Pranayama Breath Infusion Details

Pranayama Breath Infusion Details

In some lineages, pranayama breath infusion was regarded as an advanced and treasured practice but in others it was not given such importance. Most modern groups which consider themselves to be yoga societies are really asana postures and mental silencing groups. These are not yoga groups in so far as yoga is defined by Patanjali as being an eight (8) staged process.

Nowadays anyone can learn to do postures, learn how to sit silently doing who knows what in their minds, and then consider themselves to be yogis or yoginis. Apart from the cultural orientation and the lifestyle stipulations which are yama restrains and niyama permissions, the simplest stage of yoga is the asana postures. But these are a small part of yoga even though these are the most demonstrable because they are visible to physical vision.

Pranayama breath infusion is visible in part as a breathing process but it has its hidden or abstract part which is the ingestion of energy into the subtle body and the inner expression of aroused awareness or kundalini.

At first breath infusion has a specific breathing method as the objective. Then it shifts into regulating the accumulation of the energy derived from the inbreaths. After that one should observe and direct the distribution of the accumulated energy. Finally, one must observe meditative states, higher levels of perception and experience which occur during the practice. It is listed:

• absorption of fresh air
• accumulation of the absorbed air
• distribution of the accumulated air
• observation of the higher states of awareness which occur as a result

Beginners should focus on absorption of fresh air so that gradually over time, the lung cells become more efficient at intake of that energy and all cells participate in the effort to infuse the fresh air into the blood stream. Simultaneously one should monitor what effects this has on the subtle body. Pranayama breath infusion has the subtle body as its ultimate objective. Hence in all stages whatever realization is derived in reference to the physical system, is preliminary.

Once the yogi masters the absorption of fresh air state, he/she becomes concerned with accumulation of the energy, so that little interest is given to the absorption, where that happens as a matter of course, where it does not need to be attended to and the interest of the self-shifts to accumulation of fresh energy.

Once the accumulation is mastered, and that happens with little attention as a matter of course, the yogi should focus in the distribution of the accumulated energy. Mostly this distribution occurs on the basis of the locks which are applied during the practice. These are highlighted by the anus lock, sex lock, navel lock, neck lock and mind lock. There are other locks which come into focus as one practices. Most of these occur automatically at certain stages of practice but a yogaguru may show or explain some of these.

When observation of the accumulation energy occurs naturally as a matter of course, the yogi should shift to the last stage which is where there is focus on the shifts to higher states of awareness and to increased psychic perception during the breath infusion.

Beginner should do meditation after a thorough session of breath infusion but the advanced students should meditate during and after the practice. This means what while a beginner sits to meditate at the end of the breath infusion session, the advanced student has the extra task of meditating during the breath infusion in various postures and while sitting after finishing the infusion session.

The advantage for the advanced student is that he/she conditions the memory to accept impressions of the higher states experienced during the practice. The value of this is that the memory chamber becomes adjusted such that many non-yogic impressions become deleted or erased from the psyche and are replaced by transcendence impressions, which add to the yogi’s awareness so that the thinking energy is not as involved with lower impressions as before.

That yogi also gages the transcendence states as to what they are and as to the level of their contact. On the astral side, during advanced practice, siddha yogis visit to give inspiration and instructions.