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Breath, Prana and the Key to Transforming Your Life

Writer's picture: Aham ShoonyamAham Shoonyam

The Importance of Breath


You can survive for a few weeks without food and a few days without water, but without breath, you can survive barely a few minutes. Your breath is that important. It is not merely the fuel of life; it is life itself.

The first thing a newborn baby does is inhale. The last thing a human does is exhale. Between this first inhalation and last exhalation, the whole life dances.

Beyond this vital importance for the very presence of life, the breath also has a direct connection with the quality of your experience of life - whether you are feeling good or bad. When you are feeling anxious, angry or sad, your breathing will typically be shallow. When you are feeling joy, contentment or peace your breathing will typically be deep and relaxed.

Your thoughts and emotions at any given point in time are always in sync with your breathing pattern. The way you think influences your breathing pattern, and the way you breathe influences how you think and feel. Pranayama techniques gradually train you to breathe like a happy person.


Pranayama


The inhalation of oxygen and exhalation of carbon dioxide works as a carrier for the vital life force, which is known as prana in Sanskrit, often translated as “life energy”.

Pranayama is a Sanskrit word combining prana (life force) and ayama (control or expansion). In simple terms, pranayama involves practices of breathing in a controlled manner which cleanse the mind, create positive patterns, and awaken deeper states of awareness.

Relief Through Breath


The source of all misery and dissatisfaction is the mind’s attachments to its own preferences. Over time, pranayama enables you to create a distance from your thoughts. This gap brings relief - not because life’s problems vanish, but because the mind’s attachments with its preferences disappear for some time. Unlike temporary relief through substances like alcohol or drugs, pranayama offers a sustainable path to inner peace and profound transformation.

Gradually, your breathing pattern can be trained to be like that of an awakened being in the state of samadhi (a state of deep meditative absorption). This is very close to how you would breathe when you are about to leave the body peacefully, and is so subtle that you may not feel your own breathing.

Cleansing the Mind with Breath


Breath is a powerful tool for cleansing the mind. Initially, some pranayama techniques may stir hidden emotions and suppressed memories. This is a natural process of mental cleansing, and while it may be uncomfortable at times it is a sign of progress. Negative patterns, which are stored in your subconscious, come to the surface where you can observe them without following them and ultimately let go of them.

Purification of the mind works in layers. First, the problem areas of the mind will be targeted, such as hidden fears, negative beliefs and behaviours. Later, hidden desires will be cleansed. If you can continue with the process without getting carried away with either uncomfortable patterns or blissful experiences, then you will enter the realm of peace, silence, harmony and unconditional love for all.


Prana as the Fuel of Maya


Prana is the fuel for the illusion of the world, also called maya. It is the thread which stitches the body and mind together with consciousness. Just like a needle is used to pull thread through two sides of cloth and bind them together, the inhalation and exhalation are like a needle taking the thread of prana between the realm of mind-body and the realm of consciousness.

This (metaphorical) stitching job is happening all the time to keep the two together. As soon as the stitching stops, first of all, you go very close to death, and then, if the breathing doesn’t resume soon, the realm of body-mind drops and you just remain as pure consciousness, free from any experience.

In the realm of pure consciousness, the concept of time doesn’t exist. Past, present and future exist right here and now. This is why intense advanced pranayama practices can sometimes lead people to experience altered states of consciousness, such as glimpses of parallel realities in different times or a different body. There is no miracle in any of this, and you may or may not experience these kinds of states during intense pranayama. Just remember one thing - whatever you experience, it remains an illusion of consciousness.

Going Beyond the Three States of Human Experience


In human experience there are three states:
  1. The waking state - in which you are conscious of the external world.
  2. The dream state - in which you are conscious of the dream world.
  3. Deep sleep - in which you are not conscious at all.

The world, the body and the mind only exist for you when you are conscious. Consciousness is the base of all experience, of all possibilities and all parallel realities.

Our experience is a subjective reality - without thinking there is no mind, without mind there is no concept of you, and without you there is no world. Just like you lose the sense that you exist every night while going to sleep.

Your absolute true self is beyond conscious and unconscious states. You are beyond nothing (i.e. unmanifested reality) and everything (i.e. all possibilities). Breath - prana - is the bridge between everything and nothing. Ultimately, you have to go beyond both everything and nothing.

In a way, prana is the trick you have played on yourself to create an illusion to experience how it feels to forget your own profoundness and live as a limited being for some time, in which you have projected a whole illusory drama on the screen of consciousness to remind yourself that you are not insignificant, that you are everything, you are All that is.

In other words, you as the ultimate cosmic consciousness are dreaming all types of possible life forms including this body which feels real.

Inhalation is associated with birth and exhalation with death, but the concept of time and age is just for the mind. Some yogic masters have symbolically and poetically expressed this:
When you inhale, the feminine life force (or consciousness) dances and creates the whole experience of the universe, and when you exhale the whole creation merges back to you. Shakti merges into Shiva. The consciousness merges back to pure awareness.

Breath as the Key to Transcendence


As soon as you take a pause in breathing, the illusion starts to fade away. When someone has an awakening experience, the pause after exhalation elongates and they go very close to death. You don't feel your own breath in this cosmic pause. Near-death experiences can create this elongated pause and that is why they are often associated with awakening experiences.

You are this close to death every moment. If the next breath doesn’t happen then the body-mind will drop and you will remain here as consciousness, without any body, without any story, without any memory, without any ability to think or feel.

The same breath which can let you experience death immediately, also has the potential to let you have a breakthrough to ultimate freedom. You are just one breath away from your highest potential, where there is no concept of distance, no concept of time...absolutely free.

You can do this experiment now:
Just stop here, pause, don’t touch the next thought, let your breath melt away for some time…

Intense pranayama or breathing techniques, such as certain tantra techniques, can take you very close to near-death experiences. Full spiritual awakening occurs with the death of the psychological self or egoic mind, with all its desires and fears.

These intense practices are transformative but are only shared by experienced teachers with those who are ready for complete surrender. For those not ready for such intensity, gentler practices like anulom vilom (alternate nostril breathing) eventually have the same effects but offer a slower, more gradual path.

A Journey Beyond Everything


Ultimately, the journey of breath leads you beyond the illusion of separateness. Prana, the life force, is the divine play through which consciousness experiences itself as finite. Through pranayama, you can awaken to the truth:

You are not a mere body or mind. You are the boundless consciousness dreaming this experience.

When you breathe consciously, you step closer to remembering this truth. With each conscious breath, you let go of the illusion that you are small, limited, or separate. You begin to touch the infinite.

An Invitation


There are countless ways to live a happier life and you can choose whatever connects with you, but if you seek a profound and lasting transformation, we invite you to explore the power of pranayama. Try it, even just once, and discover the subtle yet profound shifts it brings.

Keep breathing, keep dreaming…until you awaken!

May you live a blissful life!

 

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