The Harmonisation of Mind and Breath :

Prana and the Mind : 3.


Likewise, there is a deliberate mustering of all the forces which constitute the limbs of yoga. The whole soul practises yoga. In this attempt at the total concentration of the personality in yoga, it is difficult to say which limb is more important than the other and which is subsidiary to the other. The logical arrangement of asana, pranayama and pratyahara, in that order, is only for convenience in understanding and for ease in practice. It does not mean that they actually have to be arranged in that order.

The process of pranayama in yoga is a technique of the harmonisation of the vital energy through the simultaneous employment of the intermediary process of pratyahara, or the withdrawal of the senses, leading to a harmonisation of the thinking process. As I mentioned, in deep concentration the senses may stop functioning temporarily, and the breath also is held. When we enjoy a beautiful landscape when the sun is about to set, our whole attention is there, and we do not hear sounds or have sensory relationships to anything else. The breath also is temporarily held. Pranayama, pratyahara and dharana are the three terms used in Sanskrit, and mean respectively: the retention of the vital force, the cessation of the function of the sense organs in respect to their objects, and the concentration or attention of the mind. All these go together.

While a position in an asana can help in the concentration of the mind, there are occasions when interest is sufficiently intense that this concentration can take place in other poses also. Sometimes when we go for a walk, we will be deeply thinking something and we will not know that we have reached our destination. This must have happened to many of us. We just reach our destination—that is all we know. We do not know that we have been walking at all, because the concentration is so strongly focused on the theme that is occupying the mind. The concentration of the mind is not necessarily connected with a particular posture of the body, though we may choose a particular posture for practical convenience in the earlier stages.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued ...