Then after having decided all these factors, take to the actual method of practice, which is the direct control of your inner apparatus – the pranas, the sense organs, the mind, the intellect and the spirit. The pranas are subdued by regulated breathing. While physical discipline is essential, physical discipline alone is not sufficient because the internal forces within us will upset all our external effort if they are not simultaneously controlled. This is why you are asked to sit in one steady posture and see that the muscular system and the nerves within are placed in a proper mood of receptivity; when you do so, the pranas automatically move gradually, calmly, and in a symmetrical manner. The symmetrical forces of breathing are called pranayama. Usually we are breathing without any rhythm or system on account of errors of thought and irregularities in our life. When these irregularities are rectified, the pranas become very subdued. As a matter of fact, Patanjali prescribes in his Sutras a method called kaivalya kumbhaka, or sudden stoppage of breath, without alternate breathing, because when your body and the nerves and the muscles are in a very controlled posture, the pranas automatically tend to subdual, and that tendency is the tendency to kumbhaka, or the retention of the breath. You need not hold your breath and struggle hard with suffocation to control your breath. That is not necessary. If you place yourself in a very conducive atmosphere and sit harmoniously in a physical posture, you will find you are automatically tending to a subdual of the pranas, and it becomes more accentuated when the mind starts concentrating. When the mind concentrates itself, the pranas also automatically get subdued. You can help the control of the mind, or the concentration of the mind, by an easy practice of kumbhaka, or retention of the breath, for a few seconds in the beginning, during which period you can mentally chant a mantra or a formula, conceive the object of your meditation, which is the goal of your life, and so on. Then the very practice of the regulation of the breath implies the control of the senses.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 22:40:11 +0000
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