The single most important element of life!

We enter life on a breath.

We exit life on a breath.

According to Yoga life can be measured by the number of breaths we breathe.

There are two types of breathing-

·       Unconscious breath

·       Conscious breath

Unconscious breath is ordinary breathing, that may or may not be full volume or effective in terms of supplying the requirements of the vital functions of the human organism.

Conscious breathing is a yogic method of training that turns our awareness to the breath rhythm and stream in various ways and for various reasons.

Physical breath has a subtle counterpart – it requires conscious participation with breath to enlarge and amplify the subtle aspect of breathing. From the yogic perspective something very powerful and potent rides and the physical breath.

We know this for without breath we no longer have life and that is not because of the chemical constituents of breath.

Everything in existence has at its source the same subtle counterpart or it too would not exist.

We speak of what Yoga calls prāṇa – the irreducible element of nonphysical material energy that gives rise to and sustains all forms of existence from galaxies to human cells, from eons to lifespans, from universal intelligence to human intelligence.

So Yoga teaches us how to first make the breath conscious. It then guides us to have a direct experience of the irreducible non- physical non-material energy component that rides the breath.  To experience real wholeness and potent transformation we need to learn how to work with and direct this subtle energy and life force. Such a relationship enhances health and integration, it awakens innate intelligence, enables listening to the cosmos. It bestows a window to know the nature of reality and the root cause of everything. Conscious breath practice can give access to an amplified form of human potentiality while awakening us to our spiritual birth right. Pranayama and breath awareness can deliver us into a sumptuous stillness and rapturous silence that will utterly alter us in every way.

Pranayama, mudra, bandha, charged mantras uttered in root languages, meditation and the various practices and stages that facilitate it, are all means, (as well as others means) used within the yogic path to ignite and lift us out of mediocre mental bondage into fully conscious presence, clarity, lucidity and capacity.

The one thing we can rely on is breath. Roughly 26,000 times a day this rhythm calls us to innate knowledge, within it lies the manual to embodiment and life. Every breath can be a doorway to realise an upgraded living experience.