The Energy Body (Prana)
veryone desires more life energy. If energy could be packaged and
�sold in a shop, it would be the most successful business ever.
Merely talking about energy excites and energizes people. Where can we get it, people want to know. Well, not in packets and not in shops
because it is, first, everywhere and, second, free of charge.
We give many names to God, even though He is One. The same is true of energy. There is nuclear energy, electrical energy, muscular en
ergy, and mental energy. All of these are vital energy or life energy,
l:alled in Sanskrit, pranic energy or simply prana. Prana is called C:hi
in C�hina and Ki in japan. Some suggest that the nearest traditional
l:onccpt of prana in the West is the Holy Spirit of Christianity, a sa�:rt•d
power that is both immanent and transcendent. Prana is also often called wind, vital air. The Bible begins its description of Creation with the sentence, "God's breath moved upon the waters." Prana is God's breath. Prana is the energy permeating the universe at all levels. It is physical, mental, intellectual, sexual, spiritual, and cosmic energy.
All vibrating energies are prana. All physical energies such as heat, light, gravity, magnetism, and electricity are also prana. It is the hidden and potential energy in all beings, released to the fullest extent as a re
sponse to any threat to one's survival. It is the prime mover of all ac
tivity. It is energy that creates, protects, and destroys. Hindus often say that GOD is Generator, Organizer, and Destroyer. Inhalation is the generating power, retention is the organizing power, and exhalation, if the energy is vicious, is the destroyer. This is prana at work. Vigor, power, vitality, life, and spirit are all forms of prana.
Prana is usually translated as breath, yet this is only one of its man
ifestations. According to the Upanishads, it is the principle of life and consciousness. It is equated with the Soul (Atman). It is the breath of life of all beings in the universe. They are born through it and live by it, and when they die their individual breath dissolves into the cosmic breath. It is the most essential, real, and present feature of every mo
ment of our lives and yet it remains the most mysterious. It is yoga's job, and especially pranayama's, to enter into the heart of this mystery.
Prana, in the form of breath, is the starting point. The suffix, ayama, means stretch, extension, expansion, length, breadth, regula
tion, prolongation, restraint, and control. Put in its simplest form, therefore, pranayama means the prolongation and restraint of breath.
Since prana is energy and life force, pranayama means the extension and expansion of all our vital energy. It has to be clear that you cannot just increase the volume of anything as volatile and explosive as pure energy without taking steps to contain, harness, and direct it. If you were suddenly to triple the strength of the electrical current arriving in
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your house, you would not think the kettle would boil in a third of the usual time and your lights burn three times brighter. You know you would immediately burn out all the circuits and be left with nothing.
Why should our body be different? That is why Patanjali clearly stated that between the practice of asana and pranayama, there is a step up.
There has to exist, through proficiency in asana, strength and stability in the circuitry of the body to withstand the increase in current that pranayama practice will bring.
Many people have approached me over the years full of the woes that befell them because they did not respect this elementary precau
tion. Often they were ignorant about the need to build a solid founda
tion and had signed up for various courses in the hope of leaping into a facile spirituality. Their weakness of body and mind betrayed them and compounded their troubles. Patanjali himself warned that if the base is not firm, sorrow, despair, unsteadiness of body, and shakiness of breath will result. Mental depression and accompanying tremors are a serious matter. They are extreme, and in his third sutra on asana, Patanjali specifically said that asana practice will protect us from the dangers and vicissitudes of extremes. He called extremes dualities. In this context it means we have to build up sufficient fortitude in body and mind to control ourselves sensibly. To gorge one day and fast the next is not sensible. If an unkind word at the office plunges you into gloom, anger, or resentment, it is not sensible. If we still ricochet be
tween behavioral, emotional, and mental extremes, we are not ready
for pranayama. If we have a reasonable strength of body and nerves
and stability of emotions and mind, then we are.
For the Inward Journey, we will need a lot of energy, and a very subtle, high-quality energy too. This never-ending exploration, occu
pation, and illumination requires the special energy of prana. Prana is spn:ial because it carries awareness. It is the vehicle of consciousness.
I t you want to send your awareness to the furthermost cell of your big
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toe, prana will carry it there. When you have a sufficient flow of prana, you can spread your consciousness everywhere within. To do this you need to generate a lot of prana. To generate prana you must cultivate the extension, expansion, control, and restraint of your normal breath.
Just as in the last chapter we were using these same terms about our practice on the physical and outermost sheath of being, the annamaya kosa, now we are using them about the second sheath, the physiolog
ical or organic body, the pranamaya kosa. Having strengthened our known selves through asana, we are now adding a second string to our bow through the culture of breath. By so doing, we generate more en
ergy. With more energy we can explore and penetrate further and deeper within.
Whether we are talking about the outermost sheath or this more interior one, we are always bringing the light of awareness. Prana is al
ways involved in carrying that light of awareness, only now we are consciously generating and directing it. In yoga philosophy both en
ergy (prana) and consciousness (citta) are considered to evolve directly out of cosmic intelligence ( mahat). Mahat is the universal intelligence of Nature. The rocks have universal intelligence. Every leaf has it.
Every cell of every creature has it. It is all pervasive and infinite. The genius of nature's intelligence is self-expression. That is why nature is infinitely varied, infinitely inventive. Prana is our link to this infinite intelligence. What a shame it is that we have such access and ignore its use and development. We are like someone with a vast fortune locked in a numbered bank account who forgets the number and so must scrape by in poverty. We live within our individual consciousness with its limited intelligence, often feeling lonely and puny, when there is a conduit available directly to cosmic consciousness and intelligence.
Through this conduit flows prana, joining each individual among us to the highest original principle of Nature. Pranayama is about restoring this conduit so that the intelligence bearing the energy of the macro
cosm can illuminate our microcosm .
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Breath and Pran ayama
I did not start the practice of pranayama until 1 944 when I had already been teaching yogasana for several years. You can take comfort from the fact that however poor your own pranayama is, it can scarcely be worse than mine was for the first few years. I would wake around four o'clock in the morning and have coffee with my wife. Often I would go right back to sleep. If not, after only three or four minutes, I would start gasping and have to stop. My lung capacity was still impaired from childhood tuberculosis, and in addition I had always overexerted myself in back bends. Through them I had gained suppleness but not the power of resistance. Somehow I persevered. But my chest was taut, and my muscles were sore. Even with my back against a wall, my breathing would be heavy and labored. Gradually I came to realize that whereas back bends strengthen the inner muscles of the spinal column, forward extensions develop its outer muscles. So I did forward bends, timing myself to gain endurance. The pain was intense, like a sledge
hammer hitting my back, and the soreness persisted for hours after
ward. I concentrated on twists too, to build up the lateral muscles. It was all very frustrating, and although I avoided the depression that can result from practice, I was terribly restless. You can never do pranayama with an upset mind. Sometimes I used to feel fresh, while at other times I was moody and tense as I never knew how to relax the brain in inhalation or understood the art of the grip needed in the process of exhalation. The grip is the ability to maintain the pranayama posture in a way that allows for inner flexibility and avoids disturbing the posture because of the movement of air. Fortunately, I had the assets of courage and determination in the face of repeated failure.
Initially my guru had told me categorically that I was unfit to do pranayama. In the old days, spiritual knowledge was considered an es
oteric subject and jealously guarded by its masters. They wen· ahrupl
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in their manner and did not think their pupils were deserving enough.
One could not talk to them openly and frankly as we do today. Even Ramana Maharishi kept his philosophy for an inner circle of highly qualified scholars. You could say that India at that time was engaged in a struggle for political democracy, but I can assure you that spiritual democracy did not exist. Because I am seen as a stern authoritarian teacher, people do not realize how strongly I have in fact reacted against the harsh and secretive regime in which I was brought up. I am open with everything I have learned, and my strictness has really been a passion for precision so that my students should not suffer from the mistakes and hardship that I had to endure.
Eventually my guru relented to the point where he allowed me to do deep inhalation, retention, and deep exhalation. But he gave no technical instruction. Consequently I was prone to the instability of body and irregular, labored breathing of which Patanjali warns. As I have said, I mercifully escaped the despair or hopelessness that can re
sult, but I was restless and unsettled. Everybody needs a teacher for pranayama. I had no one and fell into the gap between "knowing" and
"doing. " I knew I had to take a deep, slow breath, but it did not happen. I could not do it.
It was my asana practice that kept me on track. I continued to adapt and transform my body to be capable of pranayama and so over many long years came to master it. From the point of view of my ability to teach, this process of trial and error has proved a tremendous asset, but it is not a method I would recommend to anyone. My early failures were because of a lack of guidance as well as my own weak
ness. You, on the other hand, are in a position to build up a good prac
tice in only two or three years, provided you stick with it for as little as ten minutes a day and have a good teacher. As I did, you will learn through action and observation to understand the rising and de
scending energies of the intelligence and gain the art of surrendering the intelligence and willpower from the scat of the head towa rd the
seat of the heart. By learning how to stretch and how to keep the ner
vous system elastic and lively through asana, you will be capable of bearing any load, and so stress will not occur at all.
Pranayama is not normal breathing-nor is it just deep breathing.
It is the technique of generating cosmic vital energy through the fusion of the antagonistic elements of fire and water. Fire is the quality of mind, and water is the element that corresponds to the physiological body. Water douses fire, and fire evaporates water so they are not easily brought together. Air is the interface whose flow in the lungs provides the dynamic stream that fuses water and fire and produces an energetic current of prana. This spreads through the nervous system and blood
stream and is distributed around the body, rejuvenating every cell. The earth element in the form of body provides the physical location for the production of energy, and the fifth and most subtle element, space or ether, offers the space required for the energy's distribution. The need for a harmonious and symmetrical space explains the importance of the spine and its supporting musculature, for the spine is the central column of the nervous system. By lifting and separating the thirty-three articulations of the vertebral column, and by opening the ribs from the spine like a tiger's claws, we deepen and lengthen the breath.
The analogy of the production of energy through hydroelectric power may prove helpful. Stagnant water can create no energy, which means if you are not breathing, you are dead. If you are breathing nor
mally, there is some flow, and you produce just enough energy for the requirements of the moment. But there is no surplus to be invested in other projects. It is only by the techniques of pranayama, which regu
late, channel, and (in retention of breath) dam the flow all the better
to harness and extract its inherent power, that we produce sufficient energy to vitalize the whole system. We must live fully before we die.
We must generate sufficient energy to realize our full potential. The journey to our infinite core of being is arduous. Only pranic l'lllT�Y em
1 a ke us there.
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Watching the flow of the breath also teaches stability of con
sciousness, which leads to concentration. There is no finer method. The power of concentration allows you to invest your new energy j udi
ciously. In the yogic scheme of things, the highest application of that concentration and power of vision is in meditation. By learning to ap
preciate breath, we learn to appreciate life itself. The gift of breath is the gift of life. When we receive a gift, we feel gratitude. Through pranayama we learn gratitude for life and gratitude toward the un
known divine source of life. Let us look now more closely at the move
ments of breath, their implications and effects.
Yogic breathing techniques are meditative in their origin and in their effect. They basically consist of four parts. They are inhalation (puraka), retention of the breath after inhalation (antara kumbhaka), exhalation (recaka), and retention after exhalation ( bahya kumbhaka).
The in-breath should be long, subtle, deep, rhythmic, and even. The energizing ingredients of the atmosphere percolate into the cells of the lungs and rejuvenate life. By retaining one's in-drawn breath, the en
ergy is fully absorbed and distributed to the entire system through the circulation of blood. The slow discharge of air in exhalation carries out accumulated toxins. By pausing after the out-breath according to one's capacity, all stresses are purged and drained away. The mind remains silent and tranquil. If you over-prolong the pause, you will feel a sudden lurch of panic and suck in more air greedily. This is our in
stinctive attachment to life reasserting itself. Inhalation is the extension and expansion of the Self (Purusa). With the help of the in-breath, the Self embraces its sheaths up to the skin of the body, like a lover em
bracing his beloved. Retention after inhalation is the union of the lover with his beloved. In exhalation, the Self, via the out-breath, takes the beloved to his home where, in her turn, the beloved embraces her lover, the Self. Retention after exhalation is the beloved uniting with the lover in total surrender to the supreme. Hence, pranayama is more than a physiological breathing exercise. Because breath is life, the art of
judi-cious, thoughtful, ungreedy breathing is a prayer of gratitude we offer to life itself.
It is impossible, when we turn our attention to the inner movement of breath, to use our senses externally at the same time. You cannot also be thinking that you must stop at the supermarket on the way home after work. Pranayama is the beginning of withdrawal from the external engagement of the mind and senses. That is why it brings peacefulness. It is the hinge between extroversion and introversion.
When you start asana practice, you gain increased confidence, poise, self-assurance, and the radiance of health. After all, energy is in itself an attractive quality. By all means enjoy these benefits in your contact with the world. But yoga also asks us inwardly to invest some of what we have gained. That is introversion in its positive sense, not a shying away from the world out of feelings of inadequacy, but a desire to ex
plore your inner world. The breath, working in the sheath of the phys
iological body, serves as a bridge between body and mind.
You cannot look into your mind with your eyes. In asana the eyes should be active to adjust the asana, but in breathing the ears are im
portant in order to listen to the sound of mind's vibration and adjust its harmony. Similarly, the mind too is a vibration in space. The sound of the mind's vibration can be perceived only by the ears. This is the penetration of introspection. It does not bring us closer to the noisy thinking capacity of brain-on the contrary, the organ of brain is paci
fied. It brings us closer to the intuitive faculty of mind. Nothing per
taining to pranayama can be forced. That is why it teaches humility. So prana itself and its natural companion, the higher intuitive awareness (prajna) have to be invited, enticed. When circumstances are favorable, they will come. The metaphor of catching a horse is useful here. You cannot catch a horse in a field by running after it. But if you stand still and hold out an apple, the horse will come to you.
In one sense, the power of will is necessary in pranayama. That is
the will of practice, the will to conquer its monotony. Intrinsically it is
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