#53. Drop The Past, Drop The Future | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

Inhalation represents your future. Prana flows in to activate your desires, plans, wishes for your future. And exhalation represents the past, all impression what you have been carrying in you all along. By regulating the breath, you regulate prana and let go of the past, change your relationship to the past and future.

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Transcript

Namaste.

Welcome to this meditation session with me,

Dhyansay,

Your path to inner peace,

Wisdom and awareness.

As long as there is breath,

There is body,

There is mind.

When there is no breath,

There is no body,

There is no mind.

So there is a connection between the breath and the body and the mind.

And in between that connection is prana,

That energy which drives the body,

Which drives the mind is prana,

Regulated by the breath.

So he,

In this fourth pillar of pranayama,

Where he is talking about how to regulate the breath,

He is saying there are three components,

The inhalation,

The exhalation and the retention.

And he is talking about each one of these in detail.

The last two sessions we meditated on these different aspects of pranayama.

But let me repeat once again,

This inhalation,

When you breathe in,

This inhalation,

What does this represent?

This inhalation is your future.

This is all associated with your future,

With the new,

When you inhale.

When you breathe in,

Then you activate the desires,

The wishes,

The mind that you are carrying all,

You have built all throughout this life,

The body that you have built all throughout this life.

This all is activated when you inhale.

So it is your future.

When you exhale,

When you let go of the breath,

When you let the prana flow out of your body,

In that exhalation is your past,

Is the letting go,

Is of all that what has happened.

Your relationship to all what has happened can be experienced in your exhalation.

So if you observe your breath,

If you understand your breath,

If you understand the flow of prana along with your breath,

You can see how your future,

How your desires,

Your wishes are influencing your body,

Your mind,

Your breath,

And how your past,

The emotional burdens that you carry,

All the stresses that you carry,

Everything from the past that you carry,

All the scars and whatnot that you carry from the past,

Your patterns,

All these can be seen and corrected,

Modified in the exhalation.

So just simply by modifying,

By regulating,

By correcting the inhalation,

You correct your future.

You take the right stance to move into the future.

When you correct the exhalation,

You let go of the past.

You let go of everything that had already happened and has no real influence in the future.

But since you are carrying it,

Is this bag,

This burden,

How to set your relationship right to it,

How to let go of what has already happened.

This is regulated by your exhalation.

Just the way how you breathe,

Just the way how you exhale determines your relationship.

And you can change that.

You can change your relationship to your past if you change the way you exhale.

If you change the way you inhale,

You change your relationship to the future.

These two extremities of what is coming,

The future of what has happened,

The past,

These two you regulate by inhalation and exhalation and in the moment.

You hear and now that happens in retention.

That happens in the third where the breath takes a pause.

The breath normally in its cycle takes a pause after inhalation,

Before exhalation,

There is one pause and then there is another pause where you have exhaled,

Where the past has gone and the future has not yet happened.

There is one pause.

So you exist in one pause where the past has gone,

The future has not yet happened,

You are there.

And there is another pause where you have done the inhalation,

You have raised your energies for the future and that meets your past.

So there are two points of this pause where you are in the very present moment.

You must practice how you inhale,

You must practice how you exhale and then you practice how you are in these two pauses.

From these two pauses and from regulating the inhalation and the exhalation comes the next step.

Which Patanjali in his sutra says,

There is a fourth kind of pranayama that occurs during the concentration on an internal or external object.

Let me repeat,

There is a fourth kind of pranayama that occurs during the concentration on an internal or external object.

So the three pranayamas or the three points of pranayama,

The three aspects of pranayama,

Patanjali mentioned already the inhalation,

The exhalation and the points of retention,

Which can be as natural as those pauses between inhalation and exhalation,

Or the pauses that you may create in between that is also considered as retention.

So these are the three aspects or three pranayamas if you may.

And the fourth is that happens during the concentration on internal and external object.

Meaning you do not do it,

It happens to you.

There is a fourth kind of pranayama,

There is a fourth kind of regulation of the breath that happens on its own.

That happens when you are in meditation,

That happens when you are in concentration,

That happens when you are in silence.

You must have noticed that while you are very much concentrating on a particular subject and you are very much involved in it,

For a moment your breath stops.

When your breath stops,

In that stopping your awareness is very high.

And in that high awareness you grasp the subject matter.

There is knowledge of the subject matter.

So in that awareness,

Or you can say in order to have that awareness,

You hold your breath,

You take a moment,

You come out of this cycle of constant breathing and activating your mind,

Activating your body,

And constantly moving things for you,

And you stop.

You pause for a second.

When you hear something which you want to attend to,

You for a moment stop.

In that stopping,

You are also stopping your breath.

So that's the principle of it,

Which is that while you are raising your awareness,

While you want to attend,

While you want to concentrate,

You are also stopping your breath.

But there is a deeper meaning to that,

There is a deeper meaning to the practice of meditation.

While you first of all regulate the inhalation,

Exhalation,

And your relationship to inhalation,

Exhalation,

The pauses,

You see as your mind settles,

As your body is put at rest,

Then the breath automatically also becomes thinner,

Shallower,

And fades away completely.

In that natural fading which you don't do,

You only do the regulation on inhalation,

On exhalation,

On the two pauses,

To the two points in between to practice,

To bring things back in order.

Once things are back in order,

You let go,

You move into silence,

You move into awareness,

And when that happens,

Your breath automatically slows down,

Your breath along the lines of your meditation,

Along the depths of your meditation,

It becomes somewhat redundant.

It becomes so thin that it is there or not there,

It does not matter.

In that perfect settlement of the breath,

There is perfect meditation,

There is perfect concentration.

This is what Patanjali here is saying,

That there is the fourth kind of pranayama that occurs during concentration on an internal and external object.

Then he says,

As its result,

The vial over inner light is destroyed.

As a result of this pranayama,

The fourth type of pranayama which happens on its own,

Where your breath is completely giving away,

Where your breath is completely settling,

When your breath has settled,

Your mind gives away,

And the light shines again,

And you see once again in your inner light.

In Patanjali's words,

The vial over inner light is destroyed,

The vial is your mind,

Which keeps the constant,

Which covers the truth from your inner light,

From your own eyes,

From your own experience.

And lastly,

He says,

Meaning,

When that happens in that state,

The mind becomes fit for concentration or in other words,

You are in perfect meditation.

So let us take this knowledge of regulating the inhalation,

Exhalation and the two points of retention in our practice,

From there on move into an effortless pranayama,

Effortless regulation,

Where the breath automatically settles.

In that settlement,

See what your awareness shows you.

Please close your eyes.

And for the next minutes,

Bring your awareness to your breath.

As your awareness settles on your breath,

Allow your body to rest in balance,

In lightness,

In ease,

In your mind,

Your awareness on your breath.

Start by observing your inhalation.

Simply observe your inhalation and check,

Regulate your relationship with inhalation.

Allow inhalation to happen with ease,

Without trying to force,

Without trying to force what you want,

What you desire.

Let the future unfold on its own.

Let the inhalation happen on its own.

Simply by observing the inhalation,

Allow it to become smooth,

Effortless,

Flowing with prana.

Let the future unfold on its own.

As your inhalation is fine,

Move to exhalation.

Your awareness on exhalation,

Making sure that you exhale fully.

All your past,

All your emotional burdens,

The negativity,

The toxicity,

Everything that you carry,

Exhale,

Empty it out.

With every breath,

Release your past.

Exhale deeply,

Letting all the air out,

Keeping the awareness on exhalation.

Let the future unfold on its own.

Move on to the pause after exhalation before inhalation.

Shifting awareness to the pause after exhalation before inhalation.

In that pause,

There is no past.

In that pause,

There is no future.

In that pause,

You simply are.

The pause after exhalation before inhalation.

Simply focus on that.

In that pause,

There is no world.

In that pause,

There is no mind.

In that pause,

There is no body.

Let go of all effort.

Let go of all effort.

Let go of all focus on breathing.

And become aware of the one who is breathing.

Breath is flowing in,

Flowing out.

Observe the one who is breathing.

And you realize there is no one.

There is no one who is breathing.

And you realize there is emptiness,

Awareness,

And breath happening on its own or not.

Remain with the awareness.

Remain with the realization that there is no one inside.

Let go of all effort.

Let go of all focus.

When the breath stops,

It becomes shallow,

Still.

You see the truth.

There is no one inside.

And with that,

Very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes.

Keeping the truth in your heart,

The silence in your mind,

An awareness that allows you to go through this world during the day as you go back to your routines.

Please pass on this message of pranayama,

Of the power of breath to your friends and family.

Thank you very much.

Namaste.

Reviews

Easy to follow and illuminating. Thought provoking and inspiring. A great demystification of a complicated subject matter. Thank you 🙏

Best explanation of breathwork I have ever heard. Finally clicked in for me.

Excellent

Everyone of your sessions are a gift. Thank you. This is an amazing awareness practice.

Fabulous teaching! Thank you 🙏💫

Thank you for this very enlightening practice which will help me to deepen the meaning of all my practice.

Thank you for the Insights, it made me understand my breath/breathing much better! I noticed early in my Meditation-Practice that the mind-chattering stopped during the Pause between exhalation and inhalation. Today it was the state of being present, without Future or Past.
I will come back to deepen my understanding and the experiences.
Greetings from Germany!
Namaste 🙏🌻🙏

So soothing and calming. Thank you. Namaste