YOGA AND MEDICINE II

Home Yoga and Medicine II

We do not pay serious attention to breathing, the most important of all our bodily functions. A great deal of our mental and
physical troubles are due to the fact that we do not breathe correctly. Life and breath are synonymous. Life is breath and the
absence of breath is death. We live as long as we breathe. We start our life with the rst breath and end it with the last breath. We
never stop breathing whether we are awake or asleep. We can live without food and water for a few days but without air we
cannot live even for a few minutes. Air is the most important nourishment for our blood, which in turn, feed our cells, tissues,
nerves, glands and organs. All the activities of the body, from digestion to creative thinking, depend upon the supply of oxygen
through breathing. Yet we treat breathing with utter indifference. To take a few deep breaths is indeed more important than to
take a bath or a breakfast.
The habit of shallow breathing is one of the many unnatural habits that modern civilization has forced upon us. Shallow breathing is
directly or indirectly responsible for a number of mental and physical ailments ranging form nervous disorders to common colds.
To function properly, the brain requires three times more oxygen than the rest of the body. If it does not get its due allotment it
extracts it from the body supply. That is why brainworkers often possess a poor physique and poor health. Many people suffer from
the lack of oxygen and are not conscious of it.
Deep breathing not only nourishes our system but also cleanses it. Correct breathing keeps the body well ventilated and clean. We
pay a dear price for having forgotten that we are an integral part of nature.
In spite of all our inventions and achievements in the eld of mechanics, we ourselves are not mere machines. If we are really
anxious to keep physically t and mentally alert, we should begin to re-educate ourselves in the ways of living as taught by yoga.
The process of breathing is much more widespread than we generally suppose. It is said that the creation of the world was begun
when the Creator breathed upon the waters. Astrology has studied the long drawn out rhythms of the sun and it tells us that the
sun breathes regularly, each breath taking 11 years and causing the appearance of the suns spots upon its surface. Science has
discovered that plants and metals breathe. Needless to say that man also breathes and his lungs must contain a de nite amount of
air to counteract the law of gravitation which pulls him to the earth. At sea level the pressure is about 16 pounds per square inch
and this must be equalized by the intake of air. That is why the lungs never empty all the air they contain. Their total capacity is said
to be 250 cubic inches, but they only empty only 150 cubic inches so that there always remains 100 cubic inches of air within them
to cleanse and refresh the lungs. The prolonged outward breathing or Rechaka is the most efficacious.
Correct breathing will, of course, exercise a gentle massage and stimulation of the digestive organs, thereby ensuring perfect
action of alimentary canal and eliminating the need for pills and drugs. The important aspect of breathing is the rate of frequency
at which we breathe. The whole of life is built up by means of different rates of vibrations and therefore the rate of vibration of
anything is the most important factor about it, determining what it is, hence, the signi cance of the speed and rhythm of our
breathing. If the speed of breathing is changed to about 26 breaths per minute, it will be impossible for a while to feel pain. That is
why in the heat of battle terrible wounds are received without feeling them at all. That is why many great acts are accomplished
under the stress of excitement. The breath quickens, the blood heats up and this drives the ego slightly out of the body so that the
sensations are hardly felt. We can do and suffer things in hot blood, which we can never achieve in cold blood. Martial music is
designed to quicken the breath and emotions and so is the red color on flags and uniform.
By quickening the speed of breath, the body loses its power of self-protection and exhausts itself, but by slowing down the speed of
breath it is hardly possible to feel excited, irritable or nervous. If the rate of breathing is reduced to ten per minute, the brain will
become clear and ready for work. If the rate can be reduced to ve per minute, delicate psychic perceptions will be discernible.
Yogis can slow down the rate of breath to one per minute, which allows them an intensity of concentration in experience beyond
our imagination. Finally they are able to suspend the breathing altogether and this suspension permits them to enter into deep
trance or Samadhi. Slow, deep and gentle breathing will cure insomnia, blood pressure, brain fatique and bad temper.

It is the acknowledged fact that while the body is sustained chemically by food, it is maintained and kept alive by breathing. It is the
breathing which provides the physical organism with the electrical energy to preserve its vital power, for we do not breathe air
alone, we also inhale electric charges. Oxygen is not the only precious element introduced into out body by respiration but also the
electric ions freely dispersed in the outer atmosphere. Air has been de ned, from this point of view, as a highly dispersed colloidal
system. Air is known to contain ions of varying weights light, medium and heavy. The process of breathing has been called
electro-exchange by physiology. Oxygen which is an active element of metabolic activity, it the most electro negative of chemical
elements, hence its role in the maintenance of life process is described not as chemical only but as electric also. Under the action of
disease, the electric charges of one or the other of the blood constituents can vary within wide limits and even change sign. It then
becomes evident that the bioelectric function of blood circulation is dual. It keeps up the negative tension of the somatic system
and keeps up at the same time the positive tension of the nervous system. The whole electric structure is maintained in a state of
active ef ciency, since the vital tonus is exactly represented by the potential difference between the two electric systems of the
body.
Medicine has not been idle in following the discoveries of physiology. Many functional diseases are now treated by the inhaling of
negative ions. Even the healing of wounds has been accelerated by the direct application of negative ions. Moreover, the
relationship of the vital tonus with the electric tonus has been further con rmed by the results obtained with experiments. The
bioelectric experts in the West have discovered methods of measuring the nerve in ux. They have proved the interesting fact that
the nerve energy is neither physical nor chemical but electrical; that to each function corresponds a special speed of the nerve
in ux and that each function has its own chronaxie. Hence, chronaxie expresses all the functional properties of the tissue under
consideration.
Physiology is the science of function. If the body is related to anatomy, function is related to life. Within and above the physical
organism, there is a functional organism which the Yoga science calls the vital or Pranic body. It is this functional body that guides
the building of physical body within the mothers womb and continues that function after birth throughout ones existence. This
Pranic body brings to the organism its vital powers and activities of its various organs. For a modern scientist, as for an ancient
seer, function is both the creator and the mover of the organ. The Pranic body maintains and develops the physical organism. This
view has necessitated a change in the treatment of diseases. Diseases are more functional than organic. Diagnosis is now de ned
as an understanding of the whole patient.
Physiology has discovered functional hierarchy and the levels of function are three the humoral, the autonomous and the
voluntary. Of these three the humoral is the basic and it plays an important part in the preservation of the body. The Yoga science
has recognized this fact long ago with an insistence on the electro structure of the physical body.
The humoral has its essential function the regulation of all the chemical processes going on within the cells and is called
metabolism. This function is under the rule of the glandular system. The chemical elements absorbed in food or otherwise are rst
turned into colloids by the various digestive processes and then passed into the blood, nally to be distributed as reserves by the
endocrine glands, which maintain the speci cally human equilibrium. The thyroid deals with iodine, the pituitary with bromine, the
parathyroid with calcium, the supra-renal with the alkali, the liver and pancreas with sugar.
The theory of life as combustion is now superseded by the theory life as electrical induction. The body can no longer be likened to a
machine run by heat the activity of which is measured in calories. The body has become an electrical engine. In the humoral system,
electricity is found to play an important part since living substance is in its nature colloidal. Its isolated particles carry electrical
charges. These charges contribute in highly differentiated electric lining to the somatic substance of the body, whose chemical and
organic complexity it espouses and whose activity it commands. Now it has been established that the vital tonus is maintained by
the electric charges inbreathed with the air and carried by the blood from the lungs to the cells. The colloidal constitution of the
living substance has for its counterpart an organized living of electrical charges. The chemistry of cells and their metabolism has to
be maintained by borrowing food and air from the environment. What you really eat and breathe are ions, that is, molecules plus
electric charges. These charges represent an all important factor in the maintenance of the vital tonus of the organism. It is on the
basis of the electrical structure, which supports the vital tonus of the organism, that the Yoga science asserts that the physical
body could be electrified to such an extent as to be literally free from disease and dotage.
We are now in a sound position to understand the relationship between Yoga and medicine. Yoga postulates that there is the
Pranamaya Kosha or the Pranic body which is anterior and causal to the physical body, that a functional exchange is continuously
going on among the differentiated vital energies and that the functional or Pranic body conducts as well as regulates thermo
genesis of this tabernacle. Happily, physiology has discovered these three postulates of Yoga as enunciated by the ancient seers.
The discovery by physiology of the electro structure of the electro exchanges with the outer milieu taking place constantly and of
the regulation of cellular tension or heat, has necessitated a change in the medical outlook and in the treatment of diseases. It is
high time for medicine to set its materialistic standpoint and its empirical view and relate itself to life and function so that it be able
to effect functionally unity as well as structural unity that makes the three leveled human organism.

Page 1

 OM SHANTI | OM SHANTI | OM SHANTIHI

This article Yoga And Medicine is taken from H.H.Mahatapasvi Shri Kumarswamijis speech,Yoga And Medicine given at
Tapovan, Dharwad 1973.

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