He had given Romana his blessing to carry on his studio Yoga poses pinterest operations in NYC afer his death in the late 1960s. At 83, she is still Yoga poses pinterest going strong, and I thank her for being so tough on me and for her generosity of always taking extra time to share her gifts with me. Romana has incredible intuitive gifts; she has a knowledge of bodies that can’t be learned from any textbook. It’s only knowledge you can learn first-hand, and I was lucky enough to have the touch of her hands to teach me. I was so lucky to have been one of two apprentices at the time and no one knew why I was getting up at 5 A.M. every morning to run off to class! I was learning so much more from her than I would have sitting in a classroom that I opted to continue with movement studies instead of mainstream physical therapy. So, I began to study with Irene Dowd, another genius, who was one of my favorite teachers in the movement science program.
Inspired by this some Saivite Siddhas maintained that if the practitioner was able to master the subtle body with the new techniques, he would not only become immortal but also a second Siva – a jivan-mukti (a living-liberated). This was a significant re-construction of the alchemist sign of immortality’. A previous physical sign from the cultural field of immortality now in a religious field became signified by monotheism and salvation discourses.
The details of the process of achieving Siva’ varied. One version claimed that utilising the subtle body there could be a unification of divine polarities’. Specific techniques could produce a sexual union of Sakti (localised at the bottom of the spine as Kundalini) and Siva (localised in the head) leading to semi-divine status (Mallik 1953). This union would create a new high status identity belonging to liberation discourses – the jivan-mukti. The subtle body -in this clearly Tantric discourse – had become a locus of divine energies accessible to specialists through newly assembled techniques. This was a revolutionary claim immensely increasing the use- and symbolic-value of the subtle body discourse among elite strata: immortality and god-like power was now on offer! And who would not be interested in that?
