In the beginning what you should do is, while you are seated in this required posture, breathe normally, slowly, comfortably, allowing the prana, the breathing process, to move as it would like to move without your pressure on it. Never command the breath to move only in a particular manner. As you are breathing now, for instance, you are not thinking of the breath at all in your mind. Your mind is thinking of what I am speaking and not thinking of the breath. Yet, at the same time, the breathing process is going on very comfortably and you are happy. Let it go on. This is the first stage: just allow the breath to move as comfortably as possible, without interfering with it in any manner whatsoever.

The next stage is, think of the breath - feel that you are breathing. What do you feel at that time? You feel the nostrils acting as passages for the movement of breath. Watch, first of all, whether the prana or the vayu is moving through the right nostril or the left nostril. Sometimes the breathing may take place through both the nostrils, though very rarely. Often, in a disturbed condition, the prana moves through one nostril only. When the right nostril becomes the avenue of the movement of the prana, you will feel warm. When the prana moves through the left nostril, you will feel cool, and if it continues for a very long time, not allowing the right nostril to operate, you may even catch a cold. The Ayurveda Shastra and systems of this kind advise us to sleep on the left at night, because when you sleep on the left side, the right nostril will start operating and this in turn will keep the body warm. When you sleep on the right side, the left nostril will start operating. As the usual heat in the body, which you feel during daytime, normally gets diminished in the state of sleep, it is good to keep the body warm by allowing the prana to move through the right nostril, which is the surya nadi, as it is called, the solar breath. This solar breath will heat up the system when all the activities are subdued to a large extent in the state of deep sleep. But if you sleep on the right side, you will feel chillness, and you may even sneeze. Generally when you have a cold, you will find that the right nostril does not operate at all. There will be sneezing, and then liquid coming out from the left nostril due to the surya nadi not operating. This is incidental information.

So, watch the breath - how it moves through the right or the left nostril. Whatever be the way the breath is moving, allow it to move in that way. Take a deep breath inside. Now you are sitting. In this sitting posture, start inhaling deliberately and not just breathing automatically as you usually do. Deliberate, conscious attempts should be made to breathe slowly - inwardly and outwardly. You generally breathe in a shallow manner; your breath is shallow, not deep. It has to become as deep as possible. You cannot make it deep in ordinary life. Therefore, sufficient oxygen does not go into the lungs. It affects the health because more carbon dioxide may be there in proportion to the less quantity of oxygen, due to shallow breathing, and that is why you yawn sometimes - that is, the carbon dioxide pushes itself out, as you are not allowing it to function normally in its own way.

When this is carried on, take an inhalation - deeply, slowly, not with a jerk - and for one, two, three seconds, hold the breath. Not more than that - tic, tic, tic - for three seconds hold the breath, and then slowly exhale. I am not talking of alternate breathing through the nostrils. I am talking about a natural, spontaneous breathing the way it is carried on by the organism according to its convenience and practice. The only thing that you have to do at that time, with your effort, is to see that the breathing is a little deep. Draw the breath inside as much as possible, without making a jerk or anything - very slowly - and hold it for three seconds, and then breathe out. Every day, early in the morning, please do this, if not for yoga, at least for your health. For fifteen minutes before you take your tea, coffee, milk, breakfast or whatever it is, after a bath if possible, sit like this in a comfortable pose, and deeply breathe in without putting effort on the breath, allowing it to move as it would like to do, but with the consciousness that it should be as deep as possible, and retain it in the form of a kumbaka, as the retention of breath is called, for a few seconds only, and then breathe out gradually.

You will feel very much energised if you do this. You will also be happy, because you are cooperating with the natural ways in which the body and the mind have to function for maintaining good health. Usually you are disturbed in your mind; you have anxieties of a hundred types. At that time you gasp, and oftentimes breathe heavily. This is a sign of total disturbance in the physical and mental system, which upsets everything, including digestion and good sleep. In the beginning, fifteen minutes of this practice will be sufficient. Deeply inhale through both nostrils, or through either nostril, and retain it for a few seconds, then breathe out. Let this practice go on for days together; perhaps for your lifetime you can do this practice in order to maintain health.

Later on, when you are well-equipped with this technique, you can increase the retention from 2-3 seconds to a double or triple period of retention without causing discomfort. You should never feel suffocation when the breath is held. If suffocation is felt and there is discomfort, it means you are not doing it correctly. Be happy and comfortable, always, even in the breathing exercise.

It is generally said that alternate breathing is good. This is called sukapurak pranayama. You are all very well acquainted with this process, so I need not go into the details. Your yoga class instructor must be telling you all these things - the proportionate breathing, proportionate retention, and so on. You may do that. But for the purpose of meditation, that alternate breathing is also not necessary. Normal breathing is sufficient. This will contribute to maintaining good health. The harmonisation of muscular and nervous activity with the breathing process is the main point in question. But all this effort of yours - physically and in terms of breathing - depends much upon how you think in your mind, how you feel, and what you actually want.

Before you start doing yoga, ask yourself - what do you want? Most people cannot answer this question. What do you want? It is a terrible question. You cannot say what you want. Here, a little bit of philosophy is good. Philosophy is the art of finding the ultimate causes of things - not the immediate causes only, but the final causes. You want something just now. But why do you want it? You want it because if you do not get it, some trouble arises. That trouble arises because of a cause behind this feeling of immediate necessity. There is cause behind this cause, a cause behind that cause, until you reach a point where you cannot think of any further cause. A causeless cause is the state you reach, which is a state of perfect rest.

In this condition, adjust yourself gradually, and you will find that the agitations of the sense organs also cease, to a large extent, because the pranas, the breathing, constitute the dynamo which discharges energy for the sense organs so that they may move in the direction they like for the fulfilment of their desires. All desire is a disturbance of the system. Every desire is an attempt to move away from one's own self, and there cannot be a greater disease than the pressure to move out of oneself and become other than one's own self. In all desire, or fulfilment of desire, you become other than what you are, and it is a wretched condition. So every person who has any kind of desire is unhappy. This clamouring of the sense organs to jet forth outwardly into the objects outside is also controlled by subduing the breathing process, because the energy for the sense organs to activate themselves comes from prana, or breathing.

You cannot maintain a posture of peace of mind, which is the necessary background for the practice of yoga, unless your desires are stilled. To do something or not to do something, to have something or not to have something - this is the desire. This must be stilled and brought to a position of poise. How is it possible? Either you fulfil all your desires, in which case of course there will be poise of the sense organs, or you have the understanding that it is not necessary to fulfil these desires. These two aspects have to be considered very well. Are you going to fulfil all your desires so that you may have peace, as you call it? Do you believe that the fulfilment of desires will bring peace of mind? This is a moot question. A person who drinks liquor feels that he is in a state of satisfaction, but that satisfaction creates another agitation to repeat that process of drinking more liquor, so that he may expect greater satisfaction. It goes on like this until the whole body collapses, and he ruins himself. Desire is a devil. It wants to extract blood from your body and reduce you to the level of a corpse, though you do not know that this process is taking place.

A metaphysical meditation, in terms of the ultimate causes of things, will make you realise that you are a fool in allowing desires to move along their own lines. Desires are deceivers and thieves of the first water. Either you realise this by your acute understanding, or you go along the lines of fulfilling desires. You will be between the horns of a dilemma as to how you will handle this difficulty. For awhile you will feel that it is impossible to fulfil all the desires, just as if you dig a cave, more and more mud will fall and it will never end, and the cave will become wider and wider, and there is no end to this mud falling down. The cave of desire will go on expanding until it yawns to swallow you up. There is no end for your desire. Though you may unintelligently feel that you have only one or two desires, they are only the tip of the iceberg of your uncontrolled ocean of desires lying underneath, sleeping, in your subconscious and unconscious levels.

I have been telling you again and again that you cannot do this practice without some guide who has trodden the path and who knows what the difficulties are. Do not dabble with your prana or with your desires and imagine that you can perform austerities on your own without proper guidance. You want a light ahead of you to move along the path. You cannot move in darkness, not knowing what is ahead of you.

So, there is to be seen a living connection between your thought process, your desires, your longings, your positive and negative attitudes, your muscular activity, nervous function, breathing process and sensory activity. All are a simultaneous movement of hundreds of waves of the same ocean of your personality. This is a brief introduction on the very important subjects of yama and niyama - controlling the desire and setting the behavioural pattern in poise; asana and pranayama; and a difficult process called pratyahara, the control of desires by restraining the contact of the senses with the objects. Then comes meditation. So, do not think that suddenly you can meditate on That. Unless the ladder is firm, you cannot climb up to the pedestal of the meditational process. This is the foundation of yoga, of which you have to be fully aware and exercise great caution. Move very slowly but perfectly, and be sure that all is well with you inside and outside also - everywhere, all is well with you.