A wonderful story from the epic Hindu poem, the Mahabharata, relates a significant turning point in the evolution of the snake and naga mythology (see the previous blog, The First Green Yogis). In the legend Kadru, the mother of snakes, wins a bet through deception from her sister, Vinata, the mother of birds. As wagered, Vinata agrees to become Kadru’s servant. This is of course very upsetting to Vinata’s son, Garuda, who we all pay homage to in yoga classes, balancing in eagle pose.

Garuda beseeches the serpent queen to free his mother from her enslavement. Kadru agrees to release Vinta in exchange for amrita, the nectar of the gods that insures their immortality. No easy task. The gods hoard the precious juice and protect it with a firestorm across the sky, a machine with countless, razor-sharp revolving blades, and two monstrous poisonous nagas. Undeterred, Garuda flies up to realm of the gods to find the sacred well. He puts out the fire by taking the water from many different rivers into his mouth then spays it across the sky. He manages to slip through the deadly slicing blades by making himself very small. Finally, Garuda blows dust into the eyes of the serpents guarding the well, blinding their lethal stares. Then, he takes the elixir into his mouth and flies back to rescue his mother from the snakes.

Garuda presents the ransom to the nagas, buying his mother’s freedom. But before the serpents have a chance to drink the coveted amrita, Indra, the King of the Gods, steals it back. In the scuffle, a few drops fall to the ground, landing in dharba grass. The snakes , in an effort to capture even a single droplet of the elixir, slither through the moistened grass, giving the serpents the power of regenerate-ration; they’ve been shedding their skin ever since. But when they tried to lick it off, the razor-like edges of the blades of grass split their tongues.

Today the forked tongues of the higher evolved snakes give them the ability to sample two different points along a chemical gradient at the same time. They actually taste the air by picking up the scent first on the two tips of the their forked tongue and then press them up to an olfactory organ located in the roof of their mouth. Interestingly, it’s another gesture we mimic in yoga classes when we press the tip of the tongue against the hard pallet just above the front teeth to perform jiva bandha, the soul lock. Though a subtle action, jiva bandha softens the muscles of the throat and chest, and frees up the breath. It also completes an energetic loop between the front and back bodies, similar to the energy flow through the conceptual and governor meridians of Chinese Medicine.