Lesson 43 - Pranayama Q&A – Relationship to meditation

From: Yogani
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: I am having wonderful blissful feelings in my first pranayama
sessions, and they are flowing over into my meditation period. I
found myself swaying with pleasurable feelings coming up my spine,
covering me with goosebumps. I found my attention drifting back into
spinal breathing during my meditation. Is this okay? What is the
relationship between pranayama and meditation? Is pranayama a kind of
meditation? Can pranayama stand alone as spiritual practice without
the meditation we have learned?

A: Your early experiences are beautiful, a wonderful taste of things
to come. Let them inspire you to carry on along the path toward
enlightenment. With regular practice of pranayama and meditation your
experiences will go much deeper.

If there are movements during pranayama or meditation, don't mind
them too much. This applies to either pleasurable movements, or
unpleasurable ones. Just easily go back to the procedure of the
practice you are doing, whether it be pranayama or meditation. If the
movements persist to the point where you are unable to easily go back
to your practice, then let your attention rest with the movements for
a while, not favoring or resisting them. Once they settle down a bit
you should be able to effortlessly go back to your practice.

Pleasurable movements, and pleasurable feelings without movements,
can be tricky when they arise in pranayama and meditation. We tend to
be attracted to these. It is natural. The tricky part is in not
confusing the rise of pleasure with practice, and becoming unduly
focused on the pleasure. Keep in mind that these experiences are
rising due to correct practice of pranayama and meditation. In order
to advance, we must continue our practices and not fall off them into
excessive attention on the ecstatic experiences that will be coming
up. This is not to say these experiences are not welcome. Certainly
they are – we are doing advanced yoga practices so we can rise to a
life in ecstasy! As we continue our daily practices, ecstatic
experiences will overflow and become a regular part of our daily
life. This is what we want. So, if they are coming up during our
pranayama and meditation, we welcome them with joy and go back to our
practice. This is how we promote the rise of ecstatic experience in
life. We will be discussing the topic of maintaining the integrity of
our practices during ongoing experiences of ecstasy in more detail
later on. In time, ecstasy will become the predominant experience
during our practices, and this presents a unique challenge on the
road to enlightenment. It is a most enjoyable challenge.

It will happen sometimes that we will find ourselves doing pranayama
during meditation, or vise versa. When this happens, we just easily
go back to the practice we are supposed to be doing at that time. We
should not attempt to do both at once. Both rely on the simplicity of
attention, i.e., easily favoring the mantra in meditation, or easily
favoring spinal breathing in pranayama. If we try and favor both
procedures at once, we divide the attention and this detracts from
both practices. So, first we do pranayama, and then we do meditation.
This is the formula for maximum effect.

Meditation and pranayama are distinctly different practices with
distinctly different purposes. Meditation instills in us the silence
of pure bliss consciousness. Pranayama loosens the subtle nerves and
stimulates the flow of prana in particular ways. This provides pure
bliss consciousness the opportunity to flow dynamically in the
nervous system. This is experienced first as the ever-increasing
expansion of ecstasy, and later as the rise of universal, blissful
self-awareness. Pranayama is on the edge of meditation, but it is not
meditation. Meditation is on the edge of pranayama, but it is not
pranayama. You might say that they both come from opposite sides to
the edge of the subtle boundary that exists between pure bliss
consciousness and prana everywhere in us. By doing pranayama and
meditation in succession we are dissolving the boundary from both
sides. It is a double whammy. This is the great benefit of doing both
practices.

Pranayama in its various forms has tremendous value, and we will make
extensive use of it. It is one of the master keys to opening the
human nervous system to divine experience. But, pranayama is not a
replacement for meditation. Only through meditation can the nervous
system be permeated with pure bliss consciousness. Pranayama and
other techniques we will discuss aid greatly in providing the ground
for pure bliss consciousness to come up, and they are means for its
expansion outward, but they are not the primary cause of its coming
up. Meditation is. For this reason, pranayama is not recommended as a
stand-alone practice without meditation.

Meditation can be practiced as a stand-alone. It is a complete
practice that will lead to a full flowering of pure bliss
consciousness in a person over an extended period of time. This is
why meditation was said to be enough for those who are not inclined
to pursue other advanced yoga practices to speed up the journey.
Meditation is the best single practice one can do.

On the other hand, practicing pranayama alone without meditation can
leave the practitioner vulnerable in some ways. Imagine you plow a
field, turning the rich soil over and over. It is exposed, fertile,
and ready for the seed to be planted. What will you plant there? If
you meditate deeply with an effective method, you will plant the
field full with the seed of pure bliss consciousness, and it will
germinate and grow strong, filling the field with joy. But what if
you don't meditate, and you don't plant anything in particular in
your fertile pranayama field? What will grow there? Something will.
But what? Whatever happens to be around. Some desires, some thoughts,
some emotions, whatever happens to be blowing over the field. To tell
you the truth, a lot of weeds can grow there, because there is no
crop of pure bliss consciousness filling up that field. This is why
pranayama, practiced as a stand-alone over months and years, can lead
to less instead of more. In some people this type of imbalanced
practice can lead to increasing rigidness, egotism, anxiety, anger,
and just plain bad luck. Meditate every day after you do pranayama
and you will experience the opposite of these things in great
profusion – flexibility, compassion, peace, joy, and lots of good
luck. That's how it works.

The guru is in you.

<  Previous  |  Next  >