Pranayama with or without Meditation
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Jan 25, 2018
MiBeloved 5 years ago
If you do the pranayama with or without asanas and focus on infusing energy into the body, then you will get the right benefit from it, in terms of the eight process yoga system of Patanjali (ashtanga yoga).
If however you mix pranayama with meditation, then you will not get that benefit necessarily.
Looking at Patanjali, we find that after asana and pranayama, there is a gap with pratyahar before samyama which is meditation.
So where is the idea coming from that one should do pranayama as part of samyama?
Patanjali lists the three higher stages of yoga as samyama, meaning dharana, progressing into dhyana, and then into samadhi the highest level of meditation.
In between pranayama and samyama there is pratyahar.
What happens is that if you do a thorough pranayama practice (with or without asana postures), you will find that if you sit to do meditation immediately after, then you will be in the state of pratyahar because a thorough pranayama results in pratyahar.
The idea that one should sit to meditate and do pranayama practice with meditation or as a part of meditation, has come to us from Kriya masters who either did not really understand the system or who felt compelled to change the original system for one reason or the other.
In the case where those guruji practiced anuloma-viloma practice, they did that as a pranayama practice and then at a certain stage of infusion by that, they left that aside and did meditation.
It is either you are focusing fully on infusing breath and using breath to manipulate kundalini or you are not doing so. If you are doing that, then focus on that and leave meditation aside.
Do not confuse that as meditation. That is not samyama.
First do breath infusion. Then cease that when you have done the required amount and then do samyama. Do not mix the two.
If the pranayama is done properly, it will achieve the 5th step of yoga which is pratyahar. And so you will be free to do samyama as a sequential set of flowing practices which ends in samadhi trance stage.
There is no need to invent another process of yoga, because Patanjali has already defined the process which was handed down, he said by the original teacher, by Ishvara.
Alfredo 5 years ago
Thank you Acharya!
What you wrote is 100% in accordance to the Kriya Yoga handed down to Lahiri Mahasaya by Babaji, which was then given to Swami Shriyukteshwar and Yogananda, and from there to Swami Hariharananda. By carefully reading the letters between Lahiri Baba and his disciples in the later 1800s (which I posted here recently in the files section), I could confirm that the technique that Hariharananda taught, as he claimed, was indeed the original one imparted by Lahiri Baba to Yukteshwarji.
As you explained, this technique uses pranayama before meditation (and several asanas and Kriyas detailed in Hatha Yoga Pradipika also). The 1st Kriya pranayama, becomes the Thokar Kriya pranayama in 2nd Kriya, and that's it, this is a very powerful pranayama, which I have illustrated in the first part of the sampler video I posted of the practice.
So, what is different from the breath of fire (Kapal Bhati or Bhastrika) as taught by Yogi Bhajan or you? Of course the intensity, thus the time it takes to get results. In terms of intensity, I would rate the Thokar one as in between anuloma-viloma and the breath of fire.
But then some of Lahiri Baba's disciples then would do, and were instructed to do, 400, 600, and even in one case illustrated in a letter 1728 cycles of Thokar pranayama in a 12-hours stretch! That is also a big difference, for today, at least to the people they initiate into that lineage, this important factor is not stressed, the connection is not stressed.
I can attest to the power of the Thokar Kriya pranayama for I did once 144 cycles (1.25 hour stretch) daily for months with good results.
