FAQ on Pranayam
1. What is Pranayam?
Ans : Pranayam is an ancient system of breathing exercises, which was created by the yogis in India. This system helps to improve health and to increase spiritual awareness & consciousness.
2. How does Pranayam help in improving the practitioner’s health?
Ans : Most people breathe incorrectly, and almost everyone has health problems. When a disease is present in the body, then a corresponding change takes place in the breath and the breathing pattern. On the reverse side, if we change the breath and the breathing pattern we can cure at least a large part of the disease. Usually the disease has multiple causes, and pranayam removes many of them. Even if a person is not sick, the practice of pranayam helps in maintaining one’s health and helps prolong life.
3. How does Pranayam help in developing consciousness?
Pranayam purifies the mind and thereby gives clarity, proper practice of pranayam creates a feeling of lightness in the body and mind, helps a person focus his mind on the action that he wants to execute, calms the mind and as a consequence reduces the blood pressure and leads to an overall improved health. Also, pranayam clears negative emotions, aggression, anger, thereby reducing stress giving us the opportunity to become more relaxed and happy.
4. What does the term higher consciousness mean? Ans : Higher consciousness - is the force within our minds that allows us to accomplish great deeds and to achieve perfection in all that we strive to accomplish. For this we need higher consciousness, intelligence and inspiration. Since pranayam removes negative emotions and clears the mind, it makes the mind freer, expands its boundaries, and helps to achieve higher intelligence and higher consciousness.
5. Who can practice pranayam?
Ans : Since almost everyone has health problems and each one of us wishes to improve our health as well as to improve our effectiveness and efficiency, almost everyone can practice pranayam, except for children under 13 years of age and people with serious diseases.
6. Does one need to prepare for Pranayam?
Ans : No special preparation is required, you can participate in the seminar without any experience of any kind in yoga. The seminar is held for five days for two hours. During this period one must eat light food, with a gap of at least 3 hours between the last meal and the beginning of the seminar. Often people at the workshop can lose upto 6 kgs of weight.
7. What takes place in your workshops? What kind of techniques are taught?
Ans : The first thing we do in our workshop - is to try to correct breathing, so that the pattern becomes correct. The larger part of the techniques are focused on breath elongation, and this calms the mind. The exercises are very easy and anyone can manage to do most of them.
The workshop lasts 5 days, and to experience and achieve the objective of these breathing practices, one must attend all five days.
These breathing practices cause subtle changes, and those who are accustomed to physical practices sometimes find it difficult to immediately understand our system, because there is no need to move, only to sit and breathe. But the changes will still occur. The role of students in these changes is about 40%, the rest is in the hands of the teacher.
In addition, there are important instructions for the implementation of exercises that we explain in the seminar. These instructions are important and must be observed.
This Seminar on breathing exercises is the first module in the training, there are an additional 4 modules. The remaining stages involve even more subtle and profound work.
8. Why do you think that most people breathe incorrectly?
Ans : Most people do not notice their breathing. We breathe several thousand times a day and oddly enough we do not pay any attention to such an important thing. In normal humans, exhalation and inhalation takes 4 to 5 seconds and it is believed that in 24 hours a person makes about 21,600 exhalations and inhalations. Most often when an adult person breathes there is a movement in the chest or in the abdominal area. Chest breathing is shallow. When a person breathes and a movement occurs in the chest, then the full and proper exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide does not occur. Also, a movement in the abdomen does not give any special benefit as the lungs are located in the chest and one cannot breathe into the abdomen. So it turns out that both types of breathing are wrong.
9. What is the correct breathing and how does one correct the breathing?
Ans : If we look at a newborn baby, we can see that his breathing is natural and correct, he is breathing through the diaphragm. As adults, we forget the natural breath and begin to breathe incorrectly. In this seminar there are certain techniques that help restore proper breathing and help remove or reduce diseases of the body, mind, as well as psycho-somatic diseases.
10. How does Pranayam help in achieving spiritual perfection?
Ans :As Pranayam helps in brining clarity to the mind and removes negative emotions, and therefore calms the body and mind, it is a very good basic practice. On the other hand at an advanced stage of spiritual practice, it helps to deepen the practice, whether it's meditation, mantra yoga, laya-yoga, hatha yoga or any other practice.
11. What do you mean by the expression ‘pure mind’?
Ans : In accordance with the philosophy of yoga, our mind is made up of three layers. The first layer made up of the prana or life force called the Pranamaya kosha, the second – the Manomaya kosha, the layer of emotions and the third layer - the intellect or the Vigyanmaya kosha. Often, our way of life, relationships with other people and situations in life create a lot of negative emotions that overwhelm the emotional layer of the mind and do not allow the intelligence to work properly. For example, if a person has problems at home, when he comes to work he suffers from them and cannot work effectively. This is a burden on the emotional layer, which makes it impossible to engage the intellect completely. On the other hand, this stress affects the pranic layer, and thus puts pressure on the body, because of which the state of human health deteriorates. I'm not saying that emotions are bad, without them, people become less humane, but negative emotions hinder us. In Indian philosophy and human values the six major negative emotions are: passion, anger, greed, attachment, pride and envy. When the mind is cleared, then it gets rid of negative energy and becomes filled with positive energy allowing us to accomplish our goals.
12. Often, in the spiritual world the notion of energy, what does it mean?
Ans : Very sensitive people can feel the spiritual energy as a vibration, which surrounds every living being. But such people are few. The common man feels the energy differently which is mostly as follows: encountering a certain person, we feel that there is something that we do not like about them, while with some others we instantly like them. In the course of communication, we understand that one person is pleasant, while the other is difficult. It gives an insight into the state of their mind, and the associated energy, one is negative, while the other is positive, although often these energies are mixed.
13. How can people participate in your workshops?
Ans : At the moment, most workshops take place either in Moscow and some other parts of Russia or in Northern India. For persons from other places they can gather a group of 10 to 40 people and invite me to teach. One can get in touch by e-mail or facebook.
Contact information: mantrayog@gmail.com;
Brahmchari Muktanand at facebook.