The Magic of Thopikarnam 

 

When visiting the temples in Southern India, one cannot escape noticing the young and old doing something very peculiar in front of the Lord Ganesha deity.

The apparent sheer ludicrousness of the spectacle could make almost anyone chuckle. What you would see is a person doing squats – yes, squats – while holding their ears with their hands in a ridiculous cross armed fashion.

Yet, what may seem to some people primitive or meaningless ritual actually has a real physiological purpose. But for now, let us look at what are believed to be the spiritual reasons for doing this exercise:

The ancient yogis will tell us that this exercise helps in awakening their third eye and increasing the spiritual power of their brains. One of Lord Ganesha’s attributes is the power of opening up mental pathways that lead to spiritual experiences.

Lord Ganesha is the obstacle remover. He removes obstacles from your mind. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We block ourselves from reaching our destination. We give up easily when the path is strewn with various forms of obstruction.

My father – who was a medical doctor and a scientist – used to ask: when there is flooding and one is stuck in the house, are you just going to sit there and starve, or figure out a way to wade through the water to reach your destination?

He would say do your thopikarnam and you will know how to strategically get to your destination.

Knock knock who’s there?  

Does knocking on your head makes you smarter?

When Hindus go to a temple, we were told to make fists with our hands and knock on our heads lightly but rapidly as a show of respect as our eyes are focused in front us at the beautifully carved or sculpted representation of Lord Ganesha. In fact, this is traditionally the first thing one does when entering a South Indian temple.

This happens to stimulate the frontal lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes help us with planning, organizing, problem solving, decision making, behavior, emotions, speech and language.

The Odd Exercise

Then we were asked to do the squats known as thopikarnam. We would do odd numbers such as 5, 7 or 9 thopikarnams.

So, what is thopikarnam and how does it benefit us? Lord Ganesha is an obstacle remover, so when we do this we are removing all obstacles from our mind and increasing our brain capacity.

Thopikarnam is less popular today in India because it is considered an odd exercise. The movement looks so ridiculous that parents converted it into a form of punishment that they would make their children do if they misbehaved. It still is very confusing why you have to do the exercise in odd numbers. The whole thing seems odd.

But it isn’t odd to an increasing number of western doctors and scientists who have started to study the practice. In fact, some western doctors have even started clinics where they teach and “train” people in doing just this one yogic exercise to help those people with brain injuries, psychological disorders, and intelligence enhancement while charging them an arm and a leg .

That super brain yoga that a doctor in California has some of his patients do actually has a name! It is called thopikarnam in Tamil and Uttha baiti in Hindi. This has been practiced in India since ancient times.