Science of Breath
We brush our teeth daily.
Yes, there are some weekends where we become careless and let the day slip by without it. Big deal!
We poop almost daily too in the morning ( noon or evening, whatever your body and your digestive system clock prefers )
What does Sudarshan Kriya have to do with brushing and pooping?
Our body sustains on periodic cleanliness, does it not? What about our mind? It's fascinating that we don't think about how much it might need cleansing, the way we mindlessly and brilliantly have chores set for physical cleanliness. Chores which we don't even give a second thought.
Therapy helps big time. I personally have never had sessions, but a lot of my friends successfully have had. Sometimes there is a need to talk things out in a systematic, pragmatic, safe way. How, might not always be evident. That's why trained, non judgemental professionals come into picture.
But there are some things that can't go away with talking. One of them surprisingly and fundamentally is stress. The very word gives such a negative connotation that most of the human minds would feel averse to both the word and its meaning the usage of the word commonly suggests. Some of the possible things that might pop in your brain are:
- I don't have stress in life.
- I have my own ways to deal with stress. I smoke, drink, it helps me put my worries and botheration away.
- I go to the gym when I'm feeling stressful or I go to play football or go running.
- I talk it out with my best friend, take therapy.
All of the above assumes that stress is bulk event driven. Something happens, and that considerable chunk of an event has an effect on either our mind or our body or both. Maybe you went through a bad breakup, or had a tussle with your manager or boss. Maybe it's very hard for you to help your parents understand something about you and your choices. Gazillions of events that have happened with you with which you associate stress. And rightfully. They do contribute to stress.
Overtime, I've realised though that stress also sneaks as we live our lives without any comparable significant event happening. It might be the posture you sit in, the sleep cycles you engage in because of an indoor computer job, digestion stress on your tummy with unhealthy or ill timed meals. This mundane list can go on…
Stress is also accumulated continuously from all walks of life and not just through emotional, physical or mental exhaustion inflection points.
At the subtlest level stress is concentrating on what is not okay
— Swami Purnachaitanya
The hardest part about stress is, you can't measure it when it's seeped deep down into the nervous system in ways difficult to comprehend because of its sneaky characteristic. How it shows in our body-mind complex is different for everybody. And like most of the other times when we catch diseases, we end up treating symptoms rather than being able to find the root cause.
Think of this from this perspective. We eat, food gets stuck, we have to brush. We eat, it gets digested, we have to throw out the waste. With both of these activities if we don't clean, our bodies are smart enough to put pressure so that we ultimately have to. But the mind doesn't have a very evident excretory system.
We use our mind all day, sometimes nights ( dreams ) and it has been constantly working since years without any rest at all. Who is washing the mind? And how?
There's an ancient secret hinted by Maharishi Patanjali in between ~ 200 BC - 150 BC, that was recently discovered again by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on September 17, 1981. Maharishi Patanjali saved this powerful knowledge in this sutra:
Prachchardana vidharanabhyam va pranasya.
Let's break it down:
prachchardana = by splitting (expulsion);
vidharanabhyam = by retention;
va = optionally;
pranasya = of breath
By modulating the breath by splitting its rhythms and patterns by retaining and exhaling in a particular fashion / special manner.
This is the initial hint of how breath can be controlled in a manner which helps ( and teaches, thanks to dopamine ) to calm the mind. That is precisely what my Guru devised: a way to harness the capabilities of breathing in a way that relaxes the mind.
Think of it this way:
Our emotions show in our breath.
When we are under the control of a particular emotion, say anger: our breath is jittery, hot; when we are sad our exhales are longer than inhales, and so forth… What if, we changed the rhythms of the breath ( as hinted by Maharishi Patanjali ) in particular way and it helped control our emotional upsurge? Sounds plausible right?
That's the crux of Sudarshan Kriya. All you need to learn it is to know how to breathe, which fortunately we all do. That means every human on the planet is eligible to learn it. Congrats 😋.
But as easy it is to learn it, it's as powerful. 90% of our body toxins are released through breath. When the breath is modulated in a rhythmic fashion for a particular period of time, the release process speeds up. Hence it takes a trained teacher's guidance to learn it.
So Sudarshan Kriya in one line, is a vaccum cleaner for your mind.
You can't control the mind from the level of the mind.
That's why mindfulness is not helpful when your mind is not calm on its own. Using the breath first to calm the mind down, and then enjoying the mindfulness that comes as a side affect of it seems like a decent idea to try, doesn't it?
Let's hear Sudarshan Kriya's ( also called SKY ) experiences from Yale university students — who engaged in a scientific experiment and didn't expect it to be so powerful and helpful —
Learn the science of breath in a more fun way than I could write in this article here:
I've seen numerous friends and family members immensely benefit from Sudarshan Kriya ( yes even the ones who had everything going on well in their lives ). I'll curate their experiences soon, stay put :)
If you want to learn this wonderful piece of art that calms the mind down like magic, message me and I shall get back to you :)
The best thing is, you can learn it online!
If you'd like to register right away, you can do that here 👇🏻
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