So let’s begin our session for today sit comfortably wherever you are keep your back and neck straight and once you feel ready very gently close your eyes start connecting with the natural flow of your breath taking just the breath as it is making no changes to how you’re breath in now gently shift your attention to your body

become aware of your portion and see if you need to align your body your back and neck should be straight your body should be comfortable weight equally balanced on both the hips and your body should be steady and stable now gently come back to your breathing and begin to deepen the breath go for slow long and deep inhalations slow long and deep exhalations

We will open today’s session by chanting om three times followed by a mantra and then we will close with three shanties take a deep inhalation for 0m if you know the mantra you can chant it with me or else you can just listen to the chanting of the mantra take a deep breath in for om

Om………………………………………
Om………………………………………
Om………………………………………

GururBrahma GururVishnu
GururDevo Maheshwaraha
Guru Saakshaat ParaBrahma
Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha
Om Shanti Shanti Shantin

Feel the vibrations join your palms together begin to rub the palms keep the palms on the eyes very slowly while blinking and looking at your palms begin to open up your eyes coming back with a big smile on your face um shanti and namaste to everyone let us begin our class for today so this is the first class for pranayama

today is our first day so yes all right great actually i was going to ask you to introduce yourself only so if you can give me a brief introduction and i kind of know why you are practicing but maybe you can share how you came across yogic practices and pranayama specifically yes i think in my daily lifetime i’ve practiced some pranayama and they work good for me for example who dry a breath i combined it with my asana

practice and this works well for me not in every position but yeah yes it’s okay maybe i i integrated it for three times in an hour a practice of an hour for example something like this not so much and yeah my favorite breathing technique is om the nostril breathing um because it clears my mind and this is my favorite but yeah i have to learn more about for example um i’ve passed this session and i guess i don’t look at the video because i want to

yeah and then yeah i have to learn much more about the techniques that i have to practice it more but i’m in my flow and i uh once a day but for example not every day but maybe three three maybe sometimes or four times a week i integrated in my daily practice my daily lifetime and yes awesome great i’m so glad to hear that you are inculcating it already and in these sessions also we will explore pranayamas

deeply only so yeah let’s let’s begin today’s session uh today’s session is mostly an introductory session so uh pranayama it’s mostly um misunderstood by a lot of people so today’s session is going to be the basic understanding of what pranayama is and how you can change your intention when you are doing it so this class will help you to set your intention for the remaining of the days right so pranayama yes

this term so let’s uh dissect this term to understand it right so pranayama this term has been you know you can split it in two ways okay ah one is prana plus m so when you write pranayama p r a n a y a m a so first you can draw two arrows okay and first way of splitting the word is prana so p r a n a right plus you can put a plus sign and along with that you can write yama y a m a okay so this is our first way of dividing

pranayama okay and then we will divide it in another way where we are going to write first prana p r a n a then we are going to add a plus and then we are going to write i am a y a m a ok so these are the two ways in which we will split this term and first let’s understand the meaning of pranayama from the word itself right so the general idea of pranayama is the first split that i have just said right so most of the

people they think pranayama is breathing exercise okay and um it is uh you know you gaining more control over the breath okay which is true which also happens as a part of the process but that is not the entire process altogether and breath is not the only thing you are targeting when you are doing pranayama right otherwise you know you could have easily done any other practices like i always say you know you have

come in yoga so you could have easily opted for any other thing which would have physically you know helped you to move better but you came into yoga because you were looking for something more so pranayama is also something more than the breathing practices all right

sorry so this term prana below it you can in brackets write down the meaning of prana and for right now for i will elaborate on prana more deeply after some time but try for now you can write down for prana in a bracket vital force okay or life force any term that you prefer and the meaning and the term yama y-a-m-a this means control all right so prand plus yama life force and then control so very easily you can

understand pranayama is what the control of the life force okay so see here i have not used the word breath at all okay so you are trying to control something which is called prana okay essentially that is what you are doing right now this is the most easily understandable meaning of pranayam like i said you want to gain control over how you are breathing and somehow from whatever i have said so far you can

vaguely put this together that the life force is connected to your breath right so somewhere there is a connection but they are not exactly the same thing okay so prana is much more than just the breathing all right and yes i will talk about it but for now this understanding this entire connection or this entire these dots should start forming in your mind okay my breath there is something called prana and then what i am doing when i do pranayama i am controlling it okay now the second meaning is

actually the holistic meaning of the term pranayama okay so first is prana so again you can write in bracket life force it remains the same meaning remains the same but here i have you know split the word slightly differently and the word i am this i am means expansion all right so not only are you controlling controlling is a part again it is the part of the process right so when you know you will see you do different pranayam practices so maybe you inhale through the right exhale through the left or inhale through the left

exhale through the right so this is what you are acquiring some form of control right now you are choosing not to breathe through both the nostrils you are intentionally closing off one of the other nostrils so you are gaining control this is gaining control right and through this you know what is happening is actually the expansion all right of the life force all right so merely control is different or it’s just a way of attaining the

expansion but pranayama when you do pranayama you are aiming towards the expansion of the life force right you would have seen so many yogis right who look young at a very old age they look young right so what are they doing you ask them what is the secret and they say we practice pranayama right so now what are they doing when they’re practicing pranayama this is the expansion right their life

becomes long you would see pranayama tacticians their life becomes long they look young so what are they doing actually you know if it was merely a game of the breath most of the people would be able to do it and get the same results but you will see so many pranayam practitioners practitioners are not even able to get those results right means pranayama is something different than breathing no right so breathing is just

one way in which your prana shows up right so you will see that you know one of the very easily manipulated way right in which it’s like breathing is a voluntary and involuntary action at the same time right if you don’t focus too much on it it becomes involuntary it’s still going on and then when you focus on it you want to shift it intentionally change it intentionally then it becomes what it becomes a voluntary

action same involuntary action can be turned into the voluntary action and it is one of the ways in which the vital force it shows up in your body right just one of the ways so prana is overall not the breath if you hold your breath for a while you will still live okay have you ever tried holding a breath and you are still alive then you just you know started breathing again when it got uncomfortable but if the prana leaves your body okay

there is no chance okay you you will encounter what is called death okay so breath can be held but if the prana leaves the body if you suspend breathing you will be still be alive but there is no chance that if the prana leaves the body you will be alive right so they are very in different different aspects they are different all right various aspects they will show their difference but because they are like breathing is a sub

part of prana only so you are able to through the manipulation of the breath you are able to manipulate the life force in your body right so let’s little bit more deeply understand prana okay because there is a lot of misconception around this also so prana is the i like i said it’s the life force okay so now what the mind thinks is whatever will have life only that thing will have prana right but if you come to the indian understanding uh the way in which indian philosophy and here the spiritual

texts they explain prana is just the life force and it is present in everything okay so it is present in your living things and your non-living things right so we would have i will take a very common example you would have seen some people you know they bring certain healing stones they bring certain you know stones or certain things which they consider to be very lucky right uh and place those things in the house right it could be anything stones is just a very common example that i am taking right

so now the stone is clearly non-living yeah but you will see this thing that it does have some form of energy in it okay and that is prana in some things or certain beings the prana is more okay and in some it is less but that doesn’t mean that prana isn’t present in anything prana is present in this also in may also right just the level at which it is present that becomes different all right so pranayama when we talk of pranayama we are focused on this force

which is giving us life all right and when you do pranayama practices you are you know um activating and at the same time channeling as well those the that life force okay you are trying to avoid that life force to you know it’s like putting your phone on battery saver mode basically right so now same amount of battery will sustain you for a longer period of time that is why you see yogis also they have a long life why it’s not because they eat more right it’s not because they do other things it’s because

they have worked on the expansion of the life force right so i’m not saying that they acquire more life force they expand whatever is there right so pranayama is all about this thing and breathing forms a very essential and basic part of pranayama so it is much more beyond the control of the breath all right um if you have any questions just let me know any questions doubts and uh you can write them down also as and when you feel like it i will address them right okay so i will continue then i think that till now there are no doubts all right so let’s come to why are we trying to you know

work on this all right so in the hot yogic texts a very strong relation between the breath and the mind has been given so next time you get angry you know just observe your breathing all right or next time when you are very happy just observe your breathing you will see that the wind which your mind um the way in which you are breathing has a direct connection to the state of your mind all right so it was the

easiest way for the yogis to you know switch as well from one state of the mind to the other right in hattie text it has been written that ah you know when the breath moves the mind moves all right so all of this movement that you see in your mind that comes because the there is movement of the breath and it changes as the state of your mind changes so what pranayama actually does is by regulating the breath it

will also begin to change the state of the mind and that is what hath you does in general also it helps you to move your body so that the state of mind changes again the target point is somewhere the same right it you know asks you to regulate the breath so that again the breath breathing becomes more stable and as a result of the breathing becoming more stable you also feel the stability in the mind right so after practicing pranayama after your sessions right after that particular practice that we

cover on a certain day you will feel the impact you will feel a state of change in your mind because both of them are very very closely interlinked right so let’s now come to some aspects some terms that you can use in your classes and i will be i will also be using them so a proper understanding of these terms are very important sorry is very important why because these terms change the quality of your breathing okay so there are four aspects of pranayama overall okay first one is called

okay purak right or you can also write in the bracket inhalation okay i could have just said inhalation but this inhalation has certain qualities hence it is given this name okay so i will tell you about that also let us first write down all of the terms that are required second one is ray chuck r e c h a k a right i will repeat it once again r e c h a k a in bracket you can write down exhalation right now this is not normal exhalation

then we come to the third aspect which is called antar kumbak okay antar kumbak antar is a so i’ll just spell it again a n and in bracket you can write down internal retention and your fourth and last aspect is okay b a h i r kumbak is again the same k u m b h a k a i will spell b here once again b a h i r and in the bracket you can write on external retention

so these are your four aspects these form the basis for the pranayama practices and very essential to understand these before you enter the pranayam practices so first thing that i wrote was i made you write was puraq right so inhalation but what is the quality of this inhalation first thing from involuntary this becomes a voluntary action okay so right now also i’m breathing but then i consciously choose to breathe in right

so i’m changing it has to be slow long and deep these are three qualities that the inhalation should have slow long and deep then it will be called purak so conscious it’s a conscious action so i already covered that you turn it into a voluntary action you can also write conscious right whichever term you like so this is the quality of purak it is slow long deep unconscious

same goes with ray chuck but now we are doing this with what the exhalation so right now also acceleration is going on normally but i can choose to gain more control over my acceleration what will i do i will make it slow long deep and conscious again these four qualities remain

then the third and fourth is the retention all right so normally what we do in our day to day lives even when we gain control over the breathing we are only inhaling and exhaling all right so pura can recheck go on sometimes for us they do happen right but the key quality that the pranayama or k distinction that each and every

pranayama practice has is the practice of retention all right which is also called kumbak kumbak is of two types like i made you write antar kumbak and bahir kumbak right so i can either inhale and then hold my breath inside my body right and then there is another way of holding the breath when i exhale my ah you know the breath has escaped my body and then before inhaling i put a pause right so

kumbhak’s initially what they do they put a pause between the normal breathing process okay again you have to you do it consciously so retention ah most of the times when you will retain also you will put in some effort in that and you will be you will consciously do that thing right normally we do not retain the breath right so again there is a lot of awareness that is there when we retain this breath also right be it

internal or external ok so these are four terms that you will be using and out of them first two are the most important ones okay because most ah of our sessions are only going to have the first two okay the internal retention is also one stage that we will uh come across but not too often all right so pura can raychak are two very important things now already you have changed the quality of how your breathing right now um

let’s come to the aim of pranayama right why i am saying this thing because in all of these four aspects there is one thing that sometimes automatically happens right and for that you need to understand why you do pranayama right so now you are doing so much hard work why are you doing it you know that question comes up in the mind why am i doing so much hard work right so at this point of time it is very

important to understand that you can do multiple practices or you can do only one and two but one or two but you can achieve the final goal right so this final goal the goal of pranayam practices all the pranayama practices it is to reach this stage of retention right there is a stage of retention which is famously called kevli kumbak k e v a l i k and then kumbhak remains the same k u m b h a k e ok

so this is your spontaneous retention all right sometimes when you you know ah sit in meditation also automatically the breath you know it it’s it’s suspended there is automatic retention there is no effort that you put in that attention right i am referring to meditation because it is more easily observable when you sit in meditation than

when you do pranayama because in pranayama till now your focus was just to change the breathing right so in pranayama maybe you would not have observed this but during meditation you definitely would have right so the final goal of pranayama is this automatic retention or this spontaneous retention which is famously called kevli kumbak okay now there is a point where i will take in the breath i will hold and then i will exhale then i might hold right so this holding is supported by

the inhalation and the exhalation but there will come a point where all these processes will become one only and that one process is the retention of the breath okay spontaneous without any effort and why do we need this right pranayama comes before meditation yeah if you i think you must be aware of this thing that pranayama is still like a practice which a lot of people do right because it is it comes

before meditation meditation not everybody does meditation is an advanced practice right so in meditation after a while what starts happening your breathing might begin to disturb you right so that is why the yogis already set this target in a practice that was before meditation right so that the breathing which disturbs you during

meditation that stage doesn’t come up that it’s acting as a distraction for you now right so when you reach the stage of spontaneous retention you somewhere remove this obstacle this thing that will distract you it’s a distraction during meditation all right so that is why we practice pranayama this is the ultimate

goal right of pranayama so let’s just briefly also discuss the definition given by patanjali and then i will move ahead and tell you more things about pranayam so today we are only going to have a theoretical session from tomorrow we will begin the practices so patanjali also in his text he very famously described the practice of pranayama and he said that the cessation of the inhalation and exhalation is

pranayama right so till now uh in a lot of places you have heard controlling or manipulation right but patanjali when he described pranayama he gave altogether different definition of pranayama and he said this thing that the cessation of the inhalation and exhalation is pranayama right so again we are we have come back to what i was saying before only that this spontaneous so this cessation of the

inhalation and exhalation is not supported by the inhalation and exhalation it is spontaneous in its nature it happens right so initially you put in the effort and then there comes a stage when the retention happens automatically and that is exactly how even patanjali has described pranayama he says that once you reach that stage where both the inhalation and exhalation they cease to exist meaning what meaning

that you are constantly in a state of retention only right so that point right or when you reach this stage that is actually what he called pranayama okay this stage when everything the inhalations exhalations they seize okay so now when you get the clarity okay on what pranayama actually means what does it help you with okay i

could have given you a very brief definition also and we could have you know started with other topics but i have taken out the time today to elaborate on this because this will help you to set the intention of your practice like i said asan pranayam these are stepping stones to something ahead of them

all right so most people like asan they also get stuck in pranayama they like pranayama so much or they think that they want to hold the breath for a long period of time so they you know push themselves that right now i’ve held my breath for 10 seconds and now i want to reach 15 right so they push themselves so what happens is they go into the madness right madness of the practice not madness like literally

madness getting triggered but this is a madness of the practice you know you’re constantly challenging yourself wanting to increase the time for which you are retaining the breath and all along it was supposed to be natural happening it was supposed to be happening naturally to you right so in this class only change your mind towards the practice and see it as a stepping stone only right for the next

practice so it is preparing you for your next practice so don’t get stuck in it and don’t do it with the sense that this is it okay it is a stepping stone it will push you forward it will move you forward and it will take you towards ah preparation of the higher practices all right so because this is going on a lot i am focusing a little bit of and focusing a little bit on

this and giving it some time in today’s session only so from tomorrow we are going to go deeply into the practices so today we have understood the meaning of pranayama right we have understood the four aspects of pranayama which are very important and then we also talked of the ultimate goal of pranayama we have also understood a very formal definition that has been given right and now we are going to briefly discuss because not a lot of time is left briefly discuss the concept of five

sheets okay because we are going to be working on one of them right and we need to understand what is the where we are working first where am i working right and what are the direct impacts i will see right or the closest things that will get impacted when i do this practice all right so the concept of the five sheet sheets comes in over here five sheets uh is just a concept which is like uh in yogic practices as per the

point of view of yoga we are not merely the physical body right we have different dimensions in which we experience ourselves right so normally also you would have seen this thing this these five sheets that i am talking of all of us have somewhere or the other experienced them but we never realized they were different dimensions

right of just our own cells okay so this concept of five sheets in sanskrit it is called panchkosh okay so you might come across this term so p a n c h a punch okay p a n c h a punch means five okay and then kosh k o s h a kosh this means layer or sheath ok so suppose right now if you are having a diary where you are writing

everything down so you can draw a very big circle all right in the space that you have draw a big circle and mark the circle as the first sheath and this sheath is called anamy kosh or your physical body a n n a m a y a k o s h and in the bracket you can write down physical body

so now uh physical body so this is the most easily observable aspect of you every day you see your body every day when you look in the mirror you see your face and right now when i am giving you this class somewhere i can see myself and when you are taking this class if you turn on your camera you will also see yourself right so this is the most easily observable uh dimension of our existence the physical body if you

go for a scan you will get to see the arteries the veins your internal organs and all of this is supported by the food right so when you consume food you give energy to this body right so under literally means food so this is the food sheath you can say which is totally dependent on food for its existence so if you stop eating for a few days if

you would have seen some yogis also when they you know don’t eat the food only all together for a few days so they lose out on a lot of weight it doesn’t happen that they don’t lose out on the weight or their you know body doesn’t react to this thing because the physical body is dependent on what you eat right that is why what you eat is so important because it’s actually going to you know show up on your body you

know what you’re eating and how how you are consuming it right so this is our first sheet this is the outermost all right so you might think this is the innermost but no this is the outermost easy to observe right then we move to the next sheath which is the most important one of them when it comes to the pranayama classes it is called prana maikosh ok so p r a n a

in the bracket you can write down the vital body this is a target sheath all right so like i said in the body you have the arteries the veins all of these blood vessels are there and they are doing their own function carrying the blood everything right so like that when we come to a more subtle layer so the deeper we go the more subtle these

layers become right so you drew a big circle outside now draw a tiny circle inside that right close to the big circle only not too much inside because you have to draw the five sheets and this you can mark as prand may kosh or vital body so this is a subtle like it is more subtle than the physical body it is not that easy to observe and the prand mai kush it is filled with the energy channels which in yogic terms you call it

nadi nadi nadi so just like your blood vessels they are carrying the blood there are some subtle energy channels in the body which are carrying the energy right and these energy channels are called nadis and as per hearty week texts we have 72 000 nadis in the body 36 000 on one side and 36 000 on the other side right so 72 000 in total these nadis make sure that the energy right it is circulated properly it is circulated well in the body and all the functions of the body they can take place right

this concept of nadis it is very important overall also and we will discuss this more deeply in philosophy classes only but yes you should know that pranay kosh what is the part of the pranam kosh it is the energy channels right so here we are working on the energy channels and um we are working on their cleansing we are working on

how the energy is going to move so when we do pranayama practices this is the sheath which is impacted the most all right now if you come to the next circle you can draw another circle inside the first two circles and you can write down arrow make a make an arrow and label it as manu my kosh m a n o m a y a ok and you can try down in bracket mental body

so we are done with the physical we are done with the vital now we come to the mental body so this mano my kush again you have experienced it you know there are lot of thoughts that go on in your mind right you experience so many emotions throughout your day right and this is one aspect of you right and this aspect is called the manomay kosh again thoughts are much harder to track you can still connect

with the prana through the breathing right so breathing is not that easy to observe like the physical body but it is not as hard to observe as the thoughts or as the emotions right so the manomy kosh gets much more subtle than the prand mai kosh so i will talk about the other two ah sheets in the next class but i just wanted to complete these first three sheets why because pranay kosh is the one you will

directly impact okay when you do pranayama and then it is sandwiched between two other sheets the body and then your mind so the two other places where you will see the impact of pranayama the most they are going to be these two layers in between which the pranam gets sandwiched your mind you will feel immediate difference in your mind in your emotions and you will also start seeing changes in your physical

body when you do pranayama right and it is because of the closeness of these two sheets to the main sheath that we are working on so we will discuss the other things tomorrow any doubts queries or questions yes so i will also post it on the group it is called the guru mantra g-u-r-u guru mantra okay great awesome all right so we will also chant one more mantra at the end so i will give you the name since you asked

for the first one this is called shanti mantra s h a n t i shanti right mantra so we i’ll chant it ah and you can also look for it you will be able to find it easily so for today you can just listen to it and if you know it you can chant it along with me and then we will close our session

so sit comfortably wherever you are keep your back and neck straight and then once you feel ready very gently close your eyes we’ll chant om one time and then we will chandishanti mantra so take a deep inhalation for om

Om………………………………..
sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ
sarve santu nirāmayāḥ
sarve bhadrāṇi paśyantu mā kaścidduḥ khabhāgbhaveta।
oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ॥

Take a deep breath in for om
Om………………………………….
shanti shanti shantih

observe the vibrations for a few moments we are just going to focus on how our breathing is just observe the natural flow of your breath and try to keep your attention on the breathing if your mind runs away i gently bring it back to the breath don’t make any changes to the breath simply observe how you inhale and how you exhal join your palms together gently bow down just a sense of respect and gratitude and now rub your palms together keep them on your eyes very slowly while blinking and

looking at your palms open up your eyes coming back with a big smile on your face um shanti namaste i will see you tomorrow for pranayama i think you are not joining for philosophy right yeah because it’s too early in the morning i have to work this time is my working break and therefore it is it’s yeah time zones are very different i understand that so yeah i will see you tomorrow for pranayama only then and keep practicing and enjoy the remaining of your sessions bye-bye namaste.

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