Prana and Breath

Posting what my Guru Sri Sri Ravishankar has said on Prana and Breath. No one could have explained this better

What is Prana or Life force energy?

There is a lot to know about prana. The breath is connected to neuro-physiology. When the left nostril is dominating, the right side of the brain is active. When the right nostril is functioning, the left side of the brain (logic, thinking and understanding) is active. When the breath predominantly goes in and out through the right nostril and very little through the left nostril, is when knowledge permeates. When the breath predominately goes in and out through the left nostril, you listen and enjoy without understanding the knowledge, like it is music. When the breath flows equally through both nostrils, meditation and prayer happen. Or nothing happens.

If you are in the presence of someone who is very spiritual, then both nostrils will flow equally.

If you come to meet a guru, or pass by a temple, a church, a place of worship or spiritual activity, you will find both nostrils are equally functioning.

Prana, or life force, moves through the nostrils where there are three nadis. The sun nadi is the right nostril. The moon nadi is the left nostril. The fire nadi is in-between both. This is known as the Sushumna nadi. We are living in an pop ocean of prana. Prana and Truth, or consciousness, is the prana of prana.

The five types of prana in the body are Prana, Apana, Udana, Samana and Vyana.

Prana is the energy in the upper part of the body, in the region above the heart. If prana is too high or is imbalanced you cannot sleep.

Apana Vayu is the energy in the lower part of the body. If Apana is too high, then you feel lethargic, sleepy, and dull.

Samana Vayu is in the stomach region, it aids digestion.

Udana Vayu is in the upper chest and throat region, it is responsible for emotions. If Udana Vayu is imbalanced, you have no emotions, you become like a stone or you become so mushy-mushy and weak.

Vyana is all over the body, it is responsible for movements in the joints, the circulation in the body. If Vyana Prana is disturbed, then the circulatory system is disturbed, your joints are not flexible, there are aches and pains.

Panch Prana, the five different types of prana are present in everybody, and different pranas dominates at different times. The imbalances in the pranas are corrected during Pranayama and Sudarshan Kriya.

To understand prana takes a long time.There are 172,000 nadis or prana channels which function in our body.

The breath changes with every action, and certain prana functions at certain times.The Vedas teach us that the metabolism of your body is twice when you are breathing through the right nostril than it is when breathing through the left. Following this, when the left nostril is functioning, it is a good time to drink; when the right is functioning, then it is a good time to eat. If you do the reverse, then within six months time you may fall sick. Ayurveda also says that you should not eat and drink at the same time, and when you do eat you should leave a gap of half an hour to an hour before drinking. The nadis, the breath, changes every hour. Similarly, prana changes, the energy in the world changes, all the time.

A.U.M

Much has been written and discussed about the AUM or the OM as is commonly spelt. AUM is a combination of exactly what it is spelt out here, A....U....and M. Known as the ANAHATA NADA or the sound that is caused without friction of 2 objects. Most non vowels will require your tongue to hit the palates, or the the lips to purse together, or any other union that we can all experience right now by going through the various letters in the alphabet by reciting them out loud! (Remember being a witness to what is happening? Being mindful, observant and attentive are the hallmarks of Yoga)

AUM is a sound that balances the Prana in the body. Chanting the AUM giving equal span of attention to the 3 sounds that comprise it, will make the practitioner experience what I am saying. The feeling of equanimity, calmness of mind and the experience of just being! Most Hindu mantras start with an AUM simply to give the rest of the mantras chanted the benefit of being chanted in a calm and equanimous mind.

Chant A.U.M and experience yourself! Nothing more...Nothing less

The love of a strict mother

Many a time we get into the mode of laziness (Ahlasya) or the mode of 'logical arguments with ourselves ás to why we need to take a break from Yoga (Sthyana). How to handle the mind in this state? After all Patanjali has clearly stipulated that for Yoga to take root in the practitioner, one has to be with the practice for a very long time(Dheerga Kaala), continuously without breaking the practise (Nairantarya) and engaging in the practice with love and respect (Satkaara Sevita).

The answer is to be a strict but loving mother to your own body. I remember as a child whenever I did not want to go to school and cooked up false tales, my mother would immediately catch my bluff and simply refuse to comply with my demands. At the same time, when I was genuinely down with fever or any other illness, she ensured that I took the well deserved rest.

Whenever I am injured badly or simply unwell and down, I restrict my practice to just a few Surya Namaskars (maybe 12?) and a few asanas that I can still do. Though I never take a break from Sudarshana Kriya! Be kind to yourself and at the same time be strict. Like our mothers to us. Be to your body!

AUM.....

A 108 Surya Namaskars

Surya Namaskar is a set of 12 (depending on which school of Yoga we belong to, it could be having different number of steps too) asanas performed in succession.

12 steps. Stand in front of the mat with feet around 2 inches apart
1. Namaskarasana - Inhale and Exhale. Exhale when you say the mantra - forearms should be perpendicular to the ground
2. Ardha Chandarasana - inhale - focus on the stability of the pose and keep stretching the hands towards the ceiling. Gently push the hips forward
3. Pada Hastasana - exhale - do your best here. Flexibility and depth comes with practise
4. Ashwa Sanchalasana - inhale - the knee of the non stretched leg should not cross the tip of the toes. Take care. The leg stretched out, ensure that the soles of the feet are looking at the ceiling. If you have stretched your right foot out, when coming back, bring the right foot back again in step 9. The next step change the sequence to left foot
5. Dandasana - HOLD the breath. Check me in the video. My entire body is one straight line.
6. Ashthanga Namaskara - exhale - only the 2 feet, the 2 knees, the chest, the chin and the 2 hands - totalling 8 parts of the body should touch the ground.
7. Bhujangasana - inhale - navel on the mat. elbows as close to the body as possible and shoulders as far away from the ears as possible. Don't attempt to straighten elbows if the above rules cannot be adhered to
8. Adho Mukha Shwanasana - exhale - check if the entire soles of both the feet can be flat on the mat. Check my posture in the video.
9. Ashwasanchalasana - inhale
10. Pada Hastasana - exhale
11. Ardha Chandrasana - inhale
12. Tadasana - exhale

The most amazing benefits of most asanas and Surya Namaskars in particular could be

1. Mind Body co-ordination
2. Aerobic activity
3. Amazing extent and range of stretches
4. Profound effect on the Asana practice of a Yogi

I will relate my own experiences with Surya Namaskars.

I started practising Surya Namaskars as just one more of the asanas in my sequence of asanas that I learnt from The Art of Living more than 10 years ago. I used to do 12 rounds everyday and the practise was intermittent. Somewhere around 6 years ago, I regularised the practice. Once the practise was regularised, the efforts to increase the counts of my practice from the daily 12 started taking place. Somewhere around 3 years ago I started to increase the number of counts that I was doing daily from 12 to 24 and then to 54 on a daily basis.

Then the BIG thing happened. In 2014 October when I was doing a Teachers Training Program in The Art of Living Ashram in Bangalore, we had to undergo some very deep cleansing processes which resulted in my developing a mild fever. A Russian Yoga teacher called Fil Dunsky took the initiative to make the entire batch of students to do a 108 rounds of Surya Namaskars. In spite of my illness, I did not want to let go of this awesome opportunity to do the 108 rounds, something I had never done till then. After pushing myself through the process in my unwell state, I was stunned that once I had completed the process, my fever was done with and I felt ill no more!

With this wonderful and healing experience with me, I took this home and started slowly practising to do a 108 Surya Namaskars in anticipation of a YOGATHON where participants do a 108 Surya Namaskars! Once the event was over, the feeling of goodness that I carried with me was so strong, that I never had the heart to either drop the practice or even move back to my regular 54 rounds. The greatest consequence of the practice has been that depth to which my regular asana practice has got to. The 108 SNs practice is like lighting up a flame in every muscle and joint of my body. This has deepened the extent and limits of my twists, my forward bends, my back bends and not the least my physical strength.

The daily practice of a huge number of SNs has a definitive effect on the body. It is for all of us to experience.

I am embedding a video link of my doing the Surya Namaskars. Have a look at it and do comment on the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYeujlpIaqc

Experience - the difficulty in expression

The world of the Yogis resounds with this word. EXPERIENCE.

Why would one want to experience when belief is so easily available? What is the difference really? Many who are believers even tell me that what I state as experience is also a belief. Is it true?

One of the crucial pillars of Yoga is that of residing in the form of the observer. But to understand what the observer is, one needs to understand the concept of the various levels of our own existence.

The aspect that most of us identify with in normal life, is our own bodies. The man/woman in the mirror! Its our grossest form of existence and THE gadget through which we EXPERIENCE this phenomenon called LIFE! All the 5 senses of touch, smell, taste, sight and sound help us understand and perceive the outer world. Since the body is an accumulation of the food we consume, it is called as the Annamaya Kosha in Sanskrit literally meaning, the sheath made of food.

This gross body of ours expresses a phenomena called life, without which it is treated as an urgent disposable. This life exists even in a patient who is in coma on a hospital bed. What is it that keeps us all alive? It's the life force or Prana (Sanskrit). As our bodies are organisms that are in a constant state of birth, existence and death, and I am not speaking of something esoteric here, but the trillions of cells that constitute our bodies. We are continually pulling in not just proteins, carbs, etc but also Prana that is coming in through our breath (pure air is full of Prana), water, pleasant company, beautiful words and loving relationships. A beautiful way of understanding Prana, is the way we feel over the day. The stuff that makes us feel livelier, and the ones that we detest and feel 'down' after experiencing. This level of existence is called as the Pranamaya Kosha.

The subtler mind that exists within each of us is the medium through which we develop our likes and dislikes for what we are perceiving. This is known as the Manomaya Kosha

The even subtler intellect that exists in us, helps us take decisions irrespective of whether the mind loves the experience or hates it. No wonder we prefer to take inject-able medicines which though painful are more effective than orally administered ones.  This level is called the Vigyanamaya Kosha

Beyond the above 4, is THE observer. What in Sanskrit is called the Anandamaya Kosha. Literally meaning BLISS. Joy which is not event dependant. Simply the eternal joy that we all exhibited in oodles as babies.

Now comes the greater discussion on what 'Experience' is all about. When we delve deep into this phenomenon, it is the impressions of external stimuli through the body, the Prana, the mind and the intellect as simply seen by the eternal observer. Can we be in the form of the observer when the body is taken through various sensations, when the Prana flows through its various channels, when the mind is flooded with thoughts, when the intellect is busy judging? Yoga has a lot to do with our understanding of these various levels of our existence. Our introduction to the the most subtle Anandamaya Kosha which most humans simply die without even knowing, is the aim of Yoga. It is only through the stage wise understanding of the various levels, in decreasing order of grossness do we reach THAT which is the most subtle.

Can I still say more? Yes and No. Yes because a picture is equal to a thousand words and an experience is akin to a thousand pictures. It would take a million words to explain an experience. But nothing is more effective than tasting the gulab jamun or the apple cake than listening to multi million worded treatises on the same! This is the 'Difficulty in Expression'. Even when I say a few words about it, it feels I have said too much, and any amount of words I say about it, it seems so few :D Due to this fact that it is so difficult to express, one also realises that each seekers experience is also very different. This is the reason that even Krishna has a difficult time explaining what it is and finally gives Arjuna THE experience in the Gita. Our learned ancestors in India said "Ekam Satya Vipra Bahuda Vadanti"....THE truth is just ONE, but has been expressed differently by the ones who have experienced. AUM.

The Beginnings

This is my first blog on Yoga. Its an honest attempt to share my findings on the path. A path that I have cherished and pursued relentlessly like a madman for the last 10 years and more so since the last 6 years.
My tryst with Yoga started with The Art Of Living (www.artofliving.org) in 2006 when I first enrolled for their Hatha Yoga Course (Sri Sri Yoga) and then the more calming and meditative Sudarshana Kriya Yoga (SKY). The first interactions and engagements with The Art Of Living were life changing. Life changing in the sense that they were loaded with epiphanies (Aha moments), life changing experiences and the awesome and absolutely loving presence of my Guru and Master, Sri Sri Ravishankar. I will forever be grateful to this awesome being for being an inalienable part of my life. If I have been so steadfast on the path, its not so much my madness as much as it is the sheer presence of the master in my life. The introduction to the beautiful Yogic scriptures like Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the Yogasara Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita whose teachings now mean so much more to me as a book of Yoga than a religious book on which Hindus take oaths of truthfulness in court cases (as depicted in almost every Indian film!)

So what is Yoga?
Patanjali in the Yogasutras describes Yoga as a discipline (Atha Yoganushasanam). Not as a religion as is misunderstood in the west and across the non Hindu world.
Is that all?
The great sage further states 'Yogah Chitta Vrittih Nirodhah' ....Yoga is the cessation of all modulations of the mind.
So what happens then?
 'Tada Drishtuh Swaroope Avasthanam'...that the practitioner resides in the form of the observer.

The entire Yogasutras are just what it means in the literary sense....'The Threads of Yoga'...The ones more accomplished in the English language call it 'The Aphorisms of Yoga'. There are a 196 such sutras/threads/aphorisms spread across 4 main chapters titled as follows
1. Samadhi Pada - which speaks of the ultimate state to reach, namely samadhi, what I realise as a state of complete equanimity and acceptance of the world as it is perceived by our mind and the ever judging intellectual faculties. This is achieved or rather happens to the practitioner in the practice of meditation.
2. Sadhana Pada - which speaks of the means to reach 'the state'. My Guru always speaks of Sadhana as 'Sa+Dhana' which means your 'very own' wealth. A wealth that is never torn away from you when the physical body is discarded. Something so beautiful and out of the staid ways of understanding some of these beautiful concepts. Something only Sri Sri is truly capable of!
3. Vibhuti Pada - though my master has not explained this and the next chapters so far, we do hope he will in the coming year of 2017. The chapter throws a lot of light on what exactly happens when 'Samyama' (understood as the combination of the last 3 parts of Ashthanga Yoga, namely Dhyana (meditation), Dharana (one pointed focus) and Samadhi (reposing in the depth of ones own self)) is employed on various subjects both external and internal to the body
4. Kaivalya Pada - explains the 'blessedness' or 'grace' that is experienced by the seeker.

The Yogasutras are a great guide that helps the seeker to understand the ways and means to get to the 'experience'. The biggest difference between any religious spiritual practice and Yoga as a spiritual practice is that the former is immersed in belief whereas the latter focuses on direct personal experience. Yoga is the path for seekers, NOT believers. A yogi would not believe but would know. The way you 'know' that the fingers in your hands are your very own and don't need a belief system to accept the same!