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Don’t School Your Breath

During Sadhguru’s rst-ever Inner Engineering program in Hong Kong, a
participant asks a question about holding the breath in di erent ways within the
body.

Blog Home » Yoga & Meditation » Demystifying Yoga Mar 13, 2018

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Q: Namaskaram Sadhguru. Earlier, I used to practice Qigong, and in that practice they told me to hold my
energy around Manipuraka after each breath. So I have formed a habit of holding my breath like that.
Now, after I learned Shambhavi Mahamudra, I tend to mix up these two practices. What is your advice
about this?

Sadhguru: You have reopened an ancient controversy. For a long time, among the Buddhist clan,
they formed two schools. One always wants to hold the navel in and breathe using the chest.
Another believes in breathing through the belly. You see this very distinctly manifested if you look
at any statues of Buddha. In statues coming from India, he will sit with his stomach in, and he looks
very athletic. But if you see statues coming from the far-east Asian countries, he has a big belly.
This is an indication of how those schools are breathing. There are speci c purposes why such
things are done.

This will be a little hard for you to digest, but Gautama the Buddha in some way wanted to end the
human race – not by killing them, but his dream was to make the entire human community into
monks. That means in one generation, they will be over. Because he felt, and even today it continues
in the Buddhist cultures, that disembodied beings – beings without bodies – are far easier to
liberate than beings with bodies and minds. So if everyone turns into a monk, some will get
liberated, some will not nd a body. Those beings who do not have a body, he thought chik, chik,
chik, chik, chik, he will clear them up. He managed to create nearly 40,000 monks in his lifetime. But
40,000 was not the world. Other people reproduced, and you are all here. His dream did not work.

Practices for Ascetics

So, fundamentally, the practices that he taught, were taught for the monks, those who are on the
ascetic path. Today unfortunately, everybody writes some book, and everybody is practicing
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something without any sense about it, but essentially, these were designed for those on the ascetic
path. For example, if you come to the Isha Yoga Center, we have very distinct practices. What the
monks do, no one else does; for di erent types of people, depending upon the stage of their life and
the nature of their life, accordingly practices are given.

Holding the belly and breathing, or breathing through the belly,

both are not needed for you. You just inhale and let the air go

Just breathe where it wants to go. Do not try to make it go here and there
because that will lead to various other possibilities. It is like you
naturally. Do not took one step blindly and then you do not know what the next step
is. It is like launching your boat into the ocean when you do not
hold it this way or know a thing about the ocean. That is not a good way to go into the
ocean. If you want to go into the ocean, you must know every step.
that way. Otherwise you better swim in the pond.

Just breathe naturally. Do not hold it this way or that way. It is not
necessary because these things were created for di erent types of
asceticism. It was created to achieve di erent dimensions. But those things will take away every
other aspect of life, unless you make a complete change in your life system. Just doing one practice
in that direction and not making the other changes would bring more harm than wellbeing. So
please breathe naturally. Break those old habits of trying to breathe in a particular way. If you
inhale, the air knows where to go – let it go.

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Death & Breath: The Role of the Koorma Nadi | Sadhguru

Editor’s Note: Find more of Sadhguru’s insights in the book “Of Mystics and Mistakes.” Download the
preview chapter or purchase the ebook at Isha Downloads.

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If you break the shell of

your personality, you
will simply be presence
– as life is, as God is,
just a Presence.

– Sadhguru
Today’s Mystic Quote

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POSTED IN: Demystifying Yoga

TAGS: Breath, Spiritual Practices, Starred

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