Pranayama: Linking Breath and Time
Take Time to Breathe to Change How You Experience Time.
Yoga teaches you to control time? Studies of the relationship between breath and time from Buddhism to the Fourth Way, all the way to Quantum Physics.
After the first Sun Salutation, it’s impossible for any yoga practitioner to ignore the concentration on the coordination with the movement and the breath. The importance of the breath in a yoga practice cannot be overstated. However, breath is not only vital to your yoga practice! It is surprising how many people fail to realize that it is the single most important key to life.
Survivalists can tell you the Rule of Three: You can live for three weeks without food, for three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air. Three minutes. It will take the average reader that amount of time to read this article.
There is no “Now”
From a Buddhist perspective, time is as illusory and imperceptible as the rest of our thoughts. On page 87 of his book The Joy of Living (Harmony Books, 2007), monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche describes it plainly:
…how is it even possible to define “the present”? … You can break down the present into smaller and smaller increments, but between the instant of present experience and the instant you identify that instance as “now,” the moment has already passed. It’s no longer now. It’s then.
“Time is breath”
In P.D. Ouspensky’s recounting of his first few years of study under G.I. Gurdjieff In Search of the Miraculous (Harvest, 2001) Gurdjieff tells his students “Time is breath”. Ouspensky spends a great deal of time and effort puzzling over this cryptic remark, ultimately creating a vast breakdown of comparative “breath” intervals of various levels of existence.
Fascinating as his theory is, the one thing seems most vitally profound about this idea is the definition of a single now moment. The “Now”, that single useful Present moment everyone reminds us to live in, is broken down into the simplest of terms. It is the duration of one inhale and one exhale: a single breath.
The average target respiratory rate for adult humans is about 12 to 20 breaths per minute, or three to five seconds per breath. When Ouspensky launches into a great deal of computation based on the three-second breath, one notes that the man needed to have taken some Yoga when he was traveling in India…
“Now” is malleable
We all understand the cliché “time flies when you’re having fun”. We can relate to the agony of a single hour that seemed “the longest in our lives” spent in a hospital waiting room. Time is fluid based on our perception, experience and focus of attention.
In his book The Yoga of Time Travel (Quest, 2004)Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, most recognizable as Dr. Quantum from What the Bleep Do We Know explores the Quantum Physics of time. He posits that dissolution of ego and extension of the awareness of the present moment can slow down time.
Literally, your yoga practice can keep you young. In fact, doing anything that brings you fully into the present, or “in the flow” can do this. Whether it is a physical activity or an artistic pursuit, doing something you love that makes “time fly” will slow down time for you.
However, breathing exercises and the practice of Pranayama – the lengthening, expansion and extension of the breath that is the fourth limb of Patanjali’s eightfold path can allow practitioners to expand every Now moment with their full, deep breathing. This is not for the novice.
Pranayama techniques should only be pursued by advanced students and under the supervision of a certified teacher. However, an experienced yogi can extend breaths to a rate of about six breaths per minute, or ten seconds per breath.
