Bindu

Bindu (बिन्दु, "point" or "drop") is, in the tantric and Hatha-Yogic body-map, the seed drop — the same refined essence as shukra understood as a discrete locatable unit rather than as a tissue.

The classical description: bindu is seated at the crown of the head (the bindu-visarga point, at the back of the crown of the head) and naturally flows downward through the central channel. It falls through the throat and is consumed by the inner heat (agni) in the belly — the throat is the passage, the fire below is the combustion site; the residual escapes through the reproductive organs and is lost.

The entire structure of Hatha Yoga is, on the technical reading of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the redirection of bindu back upward:

• Khechari mudra (the tongue-lock practice, HYP III.32ff.) closes off the throat passage so the descending bindu is captured rather than consumed
• The three bandhas — mula, uddiyana, jalandhara — create the pressure conditions for the upward redirection
• Viparita karani (the inverted posture) literally reverses the gravitational influence on the downward flow

The text of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika is unusually explicit on this point: the verse sequence at III.88–90 states that by the downfall of bindu, death occurs, and by its conservation, life is sustained. The conservation of bindu is, in this tradition, the central biological project of the discipline.

Primary sources

• Hatha Yoga Pradipika, chapter III — the bindu doctrine and the redirection practices — Sacred Texts
• Goraksha Samhita — the bindu and nada doctrine — Wisdomlib
• Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power — the most scholarly English-language treatment — Internet Archive

In motion

• See brahmacharya for the broader discipline of which bindu conservation is the technical heart.
• See ojas for what the conserved essence becomes once it reaches the brain.
• See kundalini for the energetic-channel mechanism that does the redirecting.