 The practice of pranayama is to achieve
energy control. Prana is often equated with the breath, and pranayama, with breathing exercises. There is an intimate connection
between the breath and the flow of energy in the body. Paramhansa Yogananda often said,Breathlessness is deathlessness. Yogic
breathing exercises enable the practitioner to rise above the body normal need for breath.
When the yogi,
like a tortoise withdrawing its head and limbs into a shell, is able to withdraw his energy from the objects of sense-perception,
he becomes established in wisdom - Gita (2:58). Breathlessness is not kumbhaka in the sense of forcibly retaining the breath.
Rather, true kumbhaka comes when the body no longer requires air for its maintenance.
The purpose of respiration is
to expel carbon dioxide from the lungs, and to take in oxygen. In pranayama exercises, the breath is used to produce a state
of equilibrium in the body, in which state the physical activity of breathing is no longer required to maintain it in a condition
of equilibrium.
When one rises above the need to breathe, the heart pump also slows down, then stops altogether. When
breathing becomes unnecessary, the heartbeat slows down and then stops. Between these two phenomena the breath and heartbeat
on the one hand and sensory awareness on the other there is a close connection.
The energy in the senses, as in the
whole body, relaxes and withdraws, as happens, to a lesser degree, in sleep. A sleeper may be called. He may even be shaken
before he is even aware of being wanted. This diminished involvement with objective reality occurs because, during sleep,
energy is partially withdrawn from the body and from the sense telephones. It is only when the sense telephone have been switched
off that the mind can wholly absorb itself in the inner world of meditation.
One practice of yoga offers the
incoming breath into the outgoing breath and the apana into the prana, thereby, through pranayama, rendering the breath unnecessary
Gita (4:29). The physical breath accompanies the upward and downward flow of energy through the ida and pingala nadis in the
spine. Indeed, it is this spinal flow of the energies known as prana and apana which prompts the lungs to inhale and exhale.
Prana, more broadly speaking, means energy itself. Prana is Para-prakriti as opposed to Aparaprakriti, Nature.
The
slow, careful conscious circulation of energy around the spine constitutes the ancient science of Kriya Yoga. This circulation
magnetises the spine, and redirects the mental tendencies, samskaras, towards the brain in a way reminiscent of the realigning
of molecules in a north-south direction in a bar of steel.
Similar to the bar magnet, the spine becomes magnetised
in the sense that the energy, flowing ever more unidirectionally towards the brain, is drawn into the deep spine, the sushumna,
where, with the awakening of the Kundalini, it rises through the chakras, lifting one energy and consciousness upward, towards
God. Thus, the energy is brought to the spiritual eye, finally to become united with sahasrara the thousand-petalled lotus
at the top of the head. More on........ kaalchakra
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