Getting A Hold Of Prana
Get a hold of the thread of food, tie that to the string of mukhyaprana, and tie the mukhyaprana to the rope of subtle prana.  Then pull up that rope and use it to escape from your self-constructed tower of bondage and ignorance called the restless mental complex.

It would be good to start with pure food, but the purity of your own mind is the most essential element.

When your moods are consistently bad, and you have karmas coming up that you cannot fathom, then begin at the starting point: begin with your food and with its conscious ingestion.
1. take food consciously and bless it with mantra.
2. use that energy to start and continue a spiritual practice.
By degrees this practice will take you to "I and my Father are One."  This is classic yoga.  You want to get a hold of your prana.  You have so many nerves in your body that, tied together, they could stretch around the world.  But inside those nerves are subtle nerves that doctors and scientists cannot detect.  It is through these that we can raise our arms, raise our thoughts, etc.  Tie these together and they will reach from here to Vaikuntha and back!

Prana is food-based, then mind-based.  You want to control this?  Then you have to figure out the cause of your thought.  It is desire.  So either transcend the desire, fulfill it, or squelch it, as per your abilities.

Listen to the teachings with an attitude that all words are sacred.  Take notes and then take them back home and contemplate them.  Raise your consciousness to a higher level in this practice by activating your real understanding.  Do not leave it only at the intellectual level.  Raise Mother (manifesting as prana and Intelligence) up to higher and higher centers; then this energy turns into tejas.  Listen to a story that makes this all simple and humorous:

A man imprisoned in a high tower by a king got a message to his wife instructing her to bring a long thread, string, and a rope, along with a beetle and some honey.  He then told her to tie the thread to the leg of the beetle and spread honey on its antennae, then place it facing straight up to the man's window at the top of the tower.  The beetle followed the scent of the honey and thus carried the thread to the man.  Next, he told his wife to tie the string to her end of the thread.  He pulled the thread until he reached the string.  She tied the rope to the string, and he pulled on the string until he reached the rope.  Attaining the rope, he liberated himself.

Kundalini Shakti is very subtle, and we have forgotten Her.  The thread is one's food.  Westerners have not gotten a sense of the sacredness of food yet.  A few of them think it means organics, or fasting, etc.  Those are minor steps.  Bringing one’s focused awareness to all that one eats by the concentrated mind steeped in spiritual practice is the first major step.   And food means what is taken in through the mouth, to be sure, but also what is ingested into the mind.

The real problem with seeking health is that people get mukhyaprana (energy from food) and feel good, and then think all is well.  But mukhyaprana does not depend on food only.  When the body gets old or diseased or dies, the prana leaks out.  So do not stop with a mere feeling good philosophy of life.  Mix this subtler energy with your sadhana and generate ojas (spiritual power) via sublimation.  Then you may claim actual spirituality, not before.

Early spiritual practices bring spurts of bliss -- one of the four impediments to Yoga according to the Father of Yoga.  But why get sidetracked by a little dole of bliss now and again?   Your very nature is an indeterminable mass of unalloyed Bliss -- Ananda.  Those who seek mere nominal experiences are like the man who finds his way out of a wilderness, cold and hungry, and right away sees a sign reading, "Civilization, ten miles."  He is so overjoyed that he clings to the sign and will not leave it.....

Kundalini rises up (in) to the heart at times, but falls again due to the novice's immature devotional state.  She retreats back to the manipura chakra and settles there, waiting another opportunity.  But in and out of the manipura chakra millions of souls are departing and returning at the time of death and rebirth.  It is called the realm of the ancestors, and within it they come and they go.  Is that a man's purpose in life? to become an ancestor over and over again?  Whole nations are worshiping their ancestors, but who worships God?  Step forward and be counted among the wise.  Be original.  “Don't you see,” sings the poet/saint, Ramprasad: "Everyone is living in pallid imitation of everyone else."

A real sadhaka does his or her studies, devotions, and meditation with the energy of sanctified food.  And when this is done, the refined energy turns to Ojas, spiritual power.  The adept can then refine it further into Tejas, the ability to transmit spirituality to others.

Before spiritual evolution began in the aspiring soul, the prana was just pumping blood, evacuating waste, and carrying ordinary thoughts around the brain.  But when the higher chakras are opened the upward moving prana (udana) gets connected to the all-pervasive prana (vyana) and spirituality becomes available  Now one can really concentrate.

All the nadis penetrate to the heart.  This is why it is such an important chakra.  Moreover, its name is “Anahata.”  That is another word for AUM.

The first three chakras (muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura) are associated, as Sri Ramakrishna states, with eating, drinking, and sex life.  And these three correspond with the realms of human beings, ancestors, and celestials.  Who will open the heart, and keep it open for a lifetime?  Those that can will skirt rebirth in the realms of humans, ancestors and angels, from thence forth.

"Awakening the Kundalini” — terms do not matter so much.  You can call it awakening your Intelligence, attaining Self-realization, etc.  However you call it, this is the real and highest purpose of our human life — not earning a living, getting married, etc.

Real levitation is how you feel when you are in meditation.  Gravitation is what you feel when attached to your body.