Magical Passes ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda.

Series Introductions - Introduction.

Don Juan Matus, a master sorcerer- a nagual, as master sorcerers are called when they lead a group of other sorcerers- introduced me to the world of shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times.

Don Juan was an Indian who was born in Yuma, Arizona. His father was a Yaqui Indian from Sonora, Mexico, and his mother was presumably a Yuma Indian from Arizona. Don Juan lived in Arizona until he was ten years old. He was then taken by his father to Sonora, Mexico, where they were caught in the endemic Yaqui wars against the Mexicans. His father was killed, and as a ten-year-old child, don Juan ended up in Southern Mexico, where he grew up with relatives.

At the age of twenty, he came in contact with a master sorcerer. His name was Julian Osorio. He introduced don Juan into a lineage of sorcerers that was twenty-five generations long.

The nagual Julian was not an Indian at all, but the son of European immigrants to Mexico. Don Juan related to me that the nagual Julian had been an actor, and that he was a dashing person; a raconteur, a mime, adored by everybody, influential, commanding. In one of his theatrical tours to the provinces, the actor Julian Osorio fell under the influence of another nagual, Elias Ulloa, who transmitted to him the knowledge of his lineage of sorcerers.

Don Juan Matus, following the tradition of his lineage of shamans, taught some bodily movements which he called magical passes to his four disciples: Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and me. He taught the passes to us in the same spirit in which they had been taught for generations; with one notable departure. He eliminated the excessive ritual which had for generations surrounded the teaching and performance of those magical passes.

Don Juan's comments in this respect were that ritual had lost its impetus as new generations of practitioners became more interested in efficiency and functionalism. He recommended to me, however, that under no circumstances should I talk about the magical passes with any of his disciples or with people in general. His reasons were that the magical passes pertained exclusively to each person, and that their effect was so shattering that it was better just to practice them without discussing them.

Don Juan Matus taught me everything he knew about the sorcerers of his lineage. He stated, asserted, affirmed, and explained to me every nuance of his knowledge. Therefore, everything I say about the magical passes is a direct result of his instruction.

The magical passes were not invented. They were discovered by the shamans of don Juan's lineage who lived in Mexico in ancient times while they were in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. The discovery of the magical passes was quite accidental. It began as very simple queries about the nature of an incredible sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced in those states of heightened awareness when they held certain bodily positions, or when they moved their limbs in some specific manner. Their sensation of well-being had been so intense that their drive to repeat those movements in their normal awareness became the focus of all their endeavors.

By all appearances, they succeeded in their task, and found themselves the possessors of a very complex series of movements that, when practiced, yielded them tremendous results in terms of mental and physical prowess. In fact, the results of performing these movements were so dramatic that they called them magical passes. They taught them for generations only to shaman initiates on a personal basis following elaborate rituals and secret ceremonies.

Don Juan Matus, in teaching the magical passes, departed radically from tradition. Such a departure forced don Juan to reformulate the pragmatic goal of the magical passes. He presented this goal to me not so much as the enhancement of mental and physical balance, as it had been in the past, but as the practical possibility of redeploying energy. He explained that such a departure was due to the influence of the two naguals who had preceded him.

It was the belief of the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage that there is an inherent amount of energy existing in each one of us; an amount which is not subject to the onslaughts of outside forces for augmenting it or for decreasing it. They believed that this quantity of energy was sufficient to accomplish something which those sorcerers deemed to be the obsession of every man on Earth; breaking the parameters of normal perception.

Don Juan Matus was convinced that our incapacity to break those parameters was induced by our culture and social milieu. He maintained that our culture and social milieu deployed every bit of our inherent energy in fulfilling established behavioral patterns which do not allow us to break those parameters of normal perception.

"Why in the world would I, or anyone else, want to break those parameters?" I asked don Juan on one occasion.

"Breaking those parameters is the unavoidable issue of mankind," he replied. "Breaking them means the entrance into unthinkable worlds of a pragmatic value in no way different from the value of our world of everyday life. Regardless of whether or not we accept this premise, we are obsessed with breaking those parameters, and we fail miserably at it; hence the profusion of drugs and stimulants and religious rituals and ceremonies among modern man."

"Why do you think we have failed so miserably, don Juan?" I asked.

"Our failure to fulfill our subliminal wish," he said, "is due to the fact that we tackle it in a helter-skelter way. Our tools are too crude. They are equivalent to trying to bring down a wall by ramming it with the head. Man never considers this breakage in terms of energy. For sorcerers, success is determined only by the accessibility or the inaccessibility energy.

"Since it is impossible," he continued, "to augment our inherent energy, the only avenue open for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was the redeployment of that inherent energy. For them, this process of redeployment began with the magical passes, and the way they affected the physical body."

While imparting his instructions, Don Juan stressed in every possible way the fact that the enormous emphasis the shamans of his lineage had put on physical prowess and mental well-being had lasted to the present day. I was able to corroborate the truth of his statements by observing him and his fifteen sorcerer companions. Their superb physical and mental balance was the most obvious feature about them.

I once asked him directly why sorcerers put so much stock in the physical side of man. I had always thought that he himself was a spiritual man. Don Juan's reply was a total surprise to me.

"Shamans are not spiritual at all," don Juan said. "They are very practical beings. It is a well-known fact, however, that shamans are generally regarded as eccentric, or even insane. Perhaps that is what makes you think that they are spiritual.

"They seem insane because they are trying to explain things that cannot be adequately described with words. In the course of such futile attempts to give complete explanations that cannot be completed under any circumstances, they must touch on matters outside the coherence of the average man. So of course their explanations seem to be senseless.

"You need," he went on, "a pliable body if you want physical prowess and level headedness. These are the two most important issues in the lives of shamans because they bring forth sobriety and pragmatism; the only indispensable requisites for entering into other realms of perception.

"To navigate in a genuine way in the unknown, requires an attitude of daring, but not one of recklessness. In order to establish a balance between audacity and recklessness, a sorcerer has to be extremely sober, cautious, skillful, and in superb physical condition."

"But why in superb physical condition, don Juan?" I asked. "Is the desire or the will to journey into the unknown not enough?"

"Not in your pissy life!" he replied rather brusquely. "Just to conceive facing the unknown- much less entering into it- requires guts of steel, and a body that would be capable of holding those guts. What would be the point of being gutsy if you do not have mental alertness, physical prowess, and adequate muscles?"

The superb physical condition that don Juan had steadily advocated from the first day of our association- the product of the rigorous execution of the magical passes- was, by all indications, the first step toward the redeployment of our inherent energy. This redeployment of energy was, in don Juan's view, the most crucial issue in the lives of shamans, as well as in the life of any individual.

Redeployment of energy is a process which consists of transporting, from one place to another, energy which already exists within us. This energy has been displaced from centers of vitality in the body, which require that displaced energy in order to bring forth a balance between mental alertness and physical prowess.

The shamans of don Juan's lineage were deeply engaged with the redeployment of their inherent energy. This involvement was not an intellectual endeavor; nor was it the product of induction, nor deduction, nor logical conclusions. It was the result of their ability to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe.

"Those sorcerers called this ability to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe 'seeing'," don Juan explained to me. "They described seeing as a state of heightened awareness in which the human body is capable of perceiving energy as a flow; a current; a wind like vibration. To see energy as it flows in the universe is the product of a momentary halt of the system of interpretation proper to human beings."

"What is this system of interpretation, don Juan?" I asked.

"The shamans of ancient Mexico found out," he replied, "that every part of the human body is engaged, in one way or another, in turning this vibratory flow into some form of sensory input. The sum total of this bombardment of sensory input is then, through usage, turned into the system of interpretation that makes human beings capable of perceiving the world the way they do.

"To make this system of interpretation come to a halt," he went on, "was the result of tremendous discipline on the part of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. They called this halt 'seeing', and made it the cornerstone of their knowledge. To see energy as it flowed in the universe was, for them, an essential tool that they employed in making their classificatory schemes.

For instance, they conceived the total universe available to the perception of human beings as an onion like affair, consisting of thousands of layers. The saw that the daily world of human beings is but one such layer. Consequently, they also saw that other layers are not only accessible to human perception, but are part of man's natural heritage."

Another issue of tremendous value in the knowledge of those sorcerers, an issue which was also a consequence of their capacity to see energy as it flowed in the universe, was the discovery of the human energetic configuration. This human energetic configuration was, for them, a conglomerate of energy fields agglutinated together by a vibratory force that bound those energy fields into a luminous ball of energy.

For the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, a human being has an oblong shape like an egg, or a round shape like a ball. Thus, they called them luminous eggs or luminous balls. This sphere of luminosity was considered by them to be our true self- true in the sense that it is irreducible in terms of energy. It is irreducible because the totality of human resources are engaged in the act of perceiving it directly as energy.

Those shamans discovered that on the back face of this luminous ball there is a point of greater brilliance. They figured out through their processes of observing energy directly that this point is key in the act of our turning energy into sensory data, and then our interpreting it. For this reason, they called it the assemblage point, and deemed that perception is indeed assembled there.

They described the assemblage point as being located behind the shoulder blades, an arm's length away from them. They also found out that the assemblage point for the entire human race is located on the same spot, thus giving every human being an entirely similar view of the world.

A finding of tremendous value for them, and for shamans of succeeding generations, was that the location of the assemblage point on that spot is the result of usage and socialization. For this reason, they considered it to be an arbitrary position which gives merely the illusion of being final and irreducible.

A product of this illusion is the seemingly unshakable conviction of human beings that the world they deal with daily is the only world that exists, and that its finality is undeniable.

"Believe me," don Juan said to me once, "this sense of finality about the world is a mere illusion. Due to the fact that it is never challenged, it stands as the only possible view. To see energy as it flows in the universe is the tool for challenging it.

"Through seeing, the sorcerers of my lineage arrived at the conclusion that there are indeed a staggering number of worlds available to man's perception. They described those worlds as being all-inclusive realms; realms where one can act and struggle. In other words, they are worlds where one can live and die, as in this world of everyday life."

During the thirteen years of my association with him, don Juan taught me the basic steps toward accomplishing this feat of seeing. I have discussed those steps in all of my previous writings, but never have I touched on the magical passes as a key point in this process.

He taught me a great number of them. But along with that wealth of knowledge, don Juan also left me with the certainty that I was the last link of his lineage.

Accepting that I was the last link of his lineage automatically implied for me the task of finding new ways to disseminate the knowledge of his lineage, since its continuity was no longer an issue.

I need to clarify a very important point in this regard. Don Juan Matus had not been interested in teaching his knowledge to the masses. He had been interested in perpetuating his lineage.

His three other disciples and I were chosen, he said, by the spirit itself. He had no active part in those choices. He said we were the means to ensure his lineage's perpetuation. Therefore, he engaged himself in a titanic effort to teach us all he knew about sorcery, or shamanism, and about the development of his lineage.

In the course of training me, he later came to realize that my energetic configuration was so vastly different from his own that it could not mean anything else but the end of his line. I told him that I resented enormously his interpretation of whatever invisible difference existed between us. I did not like the burden of being the last of his line, nor did I understand his reasoning.

"The shamans of ancient Mexico," he said to me once, "believed that choice, as human beings understand it, is the precondition of the cognitive world of man, but that it is only a benevolent interpretation of something which is found when awareness ventures beyond the cushion of our world, a benevolent interpretation of acquiescence. Human beings are in the throes of forces that pull them every which way. The art of sorcerers is not really to choose, but to be subtle enough to acquiesce.

"Sorcerers, although they seem to make nothing else but decisions, make no decisions at all," he went on. "I did not decide to choose you, and I did not decide that you would be the way you are. Since I could not choose to whom I would impart my knowledge, I had to accept whomever the spirit was offering me. And that person was you, and you are energetically capable only of ending, not of continuing."

He maintained that the ending of his line had nothing to do with him or his efforts, or with his success or failure as a sorcerer seeking total freedom. He understood it as something that had to do with a choice exercised beyond the human level, not by beings or entities, but by the impersonal forces of the universe.

Finally, I came to accept what don Juan called my fate. Accepting it put me face to face with another issue that he referred to as locking the door when you leave. That is to say, I assumed the responsibility of deciding exactly what to do with everything he had taught me and carrying out my decision impeccably.

First of all, I asked myself the crucial question of what to do with the magical passes: the facet of don Juan's knowledge most imbued with pragmatism and function. I decided to use the magical passes, and teach them to whoever wanted to learn them. My decision to end the secrecy that had surrounded them for an undetermined length of time was, naturally, the corollary of my total conviction that I am indeed the end of don Juan's lineage.

It became inconceivable to me that I should carry secrets which were not even mine. To shroud the magical passes in secrecy was not my decision. It was my decision, however, to end such a condition.

I endeavored from then on to come up with a more generic form of each magical pass; a form suitable to everyone. This resulted in a configuration of slightly modified forms of each one of the magical passes. I have called this new configuration of movements Tensegrity; a term which belongs to architecture, where it means 'the property of skeleton structures that employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compression members in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency and economy'.

In order to explain what the magical passes of the sorcerers who lived in Mexico in ancient times are, I would like to make a clarification. 'Ancient times' meant, for don Juan, a time ten thousand years ago and beyond; a figure that seems incongruous if examined from the point of view of the classificatory schemes of modern scholars. When I confronted don Juan with the discrepancy between his estimate and what I considered to be a more realistic one, he remained adamant in his conviction. He believed it to be a fact that people who lived in the New World ten thousand years ago were deeply concerned with matters of the universe and perception that modern man has not even begun to fathom.

Regardless of our differing chronological interpretations, the effectiveness of the magical passes is undeniable to me, and I feel obligated to elucidate the subject strictly following the manner in which it was presented to me. The directness of their effect on me has had a deep influence on the way in which I deal with them. What I am presenting in this work is an intimate reflection of that influence.

Magical Passes ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda.

Series Introductions - Magical Passes.

The first time don Juan talked to me at length about magical passes was when he made a derogatory comment about my weight.

"You are way too chubby," he said, looking at me from head to toe shaking his head in disapproval. "You are one step from being fat. Wear and tear is beginning to show in you. Like any other member of our race, you are developing a lump of fat on your neck, like a bull. It is time that you take seriously one of the sorcerers' greatest findings: the magical passes."

"What magical passes are you talking about, don Juan?" I asked. "You never mentioned this topic to me before. Or, if you have, it must have been so lightly that I can not recall anything about it."

"Not only have I told you a great deal about magical passes," he said, "you know a great number of them already. I have been teaching them to you all along."

As far as I was concerned, it was not true that he had taught me any magical passes all along. I protested vehemently.

"Do not be so passionate about defending your wonderful self," he joked, making a ridiculous gesture of apology with his eyebrows. "What I meant to say is that you imitate everything I do, so I have been cashing in on your imitation capacity. I have shown you various magical passes, all along, and you have always taken them to be my delight in cracking my joints. I like the way you interpret them: cracking my joints! We are going to keep on referring to them in that manner.

"I have shown you ten different ways of cracking my joints," he continued. "Each one of them is a magical pass that fits to perfection my body and yours. You could say that those ten magical passes are in your line and mine. They belong to us personally and individually, as they belonged to other sorcerers who were just like the two of us in the twenty-five generations that preceded us."

The magical passes don Juan was referring to, as he himself had said, were ways in which I thought he cracked his joints. He used to move his arms, legs, torso, and hips in specific ways, I thought, in order to create a maximum stretch of his muscles, bones, and ligaments. The result of these stretching movements, from my point of view, was a succession of cracking sounds which I always thought that he was producing for my amazement and amusement. He, indeed, had asked me time and time again to imitate him. In a challenging manner, he had even dared me to memorize the movements and repeat them at home until I could get my joints to make cracking noises, just like his.

I had never succeeded in reproducing the sounds, yet I had definitely but unwittingly learned all the movements. I know now that not achieving that cracking sound was a blessing in disguise, because the muscles and tendons of the arms and back should never be stressed to that point. Don Juan was born with a facility to crack the joints of his arms and back, just as some people have the facility to crack their knuckles.

"How did the old sorcerers invent those magical passes, don Juan?" I asked.

"Nobody invented them," he said sternly. "To think that they were invented implies instantly the intervention of the mind, and this is not the case when it comes to those magical passes. They were, rather, discovered by the old shamans. I was told that it all began with the extraordinary sensation of well-being that those shamans experienced when they were in shamanistic states of heightened awareness. They felt such tremendous, enthralling vigor that they struggled to repeat it in their hours of vigil.

"At first," don Juan explained to me once, "those shamans believed that it was a mood of well-being that heightened awareness created in general. Soon, they found out that not all the states of shamanistic heightened awareness which they entered produced in them the same sensation of well-being. A more careful scrutiny revealed to them that whenever that sensation of well-being occurred, they had always been engaged in some specific kind of bodily movement. They realized that while they were in states of heightened awareness, their bodies moved involuntarily in certain ways, and that those certain ways were indeed the cause of that unusual sensation of physical and mental plenitude."

Don Juan speculated that it had always appeared to him that the movements that the bodies of those shamans executed automatically in heightened awareness were a sort of hidden heritage of mankind; something that had been put in deep storage to be revealed only to those who were looking for it. He portrayed those sorcerers as deep-sea divers who, without knowing it, reclaimed it.

Don Juan said that those sorcerers arduously began to piece together some of the movements they remembered. Their efforts paid off. They were capable of re-creating movements that had seemed to them to be automatic reactions of the body in a state of heightened awareness.

Encouraged by their success, they were capable of re-creating hundreds of movements which they performed without ever attempting to classify them into an understandable scheme. Their idea was that in heightened awareness, the movements happened spontaneously; and that there was a force that guided their effect without the intervention of their volition.

Don Juan commented that the nature of the ancient sorcerers' findings always led him to believe that those sorcerers were extraordinary people because the movements that they discovered were never revealed in the same fashion to modern shamans who also entered into heightened awareness.

He thought that perhaps this was because modern shamans had learned the movements beforehand in some fashion or another from their predecessors; or perhaps because the sorcerers of ancient times had more energetic mass.

"What do you mean, don Juan, that they had more energetic mass?" I asked. "Were they bigger men?"

"I do not think they were physically any bigger," he said, "but energetically, they appeared to the eye of a seer as an oblong shape. They called themselves luminous eggs. I have never seen a luminous egg in my life. All I have seen are luminous balls. It is presumable, then, that man has lost some energetic mass over the generations."

Don Juan explained to me that to a seer, the universe is composed of an infinite number of energy fields. They appear to the eye of the seer as luminous filaments that shoot out every which way. Don Juan said that those filaments crisscross through the luminous balls that human beings are, and that it was reasonable to assume that if human beings were once oblong shapes, like eggs, they were much higher than a ball. Therefore, energy fields that touched human beings at the crown of the luminous egg are no longer touching them now that they are luminous balls. Don Juan felt that this meant to him a loss of energy mass, which seemed to have been crucial for the purpose of reclaiming that hidden treasure: the magical passes.

"Why are the passes of the old shamans called magical passes, don Juan?" I asked him on one occasion.

"They are not just called magical passes," he said, "they are magical! They produce an effect that cannot be accounted for by means of ordinary explanations. These movements are not physical exercises or mere postures of the body. They are real attempts at reaching an optimal state of being.

"The magic of the movements," he went on, "is a subtle change that the practitioners experience on executing them. It is an ephemeral quality that the movement brings to their physical and mental states; a kind of shine; a light in the eyes. This subtle change is a touch of the spirit. It is as if the practitioners, through the movements, re-establish an unused link with the life force that sustains them."

He further explained that another reason that the movements are called magical passes is that by means of practicing them, shamans are transported in terms of perception to other states of being in which they can sense the world in an indescribable manner.

"Because of this quality, because of this magic," don Juan said to me, "the passes must be practiced not as exercises, but as a way of beckoning power."

"But can they be taken as physical movements, although they have never been taken as such?" I asked.

"You can practice them any way you wish," don Juan replied. "The magical passes enhance awareness, regardless of how you take them. The intelligent thing would be to take them as what they are: Magical passes that on being practiced lead the practitioner to drop the mask of socialization."

"What is the mask of socialization?" I asked.

"The veneer that all of us defend and die for," he said. "The veneer we acquire in the world. The one that prevents us from reaching all our potential. The one that makes us believe we are immortal. The intent of thousands of sorcerers permeates these movements. Executing them, even in a casual way, makes the mind come to a halt."

"What do you mean that they make the mind come to a halt?" I asked.

"Everything," he said, "that we do in the world, we recognize and identify by converting it into lines of similarity; lines of things that are strung together by purpose. For example, if I say to you fork, this immediately brings to your mind the idea of spoon, knife, tablecloth, napkin, plate, cup and saucer, glass of wine, chili con carne, banquet, birthday, fiesta. You could certainly go on naming things strung together by purpose, nearly forever. Everything we do is strung like this. The strange part for sorcerers is that they see that all these lines of affinity, all these hues of things strung together by purpose, are associated with man's idea that things are unchangeable and forever, like the word of God."

"I do not see, don Juan, why you bring the word of God into this elucidation. What does the word of God have to do with what you are trying to explain?"

"Everything!" he replied. "It seems to be that in our minds, the entire universe is like the word of God: absolute and unchanging. This is the way we conduct ourselves. In the depths of our minds, there is a checking device that does not permit us to stop to examine that the word of God, as we accept it and believe it to be, pertains to a dead world. A live world, on the other hand, is in constant flux. It moves. It changes. It reverses itself.

"The most abstract reason why the magical passes of the sorcerers of my lineage are magical," he went on, "is that in practicing them, the body of the practitioner realizes that everything, instead of being an unbroken chain of objects that have affinity for each other, is a current, a flux. And if everything in the universe is a flux or a current, that current can be stopped. A dam can be put on it, and in this manner its flux can be halted or deviated."

Don Juan explained to me on one occasion the overall effect that the practice of the magical passes had on the sorcerers of his lineage, and correlated this effect with what would happen to modern practitioners.

"The sorcerers of my lineage," he said, "were shocked half to death upon realizing that practicing their magical passes brought about the halt of the otherwise uninterrupted flux of things. They constructed a series of metaphors to describe this halt, and in their effort to explain it, or reconsider it, they flubbed it. They lapsed into ritual and ceremony. They began to enact the act of halting the flux of things. They believed that if certain ceremonies and rituals were focused on a definite aspect of their magical passes, the magical passes themselves would beckon a specific result. Very soon, the number and complexity of their rituals and ceremonies became more encumbering than the number of their magical passes.

"It is very important," he went on, "to focus the attention of the practitioner on some definite aspect of the magical passes. However, that fixation should be light, funny, and void of morbidity and grimness. They should be done for the hell of it without really expecting returns."

He gave the example of one of his cohorts, a sorcerer by the name of Silvio Manuel, whose delight and predilection was to adapt the magical passes of the sorcerers of ancient times to the steps of his modern dancing. Don Juan described Silvio Manuel as a superb acrobat and dancer who actually danced the magical passes.

"The nagual Elias Ulloa," don Juan continued, "was the most prominent innovator of my lineage. He was the one who threw all the ritual out the window, so to speak, and practiced the magical passes exclusively for the purpose for which they were originally used at one time in the remote past; for the purpose of redeploying energy.

"The nagual Julian Osorio, who came after him," don Juan continued, "was the one who gave ritual the final death blow. Since he was a bona fide professional actor who at one time had made his living acting in the theater, he put enormous stock into what sorcerers called the shamanistic theater. He called it the theater of infinity, and into it, he poured all the magical passes that were available to him. Every movement of his characters was imbued to the gills with magical passes. Not only that, but he turned the theater into a new avenue for teaching them. Between the nagual Julian, the actor of infinity, and Silvio Manuel, the dancer of infinity, they had the whole thing pegged down. A new era was on the horizon! The era of pure redeployment!"

Don Juan's explanation of redeployment was that human beings are perceived as conglomerates of energy fields; sealed energetic units that have definite boundaries which do not permit the entrance or the exit of energy. Therefore, the energy existing within that conglomerate of energy fields is all that each human individual can count on.

"The natural tendency of human beings," he said, "is to push energy away from the centers of vitality, which are located: on the right side of the body at the edge of the rib cage on the area of the liver and gallbladder; on the left side of the body, again, at the edge of the rib cage on the area of the pancreas and spleen; on the back directly behind the other two centers around the kidneys and above them on the area of the adrenal glands; at the base of the neck on the V spot made by the sternum and clavicle; and around the uterus and ovaries in women."

"How do human beings push this energy away, don Juan?" I asked.

"By worrying," he replied. "By succumbing to the stress of everyday life. The duress of daily actions takes its toll on the body."

"And what happens to this energy, don Juan?" I asked.

"It gathers on the periphery of the luminous ball," he said, "sometimes to the point of making a thick bark like deposit. The magical passes relate to the total human being as a physical body, and as a conglomerate of energy fields. They agitate the energy that has been accumulated in the luminous ball and return it to the physical body itself. The magical passes engage both the body itself as a physical entity that suffers the dispersion of energy, and the body as an energetic entity which is capable of redeploying that dispersed energy.

"Having energy on the periphery of the luminous ball," he continued, "energy that is not being redeployed, is as useless as not having any energy at all. It is truly a terrifying situation to have a surplus of energy stashed away; inaccessible for all practical purposes. It is like being in the desert, dying of dehydration, while you carry a tank of water that you cannot open, because you do not have any tools. In that desert, you can not even find a rock to bang it with."

The true magic of the magical passes is the fact that they cause crusted-down energy to enter again into the centers of vitality, hence the feeling of well-being and prowess which is the practitioner's experience.

The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage- before they entered into their excessive ritualism and ceremony- had formulated the basis for this redeployment. They called it saturation; meaning that they inundated their bodies with a profusion of magical passes in order to allow the force that binds us together to guide those magical passes to cause the maximum redeployment of energy.

I asked him once, without really meaning to be sarcastic, "But don Juan, are you telling me that every time you crack your joints, or every time I try to imitate you, we are really redeploying energy!"

"Every time we execute a magical pass," he replied, "we are indeed altering the basic structures of our beings. Energy which is ordinarily crusted down is released and begins to enter into the vortexes of vitality of the body. Only by means of that reclaimed energy can we put up a dike; a barrier to contain an otherwise uncontainable and always deleterious flow."

I asked don Juan to give me an example of putting a dam on what he was calling a deleterious flow. I told him that I wanted to visualize it in my mind.

"I will give you an example," he said. "For instance, at my age, I should be prey to high blood pressure. If I went to see a doctor, the doctor, upon seeing me, would assume that I must be an old Indian, plagued with uncertainties, frustrations, and bad diet; all of this, naturally, resulting in a most expected and predictable condition of high blood pressure: an acceptable corollary of my age.

"I do not have any problems with high blood pressure," he went on, "not because I am stronger than the average man or because of my genetic frame, but because my magical passes have made my body break through any patterns of behavior that result in high blood pressure. I can truthfully say that every time I crack my joints following the execution of a magical pass, I am blocking off the flow of expectations and behavior that ordinarily result in high blood pressure at my age.

"Another example I can give you is the agility of my knees," he continued. "Have you not noticed how much more agile I am than you? When it comes to moving my knees, I am a kid! With my magical passes, I put a dam on the current of behavior and physicality that makes the knees of people, both men and women, stiff with age."

One of the most annoying feelings I had ever experienced was caused by the fact that don Juan Matus, although he could have been my grandfather, was infinitely younger than I. In comparison, I was stiff, opinionated, repetitious. I was senile.

He, on the other hand, was fresh, inventive, agile, and resourceful. In short, he possessed something which, although I was young, I did not possess: youth. He delighted in telling me repeatedly that young age was not youth, and that young age was in no way a deterrent to senility. He pointed out that if I watched my fellow men carefully and dispassionately, I would be able to corroborate that by the time they reached twenty years of age, they were already senile, repeating themselves inanely.

"How is it possible, don Juan," I said, "that you could be younger than I?"

"I have vanquished my mind," he said, opening his eyes wide to denote bewilderment. "I do not have a mind to tell me that it is time to be old. I do not honor agreements in which I did not participate. Remember this. It is not just a slogan for sorcerers to say that they do not honor agreements in which they did not participate. To be plagued by old age is one such agreement."

We were silent for a long time. Don Juan seemed to be waiting, I thought, for the effect that his words might cause in me. What I thought to be my psychological unity was further ripped apart by a clearly dual response on my part. On one level, I repudiated with all my might the nonsense that don Juan was verbalizing; on another level, however, I could not fail to notice how accurate his remarks were.

Don Juan was old, and yet he was not old at all. He was ages younger than I. He was free from encumbering thoughts and habit patterns. He was roaming around in incredible worlds. He was free, while I was imprisoned by heavy thought patterns and habits; by petty and futile considerations about myself, which I felt on that occasion for the first time were not even mine.

I asked don Juan on another occasion something that had been bothering me for a long time. He had stated that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico had discovered the magical passes as some sort of hidden treasure placed in storage for man to find. I wanted to know who would put something like that in storage for man. The only idea that I could come up with was derived from Catholicism. I thought of God doing it, or a guardian angel, or the Holy Spirit.

"It is not the Holy Spirit," he said, "which is only holy to you because you are secretly a Catholic. And certainly it is not God; a benevolent father as you understand God. Nor is it a goddess; a nurturing mother watching over the affairs of men as many people believe to be the case.

"It is rather an impersonal force that has endless things in storage for those who dare to seek them. It is a force in the universe; just as light and gravity are forces. This impersonal force is an agglutinate factor; a vibratory force that joins the conglomerate of energy fields that human beings are into one concise, cohesive unit. This vibratory force is the factor that does not allow the entrance or the exit of energy from the luminous ball.

"The sorcerers of ancient Mexico," he went on, "believed that the performance of their magical passes was the only factor that prepared and led the body to the otherworldly verification of the existence of that agglutinating force."

From don Juan's explanations, I derived the conclusion that the vibratory force he spoke about which agglutinates our fields of energy is apparently similar to what modern-day astronomers believe must happen at the core of all the galaxies that exist in the cosmos. They believe that at their cores, a force of incalculable strength holds the stars of galaxies in place. This force, called a 'black hole', is a theoretical construct which seems to be the most reasonable explanation as to why stars do not fly away, driven by their own rotational speeds.

Don Juan said that the old sorcerers knew that human beings, taken as conglomerates of energy fields, are held together not by energetic wrappings or energetic ligaments, but by some sort of vibration that renders everything at once alive and in place. Don Juan explained that those sorcerers, by means of their practices and their discipline, became capable of handling that vibratory force once they were fully conscious of it. Their expertise in dealing with it became so extraordinary that their actions were transformed into legends; mythological events that existed only as fables. For instance, one of the stories that don Juan told about the ancient sorcerers was that they were capable of dissolving their physical mass by merely placing their full consciousness and intent on that force.

Don Juan stated that, although they were capable of actually going through a pinhole if they deemed it necessary, they were never quite satisfied with the result of this maneuver of dissolving their mass. The reason for their discontent was that once their mass was dissolved, their capacity to act vanished. They were left with the ability of only witnessing events in which they were incapable of participating.

Their ensuing frustration, the result of being unable to act, turned, according to don Juan, into their damning flaw: their obsession with uncovering the nature of that vibratory force; an obsession driven by their concreteness, which made them want to hold and control that force. Their fervent desire was to strike from the ghostlike condition of masslessness; something which Jon Juan said could not ever be accomplished.

Modern-day practitioners, the cultural heirs of those sorcerers of antiquity, found out that it is not possible to be concrete and utilitarian about that vibratory force. Modern-day practitioners have opted for the only rational alternative: to become conscious of that force with no other purpose in sight except the elegance and well-being brought about by knowledge.

Don Juan said to me once, "The only permissible time when modern-day sorcerers use the power of this vibratory agglutinating force is when they burn from within; when the time comes for them to leave this world. It is simplicity itself for sorcerers to place their absolute and total consciousness on the binding force with the intent to burn; and off they go like a puff of air."

Magical Passes ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda.

Series Introductions - Tensegrity.

'Tensegrity' is the modern version of the magical passes of the shamans of ancient Mexico. The word Tensegrity is a most appropriate definition, because it is a mixture of the two terms 'tension' and 'integrity'. These terms express the two driving forces of the magical passes.

Tension is the activity created by contracting and relaxing the tendons and muscles of the body. Integrity is the act of regarding the body as a sound, complete, perfect unit.

Tensegrity is taught as a system of movements because that is the only manner in which the mysterious and vast subject of the magical passes could be faced in a modern setting. The people who now practice Tensegrity are not shaman practitioners in search of shamanistic alternatives that involve rigorous discipline, exertion, and hardships. Therefore, the emphasis of the magical passes has to be on their value as movements, and all the consequences that such movements bring forth.

Don Juan Matus explained that the ancient Mexican sorcerers of his lineage, in relating to the magical passes, first strove to saturate themselves with movement.

They arranged every posture and movement of the body that they could remember into groups. They believed that the longer the group, the greater its effect of saturation; and the greater the need for the practitioners to use their memory to recall it.

The shamans of don Juan's lineage, after arranging the magical passes into long groups and practicing them as sequences, deemed that this criterion of saturation had fulfilled its purposes, and they dropped it. From then on, what was sought was the opposite: the fragmentation of the long groups into single segments, which were practiced as individual, independent units. The manner in which don Juan Matus taught the magical passes to his four disciples- Taisha Abelar, Florinda Donner-Grau, Carol Tiggs, and myself- was the product of this drive for fragmentation.

Don Juan's personal opinion was that the benefit of practicing the long groups was patently obvious; such practice forced the shaman initiates to use their kinesthetic memory. He considered the use of kinesthetic memory to be a real bonus, which those shamans had stumbled upon accidentally, and which had the marvelous effect of shutting off the noise of the mind: the internal dialogue.

Don Juan had explained to me that the way in which we reinforce our perception of the world, and keep it fixed at a certain level of efficiency and function, is by talking to ourselves.

"The entire human race," he said to me on one occasion, "keeps a determined level of function and efficiency by means of the internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is the key to maintaining the assemblage point stationary at the position shared by the entire human race: at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's length away from them.

"By accomplishing the opposite of the internal dialogue," he went on, "that is to say, maintaining inner silence, practitioners can break the fixation of their assemblage points, and thus acquire an extraordinary fluidity of perception."

The practice of Tensegrity has been arranged around the performance of the long groups, which in Tensegrity have been renamed 'series' to avoid the generic implication of calling them just groups, as don Juan called them. In order to accomplish this arrangement, it was necessary to reestablish the criteria of saturation which had prompted the creation of the long groups. It took the practitioners of Tensegrity years of meticulous and concentrated work to reassemble a great number of the dismembered groups.

Reestablishing the criteria of saturation by performing the long series gave as a result something which don Juan had already defined as the modern goal of the magical passes: the redeployment of energy.

Don Juan was convinced that this had always been the unspoken goal of the magical passes even at the time of the old sorcerers. The old sorcerers did not seem to have known this, but even if they did, they never conceptualized it in those terms. By all indications, what the old sorcerers sought avidly and experienced as a sensation of well-being and plenitude when they performed the magical passes was, in essence, the effect of unused energy being reclaimed by the centers of vitality in the body.

In Tensegrity, the long groups have been reassembled, and a great number of the fragments have been kept as single, functioning units. These single units have been strung together by purpose- for instance, the purpose of intending, or the purpose of recapitulation, or the purpose of inner silence, and so on- creating in this fashion the Tensegrity series. In this manner, a system has been achieved in which the best results are obtained by performing long sequences of movements that definitely tax the kinesthetic memory of the practitioners.

In every other respect, the way Tensegrity is taught is a faithful reproduction of the way in which don Juan taught the magical passes to his disciples. He inundated us with a profusion of detail, and let our minds be bewildered by the number and variety of magical passes taught to us; and let us be bewildered by the implication that each of the passes individually was a pathway to infinity.

His disciples spent years overwhelmed, confused, and above all despondent, because they felt that being inundated in such a manner was an unfair onslaught on them.

"When I teach you the magical passes," he explained to me once when I questioned him about the subject, "I am following the traditional sorcerers' device of clouding your linear view. By saturating your I kinesthetic memory, I am creating a pathway for you to inner silence.

"Since all of us," he continued, "are filled to the brim with the doings and undoings of the world of everyday life, we have very little room for kinesthetic memory. You may have noticed that you have none. When, you want to imitate my movements, you cannot remain facing me. You have to stand side by side with me in order to establish in your own body what is right and what is left.

"Now, if a long sequence of movements were presented to you, it would take you weeks of repetition to remember all the movements. While you are trying to memorize the movements, you have to make room for them in your memory by pushing other things out of the way. That was the effect that the old sorcerers sought."

Don Juan's contention was that if his disciples kept on doggedly practicing the magical passes in spite of their confusion, they would arrive at a threshold when their redeployed energy would tip the scales, and they would be able to handle the magical passes with absolute clarity.

When don Juan made those statements, I could hardly believe them. Nevertheless, at one moment, just as he had said, I ceased to be confused and despondent. In a most mysterious way, the magical passes, since they are magical, arranged themselves into extraordinary sequences that cleared up everything. Don Juan explained that the clarity I was experiencing was the result of the redeployment of my energy.

The concern of people practicing Tensegrity nowadays matches exactly my concern and the concern of don Juan's other disciples when we first began to perform the magical passes. They feel bewildered by the number of movements. I reiterate to them what don Juan reiterated to me over and over; that what is of supreme importance is to practice whatever Tensegrity sequence is remembered.

The saturation that has been carried on will give, in the end, the results sought by the shamans of ancient Mexico: the redeployment of energy, and its three concomitants: the shutting off of the internal dialogue, the possibility for inner silence, and the fluidity of the assemblage point.

As a personal assessment, I can say that by saturating me with the magical passes, don Juan accomplished two formidable feats. Firstly, he brought to the surface a flock of hidden resources that I had but did not know existed- such as the ability to concentrate and the ability to remember detail; and secondly, he gently broke my obsession with my linear mode of interpretation.

When I questioned don Juan about what I was experiencing in this respect, he explained, "What is happening to you is that you are feeling the advent of inner silence when your internal dialogue has been minimally offset. A new flux of things has begun to enter into your field of perception. These things were always there on the periphery of your general awareness, but you never had enough energy to be deliberately conscious of them. As you chase away your internal dialogue, other items of awareness begin to fill in the empty space, so to speak.

"The new flux of energy," he went on, "which the magical passes have brought to your centers of vitality is making your assemblage point more fluid. Your assemblage point is no longer rigidly palisaded. You are no longer driven by our ancestral fears which make us incapable of taking a step in any direction. Sorcerers say that energy makes us free, and that is the absolute truth."

The ideal state of Tensegrity practitioners in relation to the Tensegrity movements is the same as the ideal state of a practitioner of shamanism in relation to the execution of the magical passes. Both are being led by the movements themselves into an unprecedented culmination. From there, the practitioners of Tensegrity will be able to execute- by themselves and for whatever effect they see fit without any coaching from outside sources- any movement from the bulk of movements with which they have been saturated. They will be able to execute any movement with precision and speed as they walk, or eat, or rest, or do anything; because they will have the energy to do so.

The execution of the magical passes, as shown in Tensegrity, does not necessarily require a particular space or prearranged time. However, the movements should be done away from sharp currents of air. Don Juan dreaded currents of air on a perspiring body. He firmly believed that not every current of air was caused by the rising or lowering of temperature in the atmosphere, and that some currents of air were actually caused by conglomerates of consolidated energy fields moving purposefully through space.

Don Juan was convinced that such conglomerates of energy fields possessed a specific type of awareness particularly deleterious because human beings cannot ordinarily detect them and become exposed to them indiscriminately. The deleterious effect of such conglomerates of energy fields is especially prevalent in a large metropolis where they could be easily disguised as, if nothing else, the momentum created by the speed of passing automobiles.

Something else to bear in mind when practicing Tensegrity is that since the goal of the magical passes is something foreign to Western man, an effort should be made to keep the practice of Tensegrity detached from the concerns of our daily world. The practice of Tensegrity should not be mixed with elements with which we are already thoroughly familiar, such as conversation, music, or the sound of a radio or TV newsman reporting the news, no matter how muffled the sound might be.

The setting of modern urban life facilitates the formation of groups, and under these circumstances, the only manner in which Tensegrity can he taught and practiced in the seminars and workshops is in groups of practitioners. Practicing in groups is beneficial in many aspects and deleterious in others. It is beneficial because it allows the creation of a consensus of movement and the opportunity to learn by examination and comparison. It is deleterious because it fosters the reliance on others, and the emergence of syntactic commands and solicitations dealing with hierarchy.

Don Juan conceived that since the totality of human behavior was ruled by language, human beings have learned to respond to what he called syntactic commands, praising or deprecatory formulas built into language- for example, the responses that each individual makes, or elicits in others, with slogans such as, "No problem. Piece of cake. It is time to worry. You could do better. I can not do it. My butt is too big. I am the best. I am the worst in the world. I could live with that. I am coping. Everything is going to be okay," etc., etc. Don Juan maintained that what sorcerers have always wanted, as a basic rule of thumb, is to run away from activities derived from syntactic commands.

Originally, as don Juan described it, the magical passes were performed by the shamans of ancient Mexico individually and in solitariness, on the spur of the moment, or as the necessity arose. He taught them to his disciples in the same fashion. Don Juan stated that for the shaman practitioners, the challenge of performing the magical passes has always been to execute them perfectly; holding in mind only the abstract view of their perfect execution. Ideally, Tensegrity should be taught and practiced in the same fashion.

However, the conditions of modern life and the fact that the goal of the magical passes has been formulated to apply to a great number of people make it imperative that a new approach be taken. Tensegrity should be practiced in whatever form is easiest, either in groups, or alone, or both.

In my particular case, the practice of Tensegrity in very large groups has been more than ideal because it has given me the unique opportunity of witnessing something which don Juan Matus and all the sorcerers of his lineage never did: the effects of human mass. Don Juan and all the shamans of his lineage, which he considered to be twenty-seven generations long, never were capable of witnessing the effects of human mass. They practiced the magical passes alone or in groups of up to five practitioners. For them, the magical passes were highly individualistic.

If the number of Tensegrity practitioners is in the hundreds, an energetic current is nearly instantaneously formed among them. This energetic current, which a shaman could easily see, creates in the practitioners a sense of urgency. It is like a vibratory wind that sweeps through them, and gives them the primary elements of purpose. I have been privileged to see something I considered to be a portentous sight: the awakening of purpose; the energetic basis of man. Don Juan Matus used to call this unbending intent. He taught me that unbending intent is the essential tool of those who journeyed into the unknown.

A very important issue to consider when practicing Tensegrity is that the movements must be executed with the idea that the benefit of the magical passes comes by itself. This idea must be stressed at any cost. At the beginning, it is very difficult to discern the fact that Tensegrity is not a standard system of movements for developing the body. It indeed develops the body, but only as a by-product of a more transcendental effect. By redeploying unused energy, the magical passes can conduce the practitioner to a level of awareness in which the parameters of normal, traditional perception are canceled out by the fact that they are expanded. The practitioner can thus be allowed even to enter into unimaginable worlds.

"But why would I want to enter into those worlds?" I asked don Juan when he described this post-effect of the magical passes.

"Because you are a creature of awareness; a perceiver, like the rest of us," he said. "Human beings are on a journey of awareness which has been momentarily interrupted by extraneous forces. Believe me, we are magical creatures of awareness. If we do not have this conviction, we have nothing."

He further explained that human beings, from the moment their journey of awareness was interrupted, have been caught in an eddy, so to speak, and are spinning around, having the impression of moving with the current, and yet remaining stationary.

"Take my word," don Juan went on, "because mine are not arbitrary statements. My word is the result of corroborating for myself what the shamans of ancient Mexico found out: that we human beings are magical beings."

It has taken me thirty years of hard discipline to come to a point where don Juan's statements are recognizable, and their validity is established beyond the shadow of a doubt. I know now that human beings are creatures of awareness involved in an evolutionary journey of awareness; beings indeed unknown to themselves; filled to the brim with incredible resources that can be used.

Magical Passes ©1998 by Carlos Castaneda.

Series Introductions - Six Series Of Tensegrity.

The six series which are going to be discussed are the following:

1. The Series for Preparing Intent

2. The Series for the Womb

3. The Series of the Five Concerns: The Westwood Series

4. The Separation of the Left Body and the Right Body: The Heat Series

5. The Masculinity Series

6. The Series for Devices Used in Conjunction with Specific Magical Passes

The particular magical passes of Tensegrity that comprise each of the six series conform with a criterion of maximum efficiency. In other words, each magical pass is a precise ingredient of a formula. This is a replica of the way in which the long series of magical passes were originally used. Each series was sufficient in itself to produce the maximum release of redeploy-able energy.

In executing the magical passes, there are certain things that must be taken into consideration in order to perform the movements with maximum efficiency.

1. All the magical passes of the six series can be repeated as many times as desired, unless otherwise specified. If they are first done with the left side of the body, they must be repeated an equal number of times with the right side. As a rule, every magical pass of the six series begins with the left side.




2. The feet are kept separate by a distance equivalent to the shoulders' width. This is a balanced way to distribute the weight of the body. If the legs are spread too far apart, the balance of the body is impaired. The same thing happens if they are too close together. The best way to arrive at this distance is to begin from a position where the two feet are close together (fig. 1).

   The tips of the feet are then pivoted on the fixed heels and opened in a letter V shape (fig. 2). Shifting the weight to the tips of the feet, the heels are pivoted out to the sides an equal distance (fig. 3). The tips of the feet are brought into parallel alignment, and the distance between the feet is roughly the width of the shoulders. Further adjustment may be necessary here in order to reach that desired width and to get the optimal balance of the body.




3. During the execution of all the magical passes of Tensegrity, the knees are kept slightly bent, so that when one is looking down, the kneecaps block the view of the tips of the feet (figs. 4, 5), except in the case of specific magical passes in which the knees have to be locked. Such cases are indicated in the description of those passes. To have the knees locked does not mean that the hamstrings are injuriously tense, but rather that they are locked in a gentle way, without unnecessary force.

   This position of bending the knees is a modern addition to the execution of the magical passes; one that stems from influences of recent times. One of the leaders of don Juan Matus's lineage was the nagual Lujan, a sailor from China whose original name was something like Lo Ban.

   He came to Mexico around the turn of the nineteenth century, and stayed there for the rest of his life. One of the women sorcerers in don Juan Matus's own party went to the Orient and studied martial arts. Don Juan Matus himself recommended that his disciples learn to move in a disciplined fashion by taking up some form of martial arts training.

   Another issue to consider in reference to the slightly bent knees is that when the legs are moved forward in a kicking motion, the knees are never whipped. Rather, the whole leg should be moved by the tension of the muscles of the thighs. Moving in this fashion, the tendons of the knees are never injured.




4. The back muscles of the legs must be tensed (fig. 6). This is a very difficult accomplishment. Most people can learn quite easily to tense the front muscles of the legs, but the back muscles of the legs still remain flaccid. Don Juan said that the back muscles of the thighs are where personal history is always stored in the body. According to him, feelings find their home there and get stagnant. He maintained that difficulty in changing behavior patterns could be easily attributed to the flaccidity of the back muscles of the thighs.




5. While performing all these magical passes, the arms are always kept slightly bent at the elbows- never fully extended- when they are moved to strike, preventing, in this manner, the tendons of the elbows from becoming irritated (fig. 7).




6. The thumb must always be kept in a locked position, meaning that it is folded over the edge of the hand. It should never stick out (fig. 8). The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage considered the thumb to be a crucial element in terms of energy and function. They believed that at the base of the thumb exist points where energy can become stagnant, and points that can regulate the flow of energy in the body. In order to avoid unnecessary stress on the thumb or injury resulting from jolting the hand forcefully, they adopted the measure of pressing the thumbs against the inside edges of the hands.




7. When the hand is made into a fist, the little finger is raised to avoid an angular fist (fig. 9) in which the middle, fourth, and fifth fingers droop. The idea is that in making a square fist (fig. 10), the fourth and fifth fingers have to be raised, thus creating a peculiar tension in the axilla, a tension which is most desirable for general well-being.




8. The hands, when they have to be opened, are fully extended. The tendons of the back of the hand are at work, presenting the palm as an even, flat surface (fig. 11). Don Juan preferred a flat palm to counteract the tendency (established, he felt, through socialization) to present the hand as a hollow palm (fig. 12).

   He said that a hollow palm was the palm of a beggar, and that whoever practices the magical passes is a warrior, not a beggar in the least.




9. When the fingers have to be contracted at the second knuckle and bent tightly over the palm, the tendons on the back of the hand are tensed to the maximum, especially the tendons of the thumb (fig. 13). This tension of the tendons creates a pressure on the wrists and forearms, areas which sorcerers of ancient Mexico believed were key in promoting health and well-being.




10. In many Tensegrity movements, the wrists have to be bent forward or backward to an approximately ninety-degree angle by contracting the tendons of the forearm (fig. 14). This bending must be accomplished slowly, because most of the time the wrist is quite inflexible, and it is important that the wrist acquire the flexibility to turn the back of the hand to make a maximum angle with the forearm.




11. Another important issue in the practice of Tensegrity is an act which has been termed turning the body on. This is a unique act in which all the muscles of the body, and specifically the diaphragm, are contracted in one instant. The muscles of the stomach and abdomen are jolted, as are the muscles around the shoulders and shoulder blades. The arms and legs are tensed in unison with equal force, but only for an instant (figs. 15, 16). As practitioners of Tensegrity progress in their practice, they can learn to sustain this tension for a while longer.

    Turning the body on has nothing to do with the state of perennial bodily tension that seems to be the mark of our times. When the body is tense with preoccupation or overwork, and the muscles of the neck are as hard as they can be, the body is not in any way turned on. Relaxing the muscles or arriving at a state of tranquility is not turning the body off, either. The idea of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was that with their magical passes, the body was alerted: It was made to be ready for action. Don Juan Matus termed this condition turning the body on. He said that when the muscular tension of turning the body on ceases, the body is turned off naturally.




12. Breath and breathing were, according to don Juan, of supreme importance for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. They divided breath into breathing with the tops of the lungs, breathing with the midsection of the lungs, and breathing with the abdomen (figs. 17, 18, 19). Breathing by expanding the diaphragm they called the animal breath, and they practiced it assiduously, don Juan said, for longevity and health.

    It was don Juan Matus's belief that many of the health problems of modern man could be easily corrected by deep breathing. He maintained that the tendency of human beings nowadays is to take shallow breaths. One of the aims of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was to train their bodies, by means of the magical passes, to inhale and exhale deeply.

    It is highly recommended, therefore, in the movements of Tensegrity that call for deep inhalations and exhalations, that these be accomplished by slowing down the inflow or outflow of air in order to make the inhalations and exhalations longer and more profound.

    Another important issue concerning the breathing in Tensegrity is that breathing is normal while executing the Tensegrity movements, unless otherwise specified in the description of any given magical pass.




13. Another consideration in performing the Tensegrity movements is the realization that has to come to practitioners that Tensegrity is in essence the interplay between relaxing and tensing the muscles of choice parts of the body in order to arrive at a most coveted physical explosion, which the sorcerers of ancient Mexico knew only as the energy of the tendons. This is a veritable explosion of the nerves and tendons below or at the core of the muscles.

    Given that Tensegrity is the tension and relaxation of muscles, the intensity of the muscle tension, and the length of time that the muscles are kept in that state in any given magical pass, depends on the strength of the participant. It is recommended that at the beginning of the practice, the tension be minimal and the length of time as brief as possible. As the body gets warmer, the tension should become greater and the length of time extended, but always in a moderate fashion.