where that phrase came from. This entire wisdom of the nature of the healing of reality, of the life force energy of reality, came from the horse's mouth, from the stage wisdom. And what he was talking about is that everything is interconnected. We are connected to the earth, and the earth is connected to us like bees to the honey, like bees to the flower. We are this vast network, like a honeycomb, completely interconnected. And so what nourishes us nourishes the world. What nourishes the world nourishes us. And so by default, we can also know the opposite to be true. Where we hurt ourselves, where we are in conflict, where we are severed or disconnected from tending and caring and healing. We are severing ourselves from the life force of the planet. We are severing life force from being able to nurture the trees, the waters, the soil, the birds. And so this beautiful teaching then is reminding us of this interconnection and that that which is the source, that is the force that connects us all is prana. And in this particular myth, prana is honey. And madhu honey is also soma. Soma is the nectar of the light of the moon of our most subtle vibration of strength and vitality and peace and calm and love and nourishment. So I hope that you enjoy this practice. It's called 75 breaths. I hope that you feel that the force and the source and the love that is moving through you as you relax and decelerate is honey nectar, is prana, and it starts to make sense in a way that is not in an obvious way, but is in the subtle way of the world behind the worlds making sense to you viscerally and bringing you back to wholeness. I hope you enjoy. So begin by lying on your back, positioning yourself so that you are comfortable, both your head and your legs and low back. You can have a low blanket or flat pillow under the head to no higher than the chest, and a bolster pillow under the knees. Just making sure that the temperature of your body is comfortable, that the lighting is comfortable, and that you have the time and space to enjoy the relaxation. Let's begin just by bringing your awareness to the felt sensation of the body resting on the ground, the earth, the mat, or whatever you are being supported by. So the practice moves you from the feet to the crown, crown to the feet, and then we will reduce the length of space to condense the prana with our awareness, moving and guiding that condensation of prana up towards the forehead and crown. And then when you are ready, you will go ahead and bring your inhale up to the crown of the body, combining the forces of the mind and the breath, and begin your first exhalation. So exhaling downwards, passing down through the body and all of the tissues of the body to the feet. Without a pause on your next inhalation, bring the awareness with the breath from feet to crown. And just doing that nine more rounds. And then the seamless movement of inhalation back through the body, through the layers of tissue and cells to the crown, repeating ten more rounds. Or if prana invites you to the cervix for men to prostate, letting prana guide the seamless inhalation back through into the crown, smooth exhalation down through the body, encompassing the body to your base. Five rounds, at your pace, the next exhale reaches down to the naval center, and then the rise from the navel through the body, through the light or presence, or peace to the crown. Softening where there is no light, presence, or pulsation. Allow the prana to reveal itself and relax. The ascent from heart to crown.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Five rounds.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Moving from the next exhale to your throat, seamless inhale to the crown, these beautiful condensed circuits of light and love, presence and energy. All you're doing is merging the mind, dropping the mind into the waves of breath for prana to be revealed. Moves the awareness to the center of the forehead. In these five rounds, you may notice a more condensed, more available presence. And then the breath switches, awareness switches from nostrils through the head center to crown. The descent, an effortless, smooth breath, no pauses, crown down through the nostrils. We do this twenty-five rounds, just taking your time, relaxing, and enjoying it. The light, the presence, the clear peace reveals.