In India we all have grown up listening to stories of Yogis who spent months to years in samadhi, enjoying union with God, without eating or drinking anything. The first question that comes to our mind is how they survived for such a long time without eating anything. Were they seriously surviving without food or they were having something mysteriously as a source of their energy? The answer is that Yogis actually knew an ancient secret technique which gave them the ability to go on for years without eating anything, and that technique is called Khechari Mudra.
Khechari literally means moving in space and mudra means seal. So in Khechari Mudra the tongue moves in the empty space of nasopharyx. Anatomically, it's impossible to even think that tongue can enter the nasopharynx at all, but through certain yogic techniques, Yogis achieve this ability. When the tongue is inside, except the posterior wall, a Yogi can easily touch all the walls of the nasopharynx and structures associated with them and can even block one nostril from behind allowing air to flow through other nostril.
So how does taking tongue inside the nasopharynx helps to go on for years without food? According to yogic texts when a Yogi keeps on practising different asanas, pranayamas, bandhas, and mudras, while having his tongue locked in Khechari Mudra, some mysterious liquid starts trickling down on his tongue, which is referred to as Amrita, and via ventral surface of tongue and through sublingual route it reaches the heart directly. In samadhi Yogi's body goes in sort of hibernation. They go breathless through practise of 'Kevala Kumbhaka', make their brain waves go flat via different mudras, and stop the beating of their heart through 'Thokar Kriyas'. Even when the heart is not beating, some kind of squeezing action remains in the heart and that is the only process that requires a substantial amount of energy during samadhi, this and other subtle energy demands are fulfilled using that amrita.
By the successful practise of this powerful mudra the Yogi achieves the ability to enter the state of suspended animation. It requires careful preparation of the body for that experience under the guidance of a true Guru because that experience creates death-like circumstances. In that state i.e. when the body is in suspended animation, Yogi no more requires food or water to survive. That's why Khechari is praised again and again as the best of all mudras in yogic texts and is also called the favourite mudra of Lord Shiva, The Giver of Yoga. It is said that even if the Yogi is not able to practise it to that high intensity which would take him to samadhi, practise of this mudra will very much slow down the ageing process, and after few years of practise and he will start to look much younger than his contemporaries.
How that Amrita is formed in the body, from where it drops down, through which hole in nasopharynx it drops on the tongue, why only through yoga it starts dropping? These are some of the unanswered questions about that mystical technique. What ancient yogic texts are calling as Amrita could be a mysterious substance which the brain may start producing only after a very successful practise of Khechari Mudra and other secret yogic techniques and through some unknown way it reaches the nasopharynx to be caught by the tongue of Yogi in Khechari.
So does anyone in present time know this technique or it's just another long-lost knowledge of India? There are only few rare people who have complete knowledge of this technique. Many people have learned to insert their tongue inside nasopharynx but using it for samadhi is a different ball game altogether which takes years of very hard practise of yoga. I was lucky enough to meet one such rare Yogi personally, who later accepted to become my Guru also luckily.
His name is Shri Shailendra Sharma and he belongs to the Yogic lineage of Mahavatar Babaji, the Immortal Yogi mentioned in the famous book of Paramhansa Yogananda, the 'Autobiography of Yogi'. He lives in the royal cremation grounds of Bharatpur Rajas, also called Chattris, in Goverdhan. Whatever I am able to write in this article is because of him. He is the one who allowed the doctors to have an MRI scan of his head done in Khechari so that the world could see what it looks like from inside.
Here are the pictures of that scan:-
As we can see the area highlighted under yellow, in the lower half, is the tongue. Tongue is pushing the soft palate downward and forward. Tongue gets locked in this position but the tip can move freely in the nasopharynx, and hence the term Khechari. This is the exact position of tongue in which the Yogis enter samadhi.
After knowing all this a question comes to our minds, why do they eat at all after coming out of samadhi? That's the best benefit anyone can have in their life! No need to work for a living. The most important reason I learned was that the Yogis give utmost respect to mother nature and natural laws. Even when they have the ability to go beyond nature, they won't do it unless it's very necessary for them for a certain task, and I think even a Yogi won't mind having ice cream once in a while.
I would like to conclude this article by pointing out that even after being able to give so much to a person, Khechari is just one of the ingredients of samadhi, just think about the samadhi itself for which techniques like Khechari are practised and mastered and the great knowledge and abilities samadhi could provide to the blessed Yogis. Khechari alone is enough to point out that yoga is not what we see around us these days, a culture of physical exercises, it's much more deep and mysterious practise done not to control blood pressure or blood sugar but to achieve the highest sacred knowledge of self-realization.
(This article was first published in the second edition of my college's annual magazine, Spandan, in 2018)
