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TANTRA VOCABULARY:
Chakras - Energy centers of the body that we postulate. Certain energy centers correlate with certain feelings (e.g., grief is felt in the heart).
Channels - Pathways that connect the energy centers. There are many, but we visualize three main ones. Our bodily energies flow along these pathways.
Drops - Little packages of consciousness/energy that flow through the channels. We postulate these, place our awareness on them and this stimulates energy in that area of the body. (Variously called drops, tigle, kundalini energy.)
Psychophysical knots - Areas of the body which are hardened or tense due to stored emotional or physical trauma. A knot is visualized as a crinkled or twisted channel in the area where it meets a chakra. Usually the heart chakra has the biggest knot problem.
Very short outline of Inner Fire Yoga:
1. Nine breathings (to settle the body and mind);
2. Picturing oneself as a hollow body;
3. The Six Hatha Yoga Exercises to free up the body's energy. See Mullin, Glenn, The Six Yogas of Naropa, Snow Lion Pub.
4. Visualization of the "Vajra Body" (illustrated above);
5. Generation of energy in the navel chakra;
6. Moving the energy up and down the central channel (in various ways) producing a total-body "bliss."
7. Application of the non-dual mind. This "bliss" produced by the above method is a bodily state of relaxed focused clear consciousness that is very conducive to the state of Non-dual Awareness emphasized in some lineages of Insight meditation, Dzogchen (where it is referred to as "Rigpa" or The Natural State"), Highest Yoga Tantra, (Where it is referred to as 'The Union of "Bliss and Emptiness," "Method and Wisdom," "Male and Female," or Mahamudra);
8.Use of mantra or sound. After we have attained this state of mind and body which is free of conceptualizing and thoughts, we can use mantra to "fill the vacuum" that is left and keep the old patterns from creeping back into consciousness. Always appropriate is the mantra of Shakyamuni Buddha:
OM MU NE MU NE MA HA MU NA YE SO HA
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