Profoundly Effective System of Movements
Freedom from suffering. Stopping the internal dialogue. Transcending your social conditioning. Awakening from the dream of the mind. Discovering inconceivable states of wellbeing. Say it however you want: Carlos Castaneda's Magical Passes will get you there, and quickly.

Here's the theory in a nutshell. Spiritual seekers usually reach the same deadend. They know that the mind is synonymous with resistance and suffering. The usual practices involving breathing, meditating, watching the thinker, going into the body, physical cleansing, practicing presence, etc. will get you TO the door, but not THROUGH it. The masters and gurus then advise you to accept your unconsciousness as part of the "isness" of being and thereby transcend it. Does this work? Has it for you?

What if the the mind, the source of suffering, was only the expression of a more primary condition: the dispersal and misallignment of energy within the energetic and physical body? (Also the cause of most illness, disease, and ageing.)

Castaneda's "passes" address this issue with profound effectiveness by stirring up and redistrubting energy in the energetic body. Castaneda correctly states that belief, faith, or knowledge is not required to succeed. Simply do your best while practicing the movements and results will follow. The "passes" are powerful!

There are two sets of movements: the short form and the long form , The Sabre Tooth Tiger of Intent. (Powerful techniques have powerful names!) Practice the short form (37 movements) for 5-10 days before starting the long form. If you jump too quickly to the long form, you may like it so much that you may be tempted not to go back and perfect the short form which is an integral part of the long form. The short form itself produces noticeable shifts in awareness.


None of the movements is harder than jumping-jacks. The body is drawn in by the movements and enjoys the process. The mind may be doubtful, but the body likes it! The short form training takes about one half hour. The long form is condensed once perfected, and takes about fifteen minutes. There also seems to be a momentum dynamic at work here: practicing makes you more conscious and capapable, making your practices more effective making you more conscious... Apply yourself to correct execution for optimal results.

Note that there are three other "Tensegrity" videos that were produced prior to Magical Passes. Start here. This is the "perfected" version and will produce the smoothest transition. The "Magical Passes" book could also be useful further down the road. Other Castaneda books (I've read them all) are superflous to success with the passes, the best one being "Journey To Ixtlan".

The process of awakening consciousness can be a bit unpredictable. I recommend the purchase of the book "The Power Of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. It's an excellent roadmap of human consciousness and will provide the guidance you will need as liberated awareness awakens in you. Read it first. Note that it is possible when being involved with several spiritual practices to misattribute the results. This mistake cost me three years of continued suffering. It was the Passes, not Tolle, that got me through.

Carlos Castaneda's Magical Passes truly are a magical passageway to inconceivable states of awareness and wellbeing. Thank you Don Carlos.

Note: This is an instructional excercise video. There is very little conceptual content to be found on this DVD. No knowledge, no information, nothing for the mind to grasp: just do the movements. I thought the movements were ridiculous the first time I did them. Most reasonable people would think the same. In this case, reasonable thought doesn't define the potential for results.

magical movement
these exercises create a return of energy to vital centers. they are not difficult. don't be distracted by the practitioners on the tape. just learn the basic movements. do them at your own pace and let your body modify them if it wants to do so. done in the dark you will see or feel energy currents around you, especially around your hands. close your eyes and still see the energy flow. this tape covers just one chapter from the book of the same name.

The best of the Tensegrity videos; matches the book
I learned some of the passes from official workshops and some from friends. There are slight variations among the practitioners, even from workshop to workshop. As the presentation of the passes evolved, the materials got better - CC's book, "Magical Passes", is pretty well written and organized, and these companion tapes allow you to actually do them - working just from the book is almost impossible.

It's not clear how the magical passes came into being. My personal theory is that CC was a visionary, did a lot of dream work, and was strongly influenced by Howard Lee, a chi gung practitioner in L.A. But I would emphasize "visionary" - CC was creative in the best sense of the word. It's a waste of time trying to debunk the Don Juan mythos, when doing these passes creates such a deep sense of well being and provides an opportunity for "accumulating moments of silence," which is the key to stopping habitual behavior.

CC's next to last book, the Wheel of Time, is also highly recommended. Some of the material in there is as good as any of the insights in the earlier books - and presented from the point of view of "abstract practice," suitable for urban practitioners, rather than the earlier "desert shamanism."

If you get through these passes, I find the oddball passes in the first volume to be the most spooky. It's funny that the "spookier" passes were in the first volume, not in the fourth (this boxed set was the fourth to be released). I think CC was getting a better idea of what his audience, as opposed to his close personal students, could absorb and benefit the most from.

I LIKE THE TENSEGRITY VIDEOS BETTER
This is the companion video to Castaneda's book "The Magical Passes". While I think it is absolutely necessary to either attend a Tensegrity workshop or view a video of these movements to learn them, I really wasn't crazy about this video. I don't know if it's because some of the movements seem like they could be a part of a Chubby Checker video or if it's because of the extreme care that was taken to make everyone's outfits and hairstyles particularly androgynous. I just got the feeling that the original movements had been modified and simplified to make them more "acceptable" and that the modifications attenuated the power of the movements. I think (but do not know for sure) that the Tensegrity videos present the movements in a form that more closely approximates the original movements.They just seem much more powerful than the movements presented in the Magical Passes book (although the hairdos and outfits are even more meticulously drab and androgynous than in the Magical Passes video). I definitely recommend getting the Magical Passes book for the content of the text. Also recommended: 1) Chakras (Patricia Mercier), 2) Shaman, Healer, Sage (Alberto Villoldo).

Mandatory for examine magical passes
This two video cassettes explain movements from book Magical Passes by Carlos Castaneda.

My opinion is that without this cassete it is very hard to learn Tensegrity movements, because it is hard to find right tempo of movements, right intensity, and right way to move only from descriptions form the book.

I think that cassettes and the book give together good base to learn Tensegrity, but if you have to chose to buy cassettes or the book, I suggest to by cassettes.

The movements in this video are not the same as movements in the Tensegrity video set (except few of them). They are smaller and easier to learn that movements on the the second and the third Tensegrity cassette, at the same level as 12 basic movements presented in the first Tensegrity cassette.