Melissa Lummis on the yogic terms in her Love and Light series

Please give a warm welcome to Melissa Lummis, author of the Love and Light series. Today, she is going to explain to you more about the terminology she uses in her work. Feel free to leave her any comments or questions below.  

I get a lot of questions about the yogic terms and concepts I use in the Love and Light series, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about one of those questions. Recently, someone asked me where I came up with the idea for the nadis.

In Samskaras, Loti learns a new word from the fae for the pearlescent tubes of light she is able to travel between worlds in: nadi or nadis, plural. As a Light Walker, she has the ability to not only see and feel prana, the life force that forms and animates all things, but travel through these nadis to anywhere in the universe. Well, as long as she’s been there already or someone she’s with has been there.

It is a traditional Sanskrit term from Ayurveda and there’s a reason I use it for Loti’s tunnels of light. In yoga and traditional Ayurveda (traditional Hindu medicine) nadis are the channels of Kundalini energy that flow through and animate the human body (check out more about yoga nadis here http://www.sanatansociety.org/yoga_and_meditation/nadis_kundalini_yoga.htm). Kundalini, also known as laya yoga, is a specific school of yoga. (You can learn more about Kundalini yoga on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_yoga.)

“Nad” means movement and in Reg Veda, it means stream. So it made sense to me if Loti’s world is ruled by yogic precepts to use the concept of nadis to explain her ability to “walk on light”. If light is cosmic energy and she’s moving through space and time on a stream of cosmic energy, thus light walker.

There are 14 identified principle nadis in the human body, but the three main ones are:

Sushumna: This is the main vein, so to speak, and it runs along the spinal column and activates automatically at dawn and dusk, making it easier to meditate at these times. I thought this was interesting and could tie in to a vampire’s compulsion to sleep at dawn and wake at dusk.

Ida: This nadis is to the left of the spinal column and it is feminine energy. It is purifying and in conjunction with the Pingala, balances human prana.

Pingala: This nadi is masculine in energy and balances out the feminine. It runs along the right side of the spinal column.

There are several more, but you get the idea. There are actually as many as 72,000 different types of nadis identified in Ayurvedic literature, and in some cases as many as three and a half million have been theorized.

But check this out: there is a theory that these nadis also exist in the rest of the world—heck, the entire universe. Supposedly, there are channels through which psychic energy flows throughout the universe and the idea got me thinking: couldn’t this be an explanation for the tunnel of light people see when they have near death experiences?

If you read Enlightened, you know that Loti has interactions with folks who have passed away in the nadis, and similar things happen in Samskaras. What if when we die, this is the passage our souls pass through on the way to the afterlife? And what if we could access them as living beings? What could we do with them? And what could they do to us? I explore those ideas in Samskaras and the entire Love and Light series.

This is how my brain works, by the way, and exploring these questions in my writing is what I do.

Namaste

Samskaras by Melissa Lummis

When the universe conspired to bring Loti and Wolf together, it was just getting warmed up. After surviving Modore’s attempt to kill Wolf, the lovers want nothing more than some peace and quiet. But the universe has other plans. And Loti and Wolf are done waiting to find out what they are. All too aware there will be no happily-ever-after for them until Modore is dealt with, they form a dubious alliance with untrustworthy forces from Wolf’s past. While searching for clues to the homicidal vampire’s whereabouts, they uncover secrets that begin to unravel reality as they know it. Tangled up in the chaos of black ops conspiracies and fae treachery, they make a fatal mistake—overlooking the enemy in their midst. Can love and light survive a downward spiral into darkness?

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About the Author

Melissa Lummis considers herself a truth seeker, a peaceful warrior, a paranormal and fantasy writer, an avid reader, a thru-hiker GAàME ’98, a wife, a mother, and a free thinker. She believes the universe conspires to help an adventurer. And if we live our lives as if it is a daring adventure (and it is!), then everything we need will find its way to us.

The author lives in rural Virginia with her husband, two children, an Alaskan Malamute and a myriad of forest creatures. The nature of her mind dictates that she write to stay sane. Otherwise, her fertile imagination takes off on tangents of its own accord, creating scenarios and worlds that confuse the space-time continuum. Namaste, dear friends.

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