Pranayama
COUNTING BREADTHS
(Not a spelling mistake - Read on)
Text: Kunal Narula
All of us notice the variation in our breath when we swim through our daily emotions. Change in breath is bodily function which varies consistently based on how we are feeling. I will not get into the science of why it happens or why does our body needs more or less air based on the emotion we are going through. However, I am going to talk about a process which inverses this relation between emotional state and the breathing pattern. Pranayama is of course made of two Sanskrit words, ‘Prana’ and ‘Yama’. A simple google search can give you a million answers for the meaning of these two Sanskrit words. I am going to talk about what they mean to me.
Prana is the flow energy within us which makes us alive. If we think about our body and mind it is nothing more than a catalyst. It consumes food, water, sounds, thoughts etc into an outcome. Through this transformation what our body gets is energy. This energy is what we call life. Its what makes humans different from rocks. All living organisms produce this energy. Almost all organisms spend this energy looking for food to survive or to reproduce hence the balance remains. What is made is used to look for what is needed hence there is no spare energy left. How humans are unique is that we have simplified the process of looking for food. Our survival is not dependent on looking for the food. We get it at the supermarket. Therefore, we, in our bodies carry all the spare energy, at times not knowing what to do with it. Some of us successfully dedicate our lives to an objective. This can be creating a artistic masterpiece, the next model of I phone or fighting climate change. The spare energy produced in these bodies is ‘skilfully’ consumed and problem solved. However, most of us are not that lucky. We take a long time to find our passion, talent or love. We are constantly looking for that reason to be excited, to be alive or to even make sense of why we consumed the last meal other than because we were just hungry.
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Having explained ‘Prana’, I move to ‘Yama’. Yama means practice, control, or any other synonym you would like to call it. Yama is a practice of anything, where we practice a ritual repeatedly to control the outcome of the action. The action here is breathing. Pranayama in a very simple way takes the spontaneity out of breathing and makes it a conscious choice. It helps us focus on how we breathe, something we always have taken for granted. A simple action of breathing in and breathing out is controlled in a way to control the flow of oxygen to our brain. This in turn helps us control the vibrations in our brain. Why we need to control the vibrations in our brain is an individual decision or what we are going through at the moment. Personally, there are moments when I only wish that my mind listens to me, that I am in control of what I am thinking or how much I am thinking. It is the hardest thing for me to do. Controlling any other bodily function is like eating something, or not, comes easy. The only way I understand to control how much my brain functions is through controlling the air supply to my body and hence the energy I give my brain to feed on.
In simple words, Pranayama works for me as the regulator switch for your light. It controls the flow of energy to that lamp hance deciding how much it shines. On a cosy Sunday evening it gives the warm light which helps me relax in my chair and read my favourite book. The same lamp can be illuminated to max power on Monday mornings for a powerful attentive meeting. The breadths within which my brain operates is controlled by me and the environment I am in.