Shortcut to Astral Projection With a Candle (Video)

Shortcut to Astral Projection With a Candle (Video) | Third Monk

Astral projection is an out-of-body experience where your consciousness travels to another dimension. A spiritual stoner with “I Got 5 on It” playing in the background breaks it down in a way that anyone can understand.

The shortcut method involves focusing on the outer glow around the flame of a candle. His description of the astral projection experience is highly detailed and will be of interest to people who are into lucid dreaming and psychedelics.

Shortcut to Astral Projection With a Candle – Part 1

Shortcut to Astral Projection With a Candle – Part 2

Shortcut to Astral Projection With a Candle – Part 3

How to Find the Right Style of Yoga for Your Body and Mind (Guide)

How to Find the Right Style of Yoga for Your Body and Mind (Guide) | Third Monk image 1

Yoga offers a host of health benefits, including stress relief and mental clarity, but many people don’t think it’s for them. There are, however, so many approaches to yoga—Ashtanga is a fast-paced flowing style while Kripalu combines gentle movements with a philosophy of compassion and mindfulness—that if you are interested, you should be able to find a yoga style that fits your needs and reap these great benefits. Here’s how to get started (or continue) on your individual yoga path.

Getting Started

One way to find which type of yoga is right for you is to think of why you might have been interested in yoga in the first place—or, perhaps, what you didn’t like about past yoga experiences. Consider whether you want a lot of physical intensity (do you like to sweat?) or gentle poses, if you’re recovering from an injury, want heightened spiritual awareness, and so on. Your preferences may also change from day to day or with the seasons (during the winter, some are drawn to heated yoga practices).

Nine Styles of Hatha Yoga

Here are nine internationally recognized styles of Hatha Yoga, ranging in intensity.

1. Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga

Helps build strength, flexibility, and mental focus through a sequence of movements. Vinyasa is a flowing style of yoga which links the movements or asanas with breath work. Ashtanga yoga is a series of poses done in a quick-paced Vinyasa flow.

 

2. Jivamukti Yoga

Combines the physical style of Ashtanga with meditation and spiritual teachings. Think chanting and readings combined with standing poses and backbends. Developed in 1984 by David Life and Sharon Gannon, this style is described by the Jivamukti Yoga School as “a vigorously physical and intellectually stimulating practice leading to spiritual awareness.” The school claims that the average Jivamukti student knows more about the philosophy of yoga than most yoga teachers because of the emphasis on traditional teachings.

 

3. Bikram Yoga

Practiced in rooms heated to 105 degrees to help you sweat out toxins and keep flexible. If you like it hot, you’ll like Bikram. The 26 yoga postures developed by Bikram Choudhury, according to Bikram’s Yoga College of India , are designed to give every component of your body what it needs for maximum health and functioning.

 

4. Integral Yoga

A gentle, holistic practice meant to be incorporated at work, school, and everyday life. The Integral Yoga Institute of New York City says Integral yoga’s use of traditional postures can help develop “an easeful body, a peaceful mind, and a useful life.”

 

5. Iyengar Yoga

Focuses on experiencing each pose and proper alignment. Postures are held longer in Iyengar than they are in other yoga styles, and props like blocks, straps, and cushions are also encouraged. It’s one of the most popular styles of yoga in the US and was developed over seventy years ago by B.K.S. Iyengar.

 

6. Kripalu Yoga

Focuses on meditation and breathwork while promoting physical healing. Psychological and spiritual growth are big components of this school, and there’s a great emphasis on approaching yourself and others with compassion and kindness.

If you consider yoga as meditation in motion and are interested in transforming your life, Kripalu, “the yoga of life” may be for you. A variation called Kripalu Yoga Dance blends dance and yoga.

 

7. Kundalini Yoga

A branch of tantric yoga that emphasizes the wordless experience of yoga and heightened awareness. Kundalini was once a closely guarded secret, until Yogi Bhajan brought the practice to the West in 1969. Described by Bhajan’s 3HO foundation, the practice “combines breath, mudra [postures, usually of the hands], eye-focus, mantra, body locks, and postures in a precise, conscious manner to affect body, mind, and soul.”

Kundalini may be the school to explore if you’re interested in a philosophy of living or finding your true path in life, as well as physical benefits of yoga.

 

8. Sivananda Yoga

A slow-paced practice built around a series of 12 basic postures in tandem with “proper” habits and thinking. According to the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, founded by a disciple of the Swami Sivananda, Sivananda teaches 5 principles of yoga: the basic postures for flexibility and strength, proper breathing, relaxation, a healthy vegetarian diet, and positive thinking and meditations.

 

9. Viniyoga Yoga

A customized yoga practice, where the poses and breath are synchronized according to the individual’s needs and interests. This adaptive approach to yoga is also holistic—incorporating breathwork, postures, sound, meditation, and readings. The American Viniyoga Institute says viniyoga is different from other yoga practices with its focus on repetition, holding of postures, and adaptation of the postures, breath, and sequences for different results.

 

There are several other types of yoga not mentioned here, offshoots and variations of the above as well. Yoga Journal’s Not All Yoga Is Created Equal is a great guide to some other styles not covered. You can also find a quiz there that may help you match your personality and body type to a yoga style.

How to Find the Right Style of Yoga for You | LifeHacker

Joe Rogan – Interviews on DMT Trip Experiences and Isolation Tanks (Video)

Joe Rogan - Interviews on DMT Trip Experiences and Isolation Tanks (Video) | Third Monk

Joe Rogan – nnDMT Trip Experience Interview

Joe Rogan talks about his DMT experience and the joy of taking psychedelics then jumping into an isolation tank.

Joe Rogan – 5MEO-DMT Experience, Isolation Tank Interview

Joe Rogan trips out on what and how we say things on 5MEO-DMT and a caller talks about isolation tank experiences.

…When I did it I dissolved to the center of the universe and became a part of the cellular structure of all matter, it was the strangest experience ever…

Joe Rogan – The Mind in a Sensory Deprivation Tank (Video)

Joe Rogan - The Mind in a Sensory Deprivation Tank (Video) | Third Monk

Joe Rogan speaks on what the mind goes through in a sensory deprivation tank and the awesome potential you can achieve with one.

The first 20 minutes for me at least is sort of like a seminar on my life. It shows me all that the different issues in my life that I don’t like and that I need to fix, things that are bothering me, things about my own behavior that could have been better, and things where I disappointed myself

Then it will show me some things where I’m on the right track, this is good, continue here, continue doing this, continue thinking like this, continuing explore these ideas but then once it gets ME done, it’s like let’s clear all this bullshit in your life, let’s think about the big picture.

And then it’s pure thought, it’s like the mind completely untethered from the body and then I start contemplating everything, I start contemplating the universe, the role of human beings and each individual’s actions all accumulating to one specific event, I start thinking all kinds of crazy shit but without the body in the way.

Check out Intro to the Isolation Tank (Floatation Sensory Deprivation) for our post on the development of the tank and how you can try out the experience.

Alan Watts – Fear of Enlightenment

Alan Watts - Fear of Enlightenment | Third Monk image 1

Alan Watts explores the fear of enlightenment. Don’t be afraid of how great you are.

Supposing I say to you: each one of you is really the Great Self, the Brahman. And you say, ‘All you’ve said up to now makes me fairly sympathetic to this intellectually. But I don’t really feel it. What must I do to feel it really?’ My answer to you is this: you ask me that question because you don’t want to feel it really. You’re frightened of it. And therefore what you’re going to do is you’re going to get a method of practice so you can put it off. So you can say, ‘Well, I can be a long time on the way of getting this thing, then maybe I’ll be worthy of it after I have suffered enough. See, because we are brought up in a social scheme where we have to deserve what we get and the price one pays for all good things is suffering. But all that is precisely postponement because one is afraid, here and now to see it.

Intro to the Isolation Tank (Floatation Sensory Deprivation)

Intro to the Isolation Tank (Floatation Sensory Deprivation) | Third Monk image 5

The sensory deprivation tank — a temperature-regulated, salt-water filled, soundproof, lightproof tank that can isolate its occupant from numerous forms of sensory input all at once — has gone by many names over the years, but its overall design and purpose have remained largely unchanged: to find out what your brain does when it’s shoved into a box all by itself and left alone for a while.

 

Just Your Mind, All Senses Gone

Inside the tank there is no light, and therefore no sense of vision. You experience the kind of quiet that allows you to hear your muscles tense, your heart beat, and your eyelids close. The extreme buoyancy of the water lends your environment an almost zero-gravity quality. The lack of a temperature differential plays with your ability to perceive where your body ends and where the water and air begin.

 

John C. Lilly, Developer of the Isolation Tank

While John C. Lilly is certainly well known for developing the world’s first isolation tank, he was by no means a stranger to revolutionary, albeit sometimes strange and uncharted, areas of medical and scientific innovation.Lilly was a pioneer in the field of electronic brain stimulation. He was the first person to map pain and pleasure pathways in the brain. He founded an entire branch of science exploring interspecies communication between humans, dolphins, and whales; conducted extensive experimentation with mind-altering drugs like LSD  and spent prolonged periods of time exploring the nature of human consciousness in the isolation tank.

 

Experiences in the Tank

Lilly claimed that the sensory deprivation tank allowed him to make contact with creatures from other dimensions, and civilizations far more advanced than our own. He would forever refer to his very first encounter with entities from another dimension as “the first conference of three beings,” the details of which are recounted in great detail on Lilly’s website. Lilly’s, however, is an experience that others who use tanks have rarely reported.

By comparison, characterizations of sensory deprivation like this one by comedian Joe Rogan begin to sound downright grounded — and Rogan’s descriptions of hallucinations, heightened levels of introspection, and the sensation that the mind has left the body are actually among the most commonly reported experiences among tank users. Even renowned physicist Richard Feynman described having hallucinations and out-of-body experiences while using sensory deprivation chambers.

Reports of a heightened sense of introspection and out-of-body experiences by tank users mirror those of people with extensive experience in meditation, and both practices have been linked to decreased alpha waves and increased theta waves in the brain — patterns most typically found in sleeping states.

 

When, Where To Try The Tank

You might think that you can just get into the tank and have a psychedelic trip right away, but it doesn’t work like that. Absolutely nothing might happen the first time. If you are interested in using the tank, practice meditating first. Meditation helps you develop that habit of “letting go”. If you can’t free your mind, your tank experience may be boring as you’ll just be floating with impatience and anxiety.

Depending on your proclivity for psychoactive drug use, sensory deprivation tanks can offer anything from a means to achieving relaxation and reflection to a vehicle that can aid you in your travels through time and space. And if you should feel the itch to explore what sensory deprivation might be able to offer you, you can seek out nearby tank centers over at Float Finder.

> Guide to Isolation Tanks | io9

How To Open The 7 Chakras (Guide)

How To Open The 7 Chakras (Guide) | Third Monk image 15

Open the Root Chakra (Red)

This chakra is based on being physically aware and feeling comfortable in many situations. If opened, you should feel well-balanced and sensible, stable and secure. You don’t distrust people around you for no reason.You feel present in what is happening right now, and very connected to your physical body. If it’s under-active: you tend to be fearful or nervous, and easily feel unwelcome. If it’s over-active: you may be materialistic and greedy.

 Root Chakra Mudra

  1. Use the body and become aware of it through physical activity like yoga or exercise, this will strengthen the root chakra.
  2. Ground yourself. Stand up straight then relax with feet shoulder width apart and slightly bend your knees. Move your pelvis forward a little and keep your body balanced so that your weight is evenly distributed over the soles of your feet by sinking your weight forward. Stay in this position for several minutes.
  3. After grounding yourself, sit cross-legged and let the tips of your thumb and index finger touch gently, in a peaceful motion, as shown in the picture above.
  4. Concentrate on the Root chakra and what it stands for, at the spot in between the genitals and the anus.
  5. Silently, yet clearly, chant the sound “LAM.” The A is pronounced as”ah” and the M is pronounced as “mng”
  6. All this time, let yourself relax, still thinking about the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  7. Keep doing this until you are completely relaxed. You may have a “clean” feeling.

Open the Sacral Chakra (Orange)

This chakra deals with feeling and sexuality. If open, feeling are released with liberty, and are expressed without you being over-emotional. You would be open to affinity and can be passionate as well as outgoing. You also have no problems based on sexuality. If it’s under-active: you tend to be unemotional or impassive, and are not very open to anybody. If it’s over-active: you tend to be sensitive and emotional all the time.

Sacral Chakra Mudra

  1. Sit on your knees with your back straight and relaxed. Lay your hands in your lap, palms ups, on top of each other. Left hand underneath, the palm touching the back fingers of the right hand, and the thumbs touch gently, as shown in the picture above.
  2. Concentrate on the Sacral Chakra and what it stands for, at the sacral bone (lower back).
  3. Silently, yet clearly, chant the sound “VAM.” The A is pronounced as”ah” and the M is pronounced as “mng”
  4. All this time, let yourself relax, still thinking about the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  5. Keep doing this until you are completely relaxed. Again, you may have a “clean” feeling.

Open the Solar Plexus Chakra (Yellow)

This chakra encircles confidence, especially when in a group. When open, you should feel in control and have good feeling of dignity in yourself. If it’s under-active: you tend to be passive and indecisive. You could be frequently apprehensive and this doesn’t reward you. If it’s over-active: you tend to be imperious and aggressive.

Navel Chakra Mudra

  1. Sit on your knees with your back straight and relaxed. Put your hands before your stomach, slightly below your solar plexus. Let the fingers join at the tops, all pointing away from you.
  2. Cross the thumbs and straighten the fingers, this is important, as shown in the picture above.
  3. Concentrate on the Solar Plexus Chakra and what it stands for, at the spine, slightly above the navel.
  4. Silently, yet clearly, chant the sound “RAM.” The A is pronounced as”ah” and the M is pronounced as “mng”
  5. All this time, let yourself relax even more, continuing to think about the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  6. Keep doing this until you are completely relaxed. You should have a “clean” feeling (for every chakra).

Open the Heart Chakra (Green)

This chakra is all about love, caring, and endearment. When open, you seem to be compassionate and friendly, always working in amicable relationships. If it’s under-active: you tend to be cold and unfriendly. If it’s over-active: you tend to be so “loving” towards people that you suffocate them, and you could be seen as selfish for it.

Heart Chakra Mudra

 

  1. Sit cross-legged and let the tips of your index finger and thumb touch on both hands. Put your left hand on your left knee and your right hand in front of the lower part of your breastbone, as shown in the picture above.
  2. Concentrate on the Heart Chakra and what it stands for, at the spine, level with the heart.
  3. Silently, but clearly, chant the sound “YAM.”
  4. All this time, continue to relax your body, and think of the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  5. Keep doing this until you are completely relaxed, and the “clean” feeling returns and/or intensifies within your body.

Open the Throat Chakra (Blue)

This chakra is based on self-expression and communication. When the chakra is open, expressing yourself is easy, and art seems to be a great way to do this. If it’s under-active: you tend not to speak too much, so you are classified as shy. If you lie often, this chakra can be blocked. If it’s over-active: you tend to speak so much, it annoys a lot of people. You could also be a pretty bad listener.

Throat Chakra Mudra

  1. Sit on your knees and cross your fingers on the inside of your hands, without the thumbs. Let the thumbs touch at the tops, and pull them up a bit, as shown in the picture above.
  2. Concentrate on the Throat Chakra and what it stands for, at the base of the throat.
  3. Silently, but clearly, chant the sound “HAM.” The A is pronounced as”ah” and the M is pronounced as “mng”
  4. All this time, keep on relaxing your body, thinking of the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  5. Keep doing this for about five minutes, and the “clean” feeling will intensify once again.

Open the Third Eye Chakra (Indigo)

Like it’s name, this chakra deals with insight. When open, you have excellent clairvoyance, and tend to dream a lot. If it’s under-active: you tend to look up to other people to think for you. Relying on beliefs too often, you also tend to be confused most of the time. If it’s over-active: you tend to live in a world imagination all day long. In the extremes, you could suffer from frequent daydreams or even hallucinations.

Third Eye Chakra Mudra

  1. Sit cross-legged and put your hands in front of the lower part of the breast. The middle fingers should be straight and touch the tops, pointing away from you. The other fingers are bent and touch at the two upper phalanges. The thumbs point towards you and meet at the tops, as shown in the picture above.
  2. Concentrate on the Third Eye Chakra and what it stands for, a little above the center of the two eyebrows.
  3. Silently, but clearly, chant the sound “OM” or “AUM.”
  4. All this time, relaxation of the body should come a bit naturally, and continue to think of the chakra, it’s meaning, and how it does or should affect your life.
  5. Keep doing this until the same “clean” feeling seems to come back or intensify.

Open the Crown Chakra (Violet)

This is the seventh and most spiritual chakra. It encircles a being’s wisdom and being one with the universe. When this chakra is open, prejudice disappears from your To Do list, and you seem to become more aware of the world and it’s connection to yourself. If it’s under-active: you tend to not be very spiritual, and may be quite rigid in your thoughts. If it’s over-active: you tend to intellectualize things all the time. Spirituality seems to come first in your mind, and if you are really over-active, you may even ignore your bodily needs (food, water, shelter)

WARNING: don’t use this meditation for the Crown Chakra if your Root Chakra is not strong or open. Before dealing with this last chakra, you need a strong “foundation” first, which the Root exercises will present to you.

Crown Chakra Mudra

  1. Sit cross-legged and lay your hand before your stomach. Let the little fingers point up and away from you, touching at their tops, and cross the rest of the fingers with the left thumb underneath the right, as shown in the picture above.
  2. Concentrate on the Crown Chakra and what it stands for, at the very top of your head.
  3. Silently, but clearly, chant the sound “NG” (yes, this chant is as hard as it looks).
  4. All this time, your body should now be totally relaxed, and your mind should be at peace. However, do not stop concentrating on the Crown Chakra.
  5. This meditation is the longest, and should take no less than ten minutes.

Lucid Dreaming Quick Cheat Sheet (Guide)

Lucid Dreaming Quick Cheat Sheet (Guide) | Third Monk

By lucid dreaming you can open your experience up to infinity. Life doesn’t stop when your eyes close.

First – Make an effort to remember your dreams

Tell yourself before you go to sleep that you WILL remember your dreams.

Start a journal, blog, or podcast, record the entirety of your dream in some concrete way.

Second – Reality Check

Reality checking is making a habit of checking whether or not you’re dreaming, while you’re awake. This habit will carry over into you’re dreaming.

Look over the dreams you have recorded and note patterns. These patterns will help you identify when you are dreaming.

Looking at digital clocks, into mirrors and flipping light switches are all great ways to check on reality.

Third- Now You’re Lucid Dreaming

Explore your imagination. Fly, breathe underwater, space travel, time travel get crazy with it and enjoy.

When dreaming rub your hands together and spin to prolong a lucid dream state.

Instead of thinking about what you want to do when you become lucid, think about it while you’re awake.

Fourth – Lucid Dreaming Supplements

Practice meditation. You get used to being in an altered state of mind and become more comfortable with lucid dreaming.

5-HTP is a natural dietary supplement that aids in serotonin production. 5-HTP has been proven to make lucid dreams more common and more vivid.

> Lucid Dreaming | High Existence