“The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy. The greater the flow of energy, the greater the magnetism.”
—Paramhansa Yogananda
Paramhansa Yogananda created in 1916 a unique set of 39 exercises called the Energization Exercises. These exercises enable us to draw Life force directly into the body. This energy is quickly absorbed by the muscles, blood, bones, and sinews for cellular rejuvenation. The energization exercises give the highest degree of energy with the least tissue destruction.
“Energization Exercises will be found to be the surest and most effective remedy for bodily diseases and inharmonious conditions of the mind.”
—Paramhansa Yogananda
Health does not mean mere existence. Keeping out of the hospital is not health. To be able to resist disease, to bear strain, to stimulate mental vitality, and to feel the body as a luxury—as a bird feels when shooting through the air, and as a child does always—is health.
What distilled water is to a wet battery, food is to the body-battery. Life energy in the body-battery is derived from Cosmic Energy and from food. It is the intricate task of the life-force to distill additional life-force from nourishment taken into the body, by breaking up foods and converting them into energy. Oxygen and sunshine should have a very important place in people’s lives, because of their direct energy-producing quality. And one’s diet should be confined to foods that are easily converted into energy.
Good thoughts are nourishing food for the mind, while thoughts of any other nature are poisonous to body and mind. Your mental diet consists of the thoughts you think as well as the thoughts you receive from close thought-contact with your friends. Peaceful thoughts and peaceful friends always produce healthy, magnetic minds. Inner disquiet and worries, due to the wrong sort of friends or unappreciative relatives, produces an unwholesome, gloomy mind.
The mind must manifest calmness. Where worries and trials of everyday life are concerned, the mind must be like water, which does not retain any impression of the waves that play on its bosom. Through instruction on meditation, one can achieve complete calmness in the heart, lungs, and other inner organs. When muscles and inner organs are freed from motion by relaxation, the breaking down of bodily tissues and decay is temporarily inhibited. This helps to keep the bloodstream pure, for when there is decay in the body, waste products are thrown into the venous blood and poison it.
Learn to concentrate on your Life Energy and willpower, and to experience your subtle, spiritual nature. Life and strength do not depend solely on food or exercise, but are sustained from the powers within. The more you depend on the will and Cosmic Energy to sustain you, the less your food requirements; the more you depend on food, the weaker your will and the less your recourse to Cosmic Energy.
Our thoughts, will, feeling, muscular strength, proper action of organs and glands—all depend for their existence on the Life Force. Billions of body cells are kept alive properly working through this secret vital power. By consciously willing, you can draw Life Energy into the body through the medulla oblongata to replenish the energy that is expended through thoughts, feelings, and physical activities.
The will bridges the gulf between Life Energy in the body and the Cosmic Energy surrounding it. If you follow these teachings, you will learn to draw on Cosmic Life Energy to vitalize every body cell. You will experience yourself as Life Energy—and not merely as a body of bones and muscles.
These teachings are based on the axiom: The greater the will, the greater the flow of Life Energy.
“Feel your life in every limb, and health in every tissue.”
—Paramhansa Yogananda
O Infinite Spirit, Recharge my body
with Thy cosmic energy,
My mind with Thy concentration,
My soul with Thy ever-new joy.
O eternal youth of body and mind,
Abide in me forever and forever.
—Energization Exercises prayer
