Breathing is about as intimate as it gets. Every cell of the body requires breath for
what is called cellular respiration – taking in oxygen and releasing carbon
dioxide. We take in air - our atmosphere
– into our cells. The pathway is a bit
complex if you stop to notice it: from
the nose to the pharynx to the larynx to the trachea and into the lungs to the
pulmonary capillaries to the heart to the aorta and finally to the individual
cells. And of course, it is reversed for
the carbon dioxide. All of this we do
all the time without necessarily noticing.
In pranayama we practice noticing.
A poem by Jane Kenyon:
In and Out
The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.
Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life – in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh…
Recently, I shared a room with someone. At 4:30am as I lay awake I listened to my
roommate breathing. The sound of breath,
another’s breath, my own breath, in the quiet of the early morning, felt as if
I was listening to the earth breathing, or perhaps the universe.
The yogis have paid a lot of attention to breathing. Breath
and consciousness, they said, are two sides of the same coin. Changing our breath through pranayama will
inevitably change who we are.[1]
To state the obvious, breath is life.
The yogis however, went farther in their investigations. Breathing, they suggest, is our vehicle to
touching prana, the “subtle energy that pervades every corner of the universe.”[2]
The old yoga guides said that: “just as each of us breathes along and so lives
in and through prana, so, too, does the entire universe.”[3] This is undifferentiated cosmic prana or
first prana. This prana is intelligence
and creativity. Cosmic prana is also
considered by some of the old guides as the source of everything. It links us to the essence of our lives.
After watching a cosmology course with my brain group I have
been asking myself how one might tap into the amazing energy that is clearly
present in the universe. Scientists have
been attempting this for a long time, of course, with technology and we
consequently have nuclear energy and nuclear weapons that could destroy us
all. My musings have been much more
modest and low tech. I have wondered if
the yogis might not have been on to something about tapping into the energy of
the universe with the practice of pranayama.
Thanks initially to Rodney Yee, who taught early morning
pranayama at all of the five week long teacher trainings I attended very soon
after I began practicing asana, I have always included some pranayama in my
morning practice. At times however, it
has felt laborious and boring. Over the
last few years as I dropped increasingly into a place of feeling depleted in energy,
I have been drawn back to a curiosity around pranayama, like a wounded animal
searching for some kind of solace when I could not continue the vigorous asana
practice I had been accustomed to. The
two times I have now attended Patricia Walden in Durango, CO, the highlight of
the week has been the afternoon pranayama practice. This last year she told me clearly that it is
my energy body rather than my physical body that is depleted and I need to
spend more time with pranayama – confirming the direction I was already going.
And so I have spent more time in this most mysterious of
practices – pranayama.
And so I have fallen in love.
And so my breath has become my beloved.
And so my breath has become an opening to what the yogis
call cosmic breath.
And so there have been times when I have tasted sweetness of
something there are not words for.
Ah but one must be careful:
“Just as lions, elephants and tigers are gradually controlled, so the
prana is controlled through practice.
Otherwise the practitioner is destroyed.
By proper practice of pranayama, all diseases are eradicated. Through improper practice, all diseases can
arise.”[4]
Breath is air and air is wind. There is a grandfather Medicine Man in a
movie I quite love, Thunderhart. The grandfather says, “Listen to the
wind.” I listen to the wind when I
remember to do so. Yesterday I could
hear winter in the mountains when the wind was blowing. It has a distinct sound. When I hear winter in the mountains riding on
the wind I remember sitting beside Pear Lake at 10,000ft in August and I am
glad there are places in the mountains that close their doors to humans for
part of the year.
Listen to the wind.
Listen to your breath.
“Watch the wind to handle the sail.”[5]
Breathing is about as intimate as it gets. Breath has the potential to open us to the
Beloved. The Beloved is the mystery in
the ordinary – what we do all the time unconsciously. The ordinary becomes the Sacred when we
notice.
In the name of the air,
The breeze
And the wind,
May our souls
Stay in rhythm
With eternal
Breath.
-- excerpted
from “In Praise of Air” by John O’Donohue
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