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Being is time and time is finite - so far so good. To understand what it means to be an authentic human being it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of ultimately not-being - what Martin Heidegger called "being-towards-death". The self can only become what it truly is through the confrontation with not-being. Literally, by making meaning out of finiteness. If our being is finite, then what it means to be human consists in grasping finiteness, in "becoming who one is - now- until one, isnt". We can then find it possible to grasp the paradox of living in relationship with other humans while facing the fact that one has to be ultimately alone with oneself Heidegger intended the concept of Dasein to provide a stepping stone in the questioning of what it means to be – to have one's own being, one's own death, one's own truth. Dasein, one's individuality, one's own limited life-span, one's own being. Da sein (Heidegger) Lit: There. Being Or more simply: Being - There That which is "you", in and of oneself without external reference or projection onto or into any other signifiers - language, everyday curiosity, common beliefs or sense of one's material nature. One's primal nature begins with self-awareness and ends with the snuffing out of self-awareness. All this is not to be confused with "Mindfulness" - a state of being greatly preoccupied with a supra-awareness of externality. The leap of faith into pure existence requires transcending the world of things. The key to really being is a profound faith and trust that the world and one's very existence will not terminate at any point beyond the material. That is not necessarily "heaven", but it might feel like it. Transcendence and immateriality are essential to the sense of truly "being here, and being there". The ultimate goal of meditation is to grasp the notion of TS Eliot's in The Wasteland - where he writes "We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.' Existential anxiety is having the experience but missing the meaning and the tendency for the mind to lose sight of pure existence - we need to approach the meaning and discover that this is indeed enough "to restore the experience in a different form" - Dasein, Being There. Yoga activity augments the ongoing process of "being there" - it snuffs out preoccupations with thoughts of existence at "arms length". Instead Yoga aims to remove the fears of snuffing out of existence. The absence of existential anxiety is a sensation akin to nirvana. 
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Pranayama is the study of the way in which we learn to control, strengthen and increase habitual awareness in the way in which we breathe.
It involves becoming genty aware working with a cycle of breathing through the front and the back of the body. Breathing is something we have done since we arrived here and is therefore entirely forgivable why we all take breath so much for granted. But there is no reason why we should allow this to continue to our ever increased physical disadvantage. Breath and the drawing of oxygenated air inside us, allows our bodies to expand and contract internally. We use the lungs to draw the outside world into our inner space. The body and especially the lungs as they fill with air, expand and contract. These expansions allow us to feel our inner physical selves coming into contact with the external physical world. As a very simple process, we use the simple drawing in of air through our breathing tubes - the nose, mouth and throat – Pranayama simply brings awareness into our lungs with the air we take in with simple exercise to gently contro, the process and develop habits of breathing more fully. Through awareness of the expanding and contracting mechanisms, the lungs themselves, we gain contact and increase awareness in the rest of our internal organs. Pranayama Breathing is a way in which we not only become aware of the way we are using the lungs, but also the directions in which we can then direct the air and life force inside our bodies around other parts of the body using the consciousness we bring in with the air. As science has demonstrated, electrical polarities, magnetism, even north and south poles merely describe a spectrum of polarities. There is no actual “end” to polarity any more than there is an end to an ocean, other than a shore. However the shore is inevitably only a temporary break, past which, if we continue for long enough in the direction of the initial flow, so we would reach another ocean. Thus it is with duality of polarity. Pranayama Breathing simply describes a means by which we allow air to enter our bodies, be conducted infinitely around inside us and passed on and out towards the next stage without reaching an end, a polar finite point or cessation of anything. In other worlds it pushes out towards the infinite in everything. If we don’t think about breathing at all, we still breath. If we discontinue breath for long enough we die. If we discontinue our breath just a little bit, we die a little bit. Pranayama is taking ownership of the process of breathing. It is practicing how to calm oneself sufficiently to resist the catching, holding and cessation of the breath. It is gradually to habituate ourselves to stay in touch and become ever more in contact with our internal organs and their various but interconnected functions. The front of the body is yang. It goes forward. It drives. It presents to the world As we breath in it expands – it goes out to the world The back of the body is yin - the dark side The area of the body that our major senses cannot see, touch easily, smell or actually be aware of all the time. It hides from the world. As we breath out it returns our awareness to the basis of everything and fulfils the laws of all gravitational impulses. Pranayama simply provides techniques to give us complete choice whether we use purely yang breath for power and strength, purely yin breath for calmness, and gentle awareness or tell our breathing mechanism to mix the two and redirect it around the rest of our bodies to fill them with clear, pure energies. This ability is contained in the simplest of exercises. A sanskrit word to describe this entirely human condition is pranayama. Hold on - let go. How many things can one do at one time? How many things can one accomplish at one time? How many things do we hold in one hand at one time? How many things do we need to hold in one hand at one time? How many things can we let go and create more space in our our hands? How much more useful to us is an empty relaxed hand? How often are we aware that our hands are too full? Just.Let.Go. |
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