It is the predisposition and not merely the action of the prana outside that has to be set right. The regulation of the breathing process alone is not pranayama. There is a predisposition behind the breathing process, and when that tendency within is not set right, outwardly controlling the breath is not going to help. Kumbhaka (retention of the breath) and other things are a failure when the disposition within is different from this effort. We cannot convince a person of something that the person cannot understand, because the person’s brain and understanding are predisposed to something different from what we are saying. The tendency or the predisposition is to be taken into account before we try to touch the prana in any manner. Just as there has been a caution recommended in the practice of the kundalini or hatha yoga techniques, especially in their advanced stages, a caution has to be exercised in the practice of pranayama. It is very important. One should not go to excesses in the practice of pranayama.

This caution is very important in the practice of the regulation of the breath, because we must know whether we are predisposed internally to the regulation of the prana or not—otherwise we should not meddle with it. Our disposition within is a complex of a psychological nature and is very important. What is our tendency? If our mind is too full of desires, if our inclination is towards intense activity, if we have been suppressing this urge for action through a desire for yoga meditation, and if we are boiling within with energy to be expressed in some way or the other—we should not do pranayama. Otherwise, it would be like trying to build a dam across a rushing river. The river will not be manageable if we try to block its raging flow, and it will break its bounds one day or the other. The rushing river is like our energy within, which tends towards something and which has an impetus of its own in a particular direction or destination.

We need not try to build a dam across such a river. What we are to do with the river is to see that it becomes calm before a dam is built. When there is a torrent and the river is in spate, one cannot build a dam across it. Our tendency to action, the action and its fulfilment are all the forces of the prana. These will indicate how forceful our prana is. It is easier to build a dam across a lake rather than across a river that flows. The dam would be more easily placed in position by an expanded lake rather than before a moving river. Mostly our energies move—they are like rivers and not like standing lakes. When the water of the river widens its scope, its force also becomes less and less.

In the mountain regions one will find that the rivers are rushing rapidly; but when they reach the plains, they become calmer. See the Ganges—if we go higher to its source, we will find it makes a lot of noise as it rushes rapidly through gullies and ravines. Now it has come to Rishikesh but still it is not calm, and we can be drowned here by the current. The river goes further to Haridwar, then to Saharanpur and so on, and then it becomes calmer and calmer until it reaches the plains. Near Bihar it will be like an ocean. Though it is so deep and expanded, it is not rushing. The prana is something like this river which has a tendency to rush, on account of the slope of the ground through which it has to flow. If we bring it to the plains, it is calm.

Our personality is like a mountain or a hill over which the prana rushes down. We have not become a plain yet, and so we heave, gasp, run and so on. We are not at ease with ourselves, which means to say the prana is not at peace. We cannot keep quiet even for a few minutes without talking to someone, and without getting up and seeing something in order to be satisfied with ourselves. This is an external symbol of the condition of our prana within. What we do daily will tell us how our prana works. If every ten minutes we have to get up and see something, that would mean that we are rajasic in nature. Can we sit alone for a day without seeing anyone? Try this one day. Do not go out of the room, and be alone in the room. The whole day we can be in the room just seeing what our minds will tell us that day. If we feel like a fish out of water, then the prana inside is also like a fish out of water—it will not be well. One should not do pranayama in this case. The inner predisposition of our personality will be the touchstone of the condition of our prana, and this must be discerned before we undertake the practice of pranayama. This caution is to be given, because if we don’t understand this simple affair, we are likely to go wrong in the technique and press too hard. We may even have excesses telling upon our physiological system, in which case pranayama will not do us any good if we are not prepared for it.

Pranayama implies a proportion of sattva in our bodies and minds. Sattva means the tendency to equilibrium. Just as I said, we can try and test ourselves by sitting alone in the room for a day. Our response will tell us how sattvic we are. Rajasic persons cannot sit in one place—they will be writing something, looking in different corners, putting one thing in another place, taking it from that place and putting it in a third place. Our pencil is here; we lift it and put it there. We take it from there and put it here. Why do we do it? It means to say that our minds are not calm—otherwise we could let the pencil be wherever it is. The actions outside are expressions not only of the thought within but also of the way of the working of the prana. We have to be more cautious in dealing with the prana than even with our minds in meditation. The reason for this is that the prana is directly connected with our bodies, whereas the mind is connected with the body through the prana. When the prana gets out of order, it may do more harm than a mind that is not able to meditate. In the beginning, therefore, the process of the control of the prana should not take the form of the retention of breath. We should never try to retain our breath in the initial stages of the practice of pranayama.

The first things we do should be the most initial things. Generally we do not take a deep breath. If we just think of our breathing process a little bit for a few seconds, we will realise that we typically breathe shallowly. We neither inhale deeply nor exhale deeply. We are too much excited—that is why we cannot inhale or exhale deeply. The first thing would be to try deep inhalation and deep exhalation. It has nothing to do with retention—do not even think of that just yet. Sit in a well-ventilated room, or in the open if the air is warm. Take a deep breath, and after that, breathe out. If we do merely this technique of deep inhalation and deep exhalation for fifteen minutes, we will feel that we are tremendously refreshed. It has nothing to do with retention—again, do not think of retention just yet. Deep inhalation and deep exhalation continuously practised for fifteen minutes at least will give us a refreshing feeling within that we will like to experience daily.

The first step then would be only deep respiration. The second stage would be to prolong this process from a few minutes to a lengthier period. Remember that this should be done in a well-ventilated room, or even better, in the open. It should not be done in cold air, or in the very hot air that we have for example in Rishikesh in June. It should be warm air—not too chilly nor too hot. The breathing should be very calm and very slow, with no engagements in our minds. If the train is whistling to leave and we have to catch it, we should not sit on the platform and try to start our breathing practice—our minds would be lost in the whistle. We must have no engagements of this kind when we sit for deep breathing.

Everything should be done with a sense of immediacy and with attention—then we can sit for it. The other factor that is to be remembered is that this should be done preferably on an empty stomach and not after a heavy meal. When the stomach is empty, when the air is fresh and when our mind is not engaged, this breathing exercise should be started. We will see how refreshing this becomes and how our health improves. This practice can even prevent illnesses of various kinds. We need not call this pranayama—it is a big word. Let us simply call this deep breathing exercise. Let us not go for big words or technicalities. Deep breathing exercise—yes, that is sufficient. Practise daily in a calm atmosphere and with a calm mood, and this will drive off many of our sicknesses. Sicknesses may not come at all, so it may not even be a question of driving off diseases. We will be immune to many of the illnesses to which people are prone. We will have a reserve force within us, and we will have enough strength to prevent the absorption of toxic matters from outside. Pranayama therefore commences with this simple technique. The reason behind the practice is the harmonisation of the prana, just as asana was the process of harmonisation of the muscular forces and the nervous energy. The physical equilibrium was established through asana, and now through pranayama we try to establish the equilibrium of the vital energy within.

The necessity for the equalisation of vital energy within arises from the fact that it is usually not distributed properly in the system. The prana is not usually equally distributed in the system, just as our thinking process is not usually harmonious. We always think certain particular things, and therefore the prana is particularly directed in certain corners of the system. People who are prone to too much thinking have their energy concentrated mostly in their brains, and their physical health may become comparatively weak. We can see it in our practical lives. People who do a lot of intellectual work—writers or others who do mostly sedentary mental work—often do not have vigorous physical health. This is possibly due to inadequate intake of fresh air and shallow breathing, and then driving the energy mostly to a particular part of the body.

The energy of the body needs correction because it has not been equally distributed, on account of particularly directed thinking. Just as the practice of the asanas was a correcting process of the muscles, this process corrects the disordered flow of energy. Whether it is asana, pranayama or the higher processes of thinking, the aim is to equally distribute the energy—physical as well as psychological. The equal distribution of energy becomes possible when it is prevented from moving in any given direction. The mind is the reason behind the energy moving in particular directions. Excessive thinking of sense objects, or even of any particular object for that matter, would concentrate the energy in that direction, and all the force would tend towards that object of our thought or affection.

People who are given to too much love or too much hatred are also not healthy in their systems, because here again, the energy is driven in certain directions. Any excess in any kind of activity—physical or psychological—is not good for the system. All yoga is harmony and the golden mean of action, and not tolerating excess of any kind—neither to the right nor to the left. We move equally in all directions, as it were, when we practise yoga. We have no preferences of any kind, and all things are all right. That should be our mood and attitude later on. Whereas before we would say, “This should be like this, and this should not be like that,” these notions will slowly vanish. The prana is regulated towards this end of harmonising the thought without any tendency in any particular direction.

I should say something about this prana, so that we may know how to regulate it. The prana is an energy which is supposed to channelise itself through the tubes of the nerves. The nerves are so many in number that we cannot even count them. They are everywhere in the body—there is no part of the body where we cannot find a nerve. Wherever we touch the body, there is a nerve. They are thousands in number, and we can say the whole body is constituted of nerves. Therefore, everywhere there is prana, which means to say everywhere there is life force, so that any part of the body that is touched tells us that there is life there. Prana is everywhere.

This prana which is moving through the nerves is not equally distributed—from the point of view of yoga at least. In the same way, ordinarily we appear quite healthy, but actually, from a very strict medical point of view, there will be something wrong with our system. The doctor examines us, and the doctor will tell us that there is something not all right, though we may for all practical purposes look all right. Similarly, with the prana and our life system, things look all right for all practical purposes, but for the yoga purpose at least there is something not all right. That something wrong is that we breathe alternatively through the nostrils, and that there is no concentrated attention of energy. The alternate breathing is supposed to be a kind of disturbance.

In one of the aphorisms of Patanjali, we will find that he says that one among the many obstacles in yoga is alternate breathing—he calls it svasa-prasvasa. Alternate inhalation and exhalation through the nostrils is regarded as an obstacle in the practice of yoga. We may be wondering how this could be an obstacle. It is an obstacle because alternate breathing in this manner also creates a kind of alternate thinking, in terms of opposites—love and hatred, like and dislike, subject and object. Just as there is alternate motion of the breath, there is alternate motion of the thought system. Yoga does not want us to think in this alternate way—swinging from object to object, or from pleasure to pain, or love to hatred. The breathing process, as I mentioned, is an indication of the way in which we are thinking—they are mutually related. Therefore yoga thinks that by a particular kind of manipulation of the breathing process we can advantageously affect the prana, which is driving the breath in this manner.

Gradually the mind is also enticed away from its usual discursive way of thinking, and it is concentrated in such a way that it does not swing from subject to object or from emotion to emotion. This is done by an easy technique which goes by the name of kumbhaka. It is a retention which has to be achieved in a very cautious manner—not merely by holding the breath, but by educating the movement of the prana so that it ceases its alternate activity and becomes calm of its own accord. “Of its own accord” is very important—it should not be by force. When the mind becomes deliberately calm of its own accord, it tends to cease its irregular activity. The cessation of this irregular activity is what we call kumbhaka, which many people try to do forcefully by holding the nostrils closed. The beneficial effect I mentioned cannot be achieved like that.

Yoga is more a growing from within rather than an imposing of things from without. Yoga is an inwardly growing evolutionary process. In every step of yoga these important aspects have to be remembered. Hence, I emphasise our predisposition as an important factor which must be taken into consideration in the practice of pranayama. A gradual diminishing of the activity of the breath means a diminution in the activity of the prana within. This process can bring about a gathering of energy which makes us strong physically, and which also brings about the concentration of the mind, which is the next higher step.