By Baba Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari

Pranayama is the ancient science of breathing and has been studied for thousands of years. Pranayama has nothing to do with any specific religious belief, but represents the cumulative knowledge of the properties, capacities, and powers of breathing purposefully. That knowledge has been distilled, preserved, and passed down in the form of breathing exercises, from generation to generation, by countless seekers of a true, healthy, and happy life.

Deep breathing allows us to draw from the inexhaustible ocean of universal creative energy, which is around us all the time. Shallow breathing connects us only to the shallow self, the ego, which is drained quickly, and which is based on illusion. If your breath is shallow, is constricted by ongoing stress, or if it has shut down due to physical or emotional trauma, toxins will accumulate in your body and mind and poison them.

A child breathes with the abdomen and that is Nature breathing its pristine rhythm through the child. The child is amazingly energetic, and smiles the joy of natural life.

As we age, we lose nature’s rhythm and our breath becomes shallow. Our unconscious life leads to lessened capacity to breathe while allowing the blood to supply oxygen and basic nutrients to the cells and molecules. The great Sages of India like Patanjali, in their intuitive wisdom, realized that humans could bring destruction to the planet itself if they were not trained to extend or expand their breathing capacity. Shallow breath leads to stress, constriction of flow of life, and mind-body imbalance, causing emotional crises. This happens at the individual level of consciousness, and frighteningly, at the collective level of consciousness as well.

Pranayama is a simple, effective method for improving health and energy which anyone can practice, anywhere. It can help with asthma, respiratory problems, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. It releases 70% of the toxins from both body and mind, thereby creating fresh patterns of mood, good health and a peaceful mind. As it works in the cellular levels of the body there is a marked difference in the physical health and energy levels. Practitioners always say,

“Now I am bubbling with energy. The chronic disease I was suffering from is vanished!!” When you learn to breathe right you are healthy, the first requisite to being happy in life.

The uniqueness of breath is that each one of us has our own rhythm of breath. Pranayama is not just a mechanical regulation and control of breath, which is a grosser understanding. We need to go little deeper, for every gift comes with wrappers we need to uncover in order to see the inherent beauty of Mother’s Gifts.

If you are a sincere seeker of a peaceful state of mind, then you need to be a keen observer first. You need to begin observing the things that have been given to you by God. Let me share with you one example. Have you ever observed yourself when you are angry, or at times violent? Your rhythm of breath changes, it becomes erratic, chaotic, irregular, hissing, and just goes crazy!

Take another experience of yours; you are in a very peaceful, serene place, surrounded by nature, birds, butterflies, blue-sky, and blue waters. Peace descends even if you are not trying to meditate. Calmness dawns, you are centered, you are peaceful, and at that time what happens to your breath? I am sure you have experienced a quiet rhythm as the breath becomes so subtle, so deep, so harmonic.

Sages like Sri Sri Ram Thakur said that even if a householder can observe the breath for six months they could reach a stage that renounced yogis reach after years of austerities. You see what you want to see. ?Have you tried seeing your breath? You can see it, observe it, provided you want to see.

Even the greatest physicists of modern times acknowledge through research that simple observation has a tremendous power to change the dance of subatomic particles and waves!! ??The clue to pure happiness is as near as your breath. ??Just become alert and see what happens when you are stressed out. You have a shallow breath. When you become angry the rhythm of breath is hellish. ?When you are contemplative and meditative, prayerful and forgiving, positive and loving, just see your breath, it is heavenly.

Heaven and hell are not something that belongs to after life, it is right here, now, in your BREATH. ?Through observing your breath, you can find your exclusive rhythm, which is just yours. Watch when you are calm and peaceful and when you are upset and miserable. Only your continual effort of observing your breath while you are involved with daily chores of life, and your daily cycles of high and lows, will reveal your own, personal rhythm. Once you know the rhythm then you can practice how not to surrender to the wrong rhythm that brings your lows, your unhappy moods. You are gradually coming to YOURSELF. That is all about spiritualism. Then you can enjoy your life with mindful breathing and happy moods.

You can begin right now with the following practice!

Alternate Nose Breathing or Anulom-Belom Pranayama

This is a great breathing practice that helps you immensely to rebalance the energy in your body and mind. It harmonizes emotions, as well as right and left hemisphere of the brain, and strengthens the immune system.

Close you right nostril with the tip of your right thumb and take a slow and deep breath through your left nostril. Hold for 2 seconds.

Close the left nostril with the tip of your right ring finger. Exhale slowly and deeply through your right nostril, watching the flow of the breath. Hold for 2 seconds.

Inhale slowly and deeply through you right nostril. Hold for 2 seconds. Exhale through your left nostril. This completes one cycle.

Repeat at least 10 to 20 cycles to begin. Increase gradually over weeks.

If we start to practice, not regulating the breath, but first finding time to be friendly with it and be with it, and do nothing but to keep notes of the behavior of breath with your different positive and negative emotions and thought patterns, you will soon come to know YOU better. That is the whole purpose of spirituality, not to know the world, not to know others, but first to know one’s OWN Self. ?Upanishads say by knowing One you know all.

When you practice Pranayama, and the breathing exercises, you gradually become free of disease of the body. Then you move to subtler freedom from disease of the mind and emotions. As you consistently practice, you attain freedom of your Spirit which is enlightenment. You become the Light and Love and Wisdom of the Universe. Freedom breathes universality, dissolving the individual forever. This is the ultimate gift of Pranayama.

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