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January 24, 2003
Follow paths of wisdom
The practice of ophanim unites space, time and being.
RABBI ITZCHAK MARMORSTEIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Ophanim is a recently emerged kabbalistic yoga that helps people
flow in harmony with the inner Tree of Life: "In the midst
of the garden is the Tree of Life." (Genesis 2:9)
Sefer Yetzira (The Book of Creation), the first and primary
book of kabbalah (the Jewish mystical tradition), describes the
tree as rooted in "32 wondrous paths of wisdom" that are
engraved through all existence. These 32 paths are the foundations
of the Tree of Life and the entire human body is the physical expression
of these Divine attributes.
Ophanim was developed by a female kabbalah scholar and mystic in
Jerusalem more than 30 years ago. After years of labor and research
in which she immersed herself in the study of Sefer Yetzira and
related sources, she discovered that particular movements of the
body related to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The 22 letters
are the channels of connection between the 10 sefirot (spheres)
of the Tree of Life. Together, they comprise the 32 paths of wisdom.
Sefer Yetzira explains that ophanim are "angels of form"
that are carried through the breath. The practice of ophanim is
an embodiment of these teachings and is helpful in opening the paths
of our "inner tree." The postures of ophanim mirror the
22 letters and the breathing practice follows the path of the 10
spheres. It is actually a triple yoga that brings together the three
elements of space, time and being into one single practice.
The yoga of space is present in the the shapes of the postures;
each posture or ophan is different in its spatial representation.
The yoga of time is present by the fact that different letters are
practised on different days and relate to different parts of the
body and their specific energy sources. The yoga of being is present
in the breathing rhythm and the focus on its inner pathways.
The woman who developed ophanim taught it to a young Morrocan mystic
who began to teach it in the West about 10 years ago. He wrote this
about this new discovery:
"The implication was that, for the first time, the wonder of
Judaism was going to be witnessed in the world of bodies. Until
now, according to the traditional view, the body was mainly elevated
through not doing, or doing for the sake of religious prescription
only. It seemed as if Judaism was mostly preoccupied with providing
the soul a pure enough residence inside the body. Purification of
the physical realm through restraint was the main channel to communicate
with our souls. But now a new teaching was giving birth to a sanctuary
of direct expression of the soul through the body. The body can
now speak the words of God. The exile in the head was over."
Three years ago, I was introduced to ophanim and, eventually, trained
and authorized to teach it. While rooted in Jewish mystical sources,
its teachings and applications are universally applicable. The Tree
of Life grows in all of us as it grows in all of life.
The kabbalah speaks of the body as divine and tells of how we are
made in the image of the Divine. Through the practice of ophanim,
the body becomes a form writing the name of God. Anyone interested
in opportunities to experience this practice can e-mail me at [email protected].
For more information, visit www.angelfire.com/
pe/ophanim.
Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein is the author of Mila Yomit, a cyber learning
circle that's going through the Torah word by word.
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