Pranayama

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

I have been rereading books that I had not read since before I had active

Kundalini... and finding so much more there than I saw before. When I

came across the text below in Govinda, it was a real eye-opener. I had

thought I knew almost nothing of pranayama, because I didn't know a million

breathing exercises. But my understanding of what that word covered was

very limited. Govinda opens the word into its fullness.

> What has been overlooked by most writers on the subject of pranayama

>(the yoga of controlling the prana) is the fact that the same energy

>(prana) is not only subject to constant transformation, but is able at the

>same time to make use of various mediums of movement without interrupting

>its course. Just as an electric current can flow through copper, iron,

>water, silver, etc., and can even flash through space without any such

>medium, if the tension is high enough, or move in form of radio-waves - in

>the same way the current of psychic force can utilize the breath, the

>blood, or the nerves as conductors, and at the same time move and act even

>beyond and without these mediums into the infinity of space, if

>efficiently concentrated and directed. For prana is more than breath, more

>than nerve-energy or the vital forces of the blood-current. It is more

>than the creative power of semen or the force of motor-nerves, more than

>the faculties of thought and intellect or will-power. All these are only

>modifications of prana, just as the cakras are modifications of the

>akasa-principle.

>snip<

> In Tibetan Buddhism, which never lost its connexion with the

>original tradition of the Indian mother-soil, the technique of pranayama,

>the control of pranic forces, remained alive until the present day. In

>order to understand the whole depth and width of this term, we must

>however not confuse prana with 'breath' in the ordinary, strictly

>physiological sense of the word.

> Though pranayama starts with the simple function of breathing and

>makes it the basis of its practice, it is far more than a mere technique

>for the control of breath. It is a means for the control of vital psychic

>energies in all their phenomenal forms, of which the function of breathing

>is the most obvious. Among all the physical activities and effects of

>prana, breath is the most accessible, the easiest to influence, and

>therefore the most suitable starting-point of meditation. Breath is the

>key to the mystery of life, to that of the body as well as to that of the

>spirit.

 

- _Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism_ by Lama Anagarika Govinda, pp.

147, 152