Yoga Teacher Training Forum

Namaskar!

I love yoga because of prana cultivation. Every hatha yoga teacher training course should have details about prana cultivation (ie pranayama). If prana does not find sufficient room in the body there can be only one reason: it is being forced out by something that really does not belong there-such as blockages caused by rubbish. When we practice pranayama, we try to reduce this rubbish and replace it with more and more prana within the body. The goal of pranayama is not to bring the inhalation and exhalation into a certain relationship with each other, or to establish a particular length of breath.

The various practices of pranayama gives us many different possibilities for following the breath. When we follow the breath, the mind will be drawn into the activities of the breath. In this way pranayama prepares us for the stillness of meditation. The breath relates directly to the mind and to our prana. Prana enters the body in the moment when there is a positive change in the mind. It is true that our state of mind does not alter with every in-breath or out-breath.

The change occurs over a long period of time. If we are practicing pranayama and notice a change of mind, then prana has long before entered the body. The proof of the pudding is in our relationships with others. It tells us whether we had a positive changes in the mind and whether we actually understand ourselves better. As the nature and functions of the etheric body of man assume their rightful place in the thought of the world and as it is realized that the etheric is the most important of the two physical bodies, man will be brought into closer conscious contact with the other evolutions that evolve in etheric matter just as he does in a dense physical body.

There are certain large groups of devas, called "the devas of the shadows," or the violet devas, who are closely allied with the evolutionary development of man's etheric body, and who transmit to him solar and planetary radiation. The etheric body of man receives prana in different ways and of different kinds, and all these ways bring him into touch with varying entities.

Hari Aum