This is a guide on how to levitate. Before you (a) get overexcited (b) report me for sorcery, hear me out. Here is a crash course in physics, as written by David Life in his essay: "Do not mistake gravity for electromagnetism - the real key to understanding levitation. It’s all about the electrons. Each atom that makes up the molecules of your body has a shell of electrons that have a negative charge. When the negative electrons encounter other atoms’ electrons they repel each other, just like two negative poles of magnets. This electromagnetic force is strong enough to resist gravitational pull. The electrons of the atoms on the bottoms of your feet repel the atoms of the floor beneath them. You believe that you are walking on the floor, but actually you are floating slightly above the surface! The electron shell can also be missing electrons, and will share electrons with adjacent atoms - that keeps us attached to things, and holds molecules together." We are already levitating. We just do not perceive it that way. And what is to levitate anyway? It is to float above, to rise up, to lift yourself up. It is to rise in a way that appears magical. And that is what we will try to do-- to rise above. Take the opportunity to be honest with yourself: What is it that you wish to rise above? If you feel that there is something weighing you down, you can choose to float above it rather than be dragged by it. The practice of equanimity gives us the space to float from moment to moment, without attaching to our preferences or suffering from our aversions. To rise above our temporary plights in life is not to deny the inherent difficulties of living a human life. It is not to ignore our struggles. Rather, it is to acknowledge the reality of them all, and then to rise above them. There will be many opportunities to practice lifting the body up, in lolasana, in eka pada koundinyasana, astavakrasana, etc. The poses may or may not be available to us today. But what is available-- and the kind of lifting up that matters-- is that we can lift up from our difficulties, we can float above our negative tendencies, we can rise above our old conditioned patterns. By being kind to ourselves now, we can lift up from years of being weighed down. By acknowledging the temporal nature of all things, we can rise above challenging situations that test us. Focus on lifting up the mind. Let the body do what it can do today, but do not get distracted. The body being able to lift up or not is one thing, but the root of the kind of levitation we are interested in rests in the mind. There are some things in life that at times feels almost impossible to bear. Remember this idea of levitation-- to rise up, to float above, to lift yourself up. Do not let the gravity of any situation weigh you down. Lengthen your spine, lift your chin up, stand taller. You can "levitate". You can lift yourself up. You are your own savior.
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