Ma Prem Tao has recently re-discovered a healing technique she had developed and practised thirty years ago.
In a recent letter Tao recounts how she discovered Ptolemics and explains its healing potential.
Dear Bhagawati, I don’t know whether I mentioned to you about Ptolemics, I don’t think so. When I was in Poona, this was probably the second year 1978, I sat down at a table in Vrindavan one lunch-time with Amitabh and Siddha who were discussing all the various therapies and bodywork techniques that exist and wondering why nobody works with the belly. Why all these methods and processes leave the belly area untouched. They were hypothesizing why that might be and what might happen if they did enter the belly area. And they engaged in almost every plausible and implausible therapeutic situation that might occur, guessing that maybe this would happen or maybe that would happen. And they were going on and on. In the meanwhile I was eating my lunch and half-listening to this and realized I was getting more and more impatient and my stomach was starting to get knots with all these maybes and what-ifs. The next thing that happened was I put down my fork and said, “well, do you want to find out?”
I was just as surprised as they were at this, but Siddha jumped to it and said yes! He would like to know what happens when you work with the belly. He went to the booking office and booked a session with me. I was already offering head and face massage and channeled foot reflexology.
The day came. I remember walking into the massage room and seeing this pulsating belly staring up at me from the table. I hadn’t a clue what to do with it. But this was an experiment after all, so after first speaking a little together I just moved in, closed my eyes and raised my hands above his body and followed the lines of energy as they took me and a whole experience ensued.
It was very beautiful as I was connecting in to dimensions, layers, levels of energy that exist not only above the belly but inside the belly body and that is such a core place. After all it’s the home of the chi, the hara, the kath, the core and the place from which Spirit emerges and where we connect not only to ourselves but to Existence. That has been my experience. In fact I have always taught belly breathing all these years to everyone. And my discovery at the age of 16, of pain relief came through breathing, in the belly, and I have also taught that for emotional and physical pain relief to whomever would listen. When I prepare to do an intuitive reading, I go into my belly to clear completely out of all minds and to connect with existence and free Spirit.
When Siddha and I were feeding back afterwards we discovered that we both had had a similar experience in the session, that of falling down a funnel-shaped tunnel. I imagine that such a thing would be a simultaneous experience but that was something we couldn’t know and is not really important anyway. I asked Siddha whether he thought it was worth offering this to other people and he said absolutely. I then wrote to Osho asking whether I should offer this in the ashram and he said yes. So now I was not only working with the two ends, the feet and head, but now also with the middle.
When I went back to the West, to Toronto, in 1980, I began to create this as a methodology and I needed a name. I decided that as it came from the belly, that is where to go for the name as well. I was in my boyfriend’s apartment, I remember, and he was standing by a chalkboard ready to write down whatever came, as I sat there with my eyes closed, breathing deeply in my belly, waiting. And the name came. But it came one letter at a time. P-t-o-l-e-m-i-c-s. Ptolemics. Amazing!
It was exciting, thrilling! At the same time it was a very strange name for this system. This energy work system was so feminine, such a taoist one, action through inaction, very, very feminine, moving into energy layers as the body opened, allowing and accepting the deepening movements. The practitioner moves totally in concert with the energy of the client who is actually orchestrating and conducting what is happening. And this name seemed so hard sounding, so masculine. However I trust how it arrived, so accepted it as being right and began to research the name, see what I could find and how it applies to me and this new core bodywork system.
I discovered Ptolemy. The Ptolemies ruled Egypt. Cleopatra was a Ptolemy. This Ptolemy was an astronomer and philosopher who discovered a geocentric solar system. Before that it was believed (as later did Copernicus) that everything revolved around the sun. Ptolemy said no, everything revolves around the earth. The earth is the center. And that was my connection with Ptolemics! The belly is our body’s earth, the center of the body-mind-soul system! You can go out (into existence) through the belly, which is my experience.
A bit of factoiding here: The geocentric system was the first model of our solar system-dating back to the times of Aristotle and is best know as the Ptolemaic system after this Ptolemy. While Nicolaus Copernicus is often credited as being the one who pushed heliocentrism (the sun as the center of our solar system) to the forefront of modern astronomy, it was actually Aristarchus of Samos who argued the idea of a heliocentric model nearly 1800 years earlier!
When I worked with some spiritual people in the 70’s and early 80’s I found so often that they were in their upper chakras but with no grounding. All the stigma about the ‘lower’ chakras at that time being ‘less than’, meant that people avoided them. Just a misunderstanding really. They are all important in the whole picture and each needs to be open and alive. Even today I find many people from all walks of life who do not breathe in their bellies but from the chest up. A defensive practice when trauma hit early on in their lives and they cut off. If you are not in your belly, then you are protecting yourself from the feelings there and at the same time disconnecting yourself from your source. It’s a blocked path that absolutely needs to be opened, gently, to reveal the hidden goodness. I remembered a phrase I heard and love although I don’t recall who coined it: “flying with your feet on the ground.” I embraced it and use it and pass it on to others.
Not long after all of that, I had a reading with a local psychic who called himself an Inter-dimensional Counselor and who became a sannyasin through the Toronto Center, Satdharm, that I was running and in that session he pulled through information that Ptolemy was a mystic, an awakened one, who had only one disciple. And guess who that disciple was… a no-brainer really – moi. So it all fit together very nicely. I vaguely remember something about The Library, the sacred storehouse with all the Akashic records, all the wisdom and information of all time, which I believe the Chaldeans created and Ptolemy I think was the keeper of it when it got burned. As I say it’s now vague, so don’t quote me. But from that time whenever that was, there was the practice of passing down the information orally, so that this destruction and loss could not happen again. And that’s the background.
About 3 weeks ago I got the message to restart Ptolemics and offer the work again, that the time has come. It didn’t really sail in the 80’s. Now people are ready for energy and for this subtle yet effective energetic work. And I clearly was to offer it right away, to a colleague and friend in Honolulu who is a Reiki master and seer and a great astrologer, and has had a weakness in the belly area. So I gave her a session and got good feedback from her. The experience was a little like the first time, as it had been so long since I had used Ptolemics, that it was again fresh, new and in the moment.
I would describe Ptolemics as a very gentle, yet subtle, potent process, taking the receiver deeply to their core through the different energy layers and assisting the body energies themselves to open, shift around, align and find balance. It’s a drenching of the deeper body in love and in the process clearing old, stuck emotions and mental patterns both physical and emotional. The interesting thing about it, as has been mentioned over and over by clients, is that as something begins to bubble up, rather than it being a cathartic experience, it just seems to dissolve, evaporate and the next energy layer is available.
When I was offering Navel Massage as it was called in the Ashram, there were a myriad of experiences that people had. One young man talked about an opening of blocked sexuality and he walked away from the session with his extreme fear of having his belly touched gone and a new sense of self. Having brought himself to the session in the first place, was really the big step towards facing his fears. I remember him well, probably because he asked a question in discourse which Osho answered exactly about this, why is he so afraid to have someone touch his belly. And then he turned up in my session room. I was really happy he did.
So, I’m excited about this, happy to be healing again. When I was in Tucson seeing my client, her Healing Touch practitioner came to give her a session and when she (the healer) heard about Ptolemics she wanted one. So I did a session for her as well and she said it was unbelievable and she could not say enough about her experience. I take this as a further signal that this really will be helpful to people. Well it’s certainly been a magical process, right from its strange, seemingly vicarious beginnings.
Much Love, Tao
Tao has been planning and facilitating weddings in Hawaii since 1991 and custom-creating soul ceremonies for all occasions She’s been a sannyasin for (at least) 100 years. Tao plays French Horn in the Chamber Orchestra of Kona, a great passion, and the West Hawaii County Band. Tao hosted a weekly live radio show in Honolulu and in Kona called Psychic Airwaves, where people called in with their questions and concerns. “It was great fun! Radio is the best!” she says. Although the show is over, she still gives intuitive readings.
Contact: (808) 322-3322; (866) 321-3321 toll-free USA only,
www.weddingsalaheart.com
Text by Ma Prem Tao for Osho News
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