Throw away those expensive night creams. Stop obsessing over those fine lines and crow’s feet in the mirror every night.

Read this before you cut a new cheque for the latest skin tightening and anti-ageing laser treatment.

And if you are dreaming of a distant technological revolution which will make you immortal, I urge you to take notice, right now, of an ancient internal technology that can do the job.

No kidding.

Try Yogic breathing or Pranayama. Try it in its truest sense, the way it was first intended. Originally.

Not simply to make your heart healthy, reduce stress and calm your mind. Those are important benefits, no doubt, but they are hardly the juice, the meat of the matter. Pranayama’s highest potential remains unexplored, its magic remains unexperienced today. This great natural tool available to us for extra-ordinary transformation remains under-utilised.

What a tragedy. There are a plethora of articles online explaining what Pranayama is and how to practise it, along with its benefits. Sadly, its actual purpose and highest capacity never gets discussed, other than in serious Yogic circles. So today, I want to digress from talking of all ancillary benefits, which they are. Ancillary. Along with its various techniques, in great step-by-step detail, which anyone with enough curiosity can easily find online.

I will cut straight to the chase here, diving deep into the heart of the issue.

Pranayama’s true goal

Let’s understand Pranayama in its most simple terms. What are you trying to do with this yogic breathing technique? During normal, regular breathing, you are hardly aware of your in-breath and out-breath or of the tiny, tiny gap between them. It’s automatic and unintentional.

Now, when you practise Pranayama, you are trying to increase this gap between your out-breath and in-breath. You want to change and regulate the coordination or rhythm of your normal breathing process, right? You want to lengthen the pause, the gap between inhalation and exhalation.

When Pranayama begins to succeed in your system, this gap begins to increase. Your breathing becomes more and more subtle; you begin to notice the long gap between your exhalation and inhalation, acutely. You become intensely aware of your breath as it enters and leaves you.

And when Pranayama reaches its peak in your system, your breath stops. Almost. No, you aren’t dying. Quite the contrary. There is complete retention of breath, yet you are profoundly aware. Your stomach swells outwards like a pot.  It happens to you automatically.

This peak state of Pranayama is called  ‘Kevala Kumbhak. Kumbhak means pot in Sanskrit.

Your breathing has become so subtle, so fine it has almost stopped. And along with that, just then, your mind comes to a complete stand-still. Your thoughts have stopped too.

So? What is the point?

Well, time in Yogic terms is the interval between two breaths. Or the interval between two thoughts. So effectively, you have stopped time for yourself.

The connection between your Breath and Mind:

Your breath and your mind are twins. There is a direct, straight connection between them; a simple linear equation. Think about it, when you are really anxious and your thoughts are running a mile a minute, aren’t you breathing hard? If you have ever had an anxiety attack, you will know what I am talking about. Chaotic mind and unruly breathing, together. What a horrifying experience, I remember mine clearly.

They are intimately connected, and that is why no anxiety can happen without unruly breath just as no thoughtlessness can happen without yogic breathing or pranayama. Only a large gap between inhalation and exhalation will allow a large gap between thoughts.

Pranayama is a step before dhyana or meditation, as the sage Patanjali tells us in his seminal book on Yoga: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Pranayama must precede meditation and samadhi, but that is a topic for another day.

For now, let’s get back to the connection between thoughts, breath and time.

The Mathematics of Yoga: Breaths/thoughts per second

In yogic science, time is the interval between two breaths. Or two thoughts.

No, not the time of our mundane world. Not the ticking of the second, minute or hour hands of the clock. That is physical time which we have invented to make sense of and manage the world around us. The universe does not acknowledge seconds and minutes, ask the scientists. The idea of physical time, measured in the unit of seconds, is falling apart. Physicists are declaring unequivocally now, that time is an illusion. It is a human construct with no basis in reality. Einstein proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that time is relative, not constant.

We mark three hundred and sixty-five days as one ‘year’ for all of us and celebrate our ageing on the same day every year, making time a constant for all. But we don’t age at the same rate, do we? Nor do we live to the same age. Why do some of us appear more youthful, while others age fast? Yes, you are guessing right. Time is psychological, and it’s not the same for each. Maybe they are taking better care of themselves, maybe they are less stressed. Maybe.

Or maybe at a more fundamental level, their frequency of breaths and thoughts are different.

So Yogic time, which can be expressed as the interval between two thoughts, or two breaths is actually psychological time.  Not physical.

We could connect the unit of Yogic time to regular time as thoughts or breaths per second. TPS or BPS.

This unit of yogic time is not constant, the same for everyone. It is relative, depending on one’s frequency of breath. When the thoughts per second for a person is more, yogic time moves faster for them. When breath per second for someone is low, yogic time moves slower.

  Maybe the number of breaths allotted to all of us is constant, but the rate at which we choose to expend our breath determines our age. Enlightened yogis and meditation masters of yore were said to live long lives. Enlightenment or nirvana is said to bring freedom from the shackles of time, rebirth and karma, both according to Vedic and Buddhist philosophies. Gods of our myths were supposedly immortal, living outside the bounds of time and space.

The Vedas say that if your unit of psychological time becomes four times the constant physical unit, your senses become purified. Purification of senses is important to achieve Pratyahara, which is the step after pranayama on the way to samadhi or enlightenment. Not only purified but highly sensitive and perceptive too.  Going further, if your psychological unit of time is five times of the physical unit, you will enter the space of enlightenment, where you sense extraordinary smells, tastes, hearing and touch. Not to mention that you will step off the wheel of time, karma and rebirths. You will become immortal.

Conclusion

So now that you know of the untold and unimagined benefits of yogic breathing, wouldn’t you like to experience it? It’s real magic. It’s insane, science-fiction-like possibilities.

Imagine what a world it would be, where all of us lived long, healthy lives with no external help from cosmetics, medicine or technology.  And you wouldn’t have to wait for the latest cream, surgery or technology to come along. You could start right now, at the place you are sitting, reading this. 

So for those of you who have been practising pranayama, I urge you to make it a more serious practice. Prioritize more time of the day to it, and you should, given its potential.

For those who have never learnt nor ever heard of it, yogic breathing might just be one of the most life-changing sit-downs you ever tried.