2. Bring In Awareness
As of now, our breathing is unconscious and that is why the unloading time is very less. If you bring awareness to all five prana movements, much more prana can be unloaded from the air that goes inside and spread throughout your system.
Civilization has taught us to completely control the activity of "cleaning". That is why you end up with stomach problems. In civilization, the natural cleaning process is not allowed. It is considered ill manners, so you constantly have to control yourself. One important thing: you constantly harbor so much tightness in your swadhishtana chakra when you try to control the cleaning process. The swadhishtana chakra is the energy center below the navel which is associated with fear and it is not good to keep this area tense.
Being too tense takes you away from the cleaning process. Either you should have full control so that you don"t need the cleaning process, or you should be in an unconditioned and relaxed mood. Due to social conditioning, you create so much tension in the navel center. This is nothing to laugh about. It is a serious problem. This conditioning is actually killing you. Especially if the breathing is shallow, then the complete unloading and loading of the prana does not happen. If the kumbhka, staying of air, happens for a few seconds more, then the prana will be completely unloaded, and whatever needs to be sent out, will be sent out. Also, if whatever is to be sent out stays inside your body longer than required, you will be struggling with it.
Bad breath, constant sweating, all these things are just because your breath does not have your awareness. You don"t breathe with awareness. All the five steps of the breathing process do not have your awareness. That is why there is so much of suffocation. One more thing: because the routine for the entire day is fixed, you have practically lost the spontaneity. Many times you must have seen: you will come down from your bedroom through the same path, sit in the same chair, have breakfast, walk in the same way, get into the car, and only after reaching the office you will realize that you drove for half an hour on the road! Your entire morning routine goes unnoticed by even you!
Recently, I read an article that a guy died in an office in Bharat, and for three days they did not realize that he was dead! They thought he was working sincerely. Only on the third day, they realized he was dead. Your routine is so fixed! So your breathing pattern is also almost fixed. But that is not the way life should be. It should be spontaneous, and so should the breathing pattern. It should be alive and deep, with awareness. Bringing a little awareness to the breathing pattern, bringing a little awareness to the prana, will create more of a gap between the inhaling and exhaling. It means that the unloading of the prana and the loading of the air energy, which is no longer necessary, will be done completely.
If there is enough gap between inhaling and exhaling, then the cleaning process, that is apana, will also be done by its own nature. You don"t need any other process for apana to happen. You don"t even need to do exercise. Generally, working out until you sweat is considered as a big thing. If you create a gap between inhaling and exhaling consciously, you don"t even have to do any physical exercise, or make yourself sweat. What can be achieved through a workout can very well be achieved through just this. These are the basic secrets of pranayama. That is why pranayama is considered to bring good health, energy and healing to the body. How does it do so much of cleaning? It is a very simple technique which you are going to do now. It is just bringing awareness to all the five processes, that"s all.
You have become completely unaware, especially of the process in which prana is spreading all over your body. Every second, the pranic energy is spreading from your head to your toe. That is why you are still alive. But you are not aware of it. Not only that, the impulses in our own bodies which travel from the body to the brain, and back from the brain to the body, are the physical manifestations of prana. It is prana that coordinates the activities of the body and mind, and things such as rationality, emotions and other aspects of our personality.
In the Yoga system, they say that when you add awareness to your prana process, you will experience the immortal nectar throughout the body. When you become aware of this pranic energy flowing throughout your body, only then do you experience the nectar, the joy, and bliss, and automatically, this leads to longevity.
Your breathing should be very deep with deep awareness. I don"t mean that you should change your breathing forcibly. Forcibly, you can change only for two to three minutes. But if you change the pattern consciously, through deep awareness, you can change it once and for all. Throughout the day and night, the pattern of breathing will be changed. Now we are not going to change it by force. Changing it by force is called pranayama. That will help only for 10 minutes. Changing it consciously, by bringing awareness to it, will completely change the breathing pattern, throughout the day and night.
As the duration for which the prana stays inside increases, you will become aware of the nectar. Naturally, having awareness and unloading more prana shakti, will increase your longevity. That is why we call it amruta, which means nectar. In many Upanishads, they say, when the prana reaches the sahasrara chakra, or the crown center on top of your head, it flows all over the body like amrit dhara meaning nectar. When you bring awareness to the five processes - inhaling, staying, spreading, exhaling and cleaning, all the five processes happen beautifully. The sensitivity towards the experience of these five processes, can add more prana and more energy to your system. You will be able to experience the life energy flowing throughout the body.
One difficulty with this meditation is that when we do it after food, we tend to sleep. Now, just imagine if I ask you to close your eyes and sit! What will you do? You will simply go to sleep, so just get up now, and stretch your bodies, and then we can sit in meditation. Please loosen your belts because, for the meditation which you are going to do, nothing should be tightly gripping your body.