Practice Session - 25/06/2012

Segment from original post by Thomer Scheepens:

What I did back then was rapid exhaling and inhaling, inhaling as passive, exhaling and inhaling in a very light way, almost like sniffing, not forcefully as you do with Kapalbhati or Bhastrika, I don't think even all the air goes out of the body with the exhaling, but yet it raised my kundalini back then within minutes.

 

Suryananda's reaction:

 

Surprisingly, I noticed a similar breathing pattern with someone who would attend classes when I used to share the practice in that type of format a couple of years ago. He would so easily collapse and so regularly and predictably, eventually he was advised not to stand up for the rooster. I thought to myself this is ridiculous let me see what else could be going on.

 

So one day, out of curiosity I mimicked this rather light but particular breathing as compared to serious bellows, and surprisingly it worked! Repeatedly there seemed to be a clear difference, therefore I would use it.

 

I was practicing with RishiDeva some months later, and during the rooster I was doing that breath pattern; he noticed and impatiently directed me to correct and to breathe more forcefully. Of course, I didn’t even think of following up with him about trying some non-sense, the prescribed methodology is to max out, so why would anyone want to hold out?

 

Reading Thomer’s experience years later I find it interesting. Still, when one is capable of serious bellows this methodology is a waste of time, a beginner's caprice on some variations in how to arouse the life force just withholding bellows or stopping breath can also cause the same.

There is such a thing as negative pranayama which is practiced by some ascetic. Duryodhana the villian of the Mahabharata was an expert at it. This is why he was living at the bottom of a lake without air for weeks after he lost the Battle of Kurukshetra. What I teach has to do with increasing fresh air and reducing used air. The negative pranayama has to do with decreasing fresh air and increasing pollutants. It is a practice but I do not teach it. Pigs thrive on eating what humans evacuate as food waste, so we cannot say that it is not nourishing. Stool is nourishing but if you are not aiming to get the benefits of eating it as the pigs do, then there is no point in eating it.