To that God we dedicate our life,
Who is the giver of life’s breath, power and vigor;
Whose command all the divine powers obey;
Who rules whatever breathes, moves or is still;
Who is the God of all created beings.Atharva Veda
“To live is to breathe” is to assert the obvious. We do not need medical science to tell us that the whole marvelous mechanism of the human body stops when breath departs. Otherwise stated, however perfect the physical body is, with the absence of breath it is but a corpse. Yet there is more to know about breathing than the obvious, and from the spiritual heritage of Yoga comes the invitation to learn to expand what it is “to live.”
Isn’t it enough, you might think, just to breathe and to be grateful to be alive, whatever one’s circumstances or age? Well, if to “breathe and let breathe” is enough for you, then the subject of this book is not going to hold your interest.
Admittedly, for many people, “to breathe” simply designates that process of air going into the lungs expanding to receive oxygen and then contracting to expel carbon dioxide. Yet the process of breathing, as we will see, involves our entire body, its energies and more, circulating throughout our entire being as various simultaneous waves, arising and falling. Also, breathing is more than what happens physically as you inhale and exhale, and it does not even originate from your lungs.
Most people will duly appreciate that breathing keeps the lungs, brain and organs functioning while maintaining all the attendant functions of digestion, circulation and movement. They know that improving breathing improves health. Although fitness watches remind their wearers regularly to mindfully take deep breaths, such attentions are still comparatively superficial, ignoring more sublime meaningful potential! Unfortunately, theologians do not develop the importance of breath as essential to one’s spiritual life. Some say that scriptural knowledge is important, some that prayer is, others that faith is, and others that ritual is, but that the knowledge of breath is of essential importance is likely to be disregarded or deemed unnecessary.
You have been breathing from your first day on earth. You are breathing now as you read this, and you will breathe for as long as you live as human. Most of the time you will not think about breathing, and yet, when methodically and meditatively breathing you will find yourself attuned to, inspired by and empowered by the most sublime wisdom ever known to human minds! Your own mental powers of Contentment and Peace, Power and Universality will grow.
Although many creatures breathe, we humans, in relation to our breath, are unique. The Old Testament’s Book of Genesis asserts that there is a special and purposeful link with God through the breath, as “God breathed the breath of life in the nostrils of man.” Note that the pronouncement in Genesis occurs only after the creation of heaven and hell, after the creation of earth and skies, after creation of days and nights — in fact after all living components of nature are created. A profound point derives from that single statement.
That God breathes at all is something we might further wonder about since God’s breath would certainly not involve lungs ... nor inhaling and exhaling. In what, then, does God’s breath consist? God’s breath must and can only be the breath of life itself, as Breath and Life are inexorably linked together. Why, then, the specific mention of “the nostrils of man”? Ah, we shall see ... The knowledge will be both practicable as well as illuminating.
Srimati Kamala “Swami Kamalananda,” The Breath of God and Pranayam