Spiritual Portal

Paramahansa Yogananda states that ' the pupose of the Hong-Sau technique is to increase naturally the intervals when the breath does not flow. There is that pause that can occur before breathing out. There is also that interval of time when we may not have to immedaitely breath in again. He speaks of waiting and enjoying the breathlessness; SRF Lesson 23

Steve

<3  <3  <3  <3 <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3  <3 

mccoy i find it fascinating that you have some of the same thoughts i have had during the years. You have made several interesting points in the last post. I want to first respond to the first one. I moved this post to the thread 'hong sau" because the first part of your post describes that practice. I reread the beginning of this thread and the purpose of hong sau because here we see that Paramahansa Yogananda does not specifically say that we are trying to stop the breath but rather increase the length and space between breaths.

Like yourself i have been practicing this technique many years and can not say i have had incredible sucess. IF-and this is the big if-we are speaking of stopping breath. That is no breath. However if we are taking Yogananda literally here he is not saying no-breath but rather increasing the length of intervals between breaths and enjoying those breathless periods. i just think that many times we expect too much to soon. That has been my personal observation in my own practice. In other words by now I should be able to enter the breathless state at will.

Perhaps though you may have noticed that at times there are pauses between breaths with various lengths of time. I was at a SRF convocation in the early 70 ' s and went into the meditation room. No doubt I was blessed by being in the presence of other meditators and all the monks and nuns because that day I had an unusual experience with  the hong sau technique. One that I had never had. I remember Paramahansa Yogananda making the comment that if you could stop the thoughts for several seconds- i think it was  6 seconds-you would automatically be in a state of bliss.

In the above qoute Paramahansa Yogananda describes these intervals between breaths as breathless states. When i was at the convocation that day I experienced this state of bliss that the Master describes. Something quite disturbing happened to me after what seemed like a long period of bliss and breathlessness. There was this thought that entered my mind. It was this: What am 'I' experiencing? 'I' am in bliss and 'I' am not breathing.

No doubt you can predict what happened next. Yes 'I' started breathing and yes the state of bliss started evaporating quickly.
So i would propose this to you as well as myself: We are still dealing with a massive ego. Even if we have such experiences the ego wants to own them it says 'I' am experiencing such things it gets excited and poof the state we were in is gone. At this point I am back at the practice. Baby steps... just to see the breath slow down... just to see the spaces between breaths lengthen... just to enter a little calmness...just to be more in the now.... just to take this state of awareness into my life.

This 'breath-thing' is an interesting phenomena to me. For instance: There are times when you are focused or absorbed that you just seem to notice the breath naturally. It is almost like 'a calling' to practice a mantra.

Steve

"However there are four related forces which must be harmonized before you can harmonize your breathing rhythm that coincides with the main obstruction in your life. In the practice of concentration the relation between the following four related forces must be known, life force, breath, vital fluids or sexual energy and mind. A control and balance between these four bodily forces will bring fast results without any down-fall. Students who meditate regularly without striving to calm the restless breath or control the life force or vital essence often find insurmountable difficulties on the spiritual path.

It's like a chain reaction if one life force is restless he is nervous and keeps his body in constant motion, if his mind is restless than vitality or sexual energy is restless than breath is restless but if one controls life force with the practice of calmness at all levels his mind and vital power are in his control. To sum up if breath is made calm and rhythmic by the practice of Hong-Sau the life-force, mind and sexual instinct will gradually come under control. Calmness is a positive state of mental expansion and that leads to intuition when guided by meditation. This is the quality you want to attain from expansion. The more you meditate in a calm state the more intuition you will have....."

~ Brother Turiyananda

Very interesting expansion of Yogananda's words by Bro. turyianananda

Nomaste mccoy. Sometimes I just like to lie down and relax. It is a good time to practice hong-sau. I wonder if you would share some of your experiences and/or insights with hong-sau?

I've not many glamorous experiences or insights I'm afraid, just sometimes low breathing counts and lost in a realm where heartbeat is the only moving thing. Then I try, unsuccessfully, to stop that movement as well.

Once a colleauge on oil rigs asked if I wanted to go out eating. I answered no, I must try and stop the heart. He went, "The other guy is trying hard to make it tick". He referred to a texan guy working with us in the same rig who had a heart attack and just recovered.

mccoy I know that sensation of hearing the heart. It sometimes becomes audible especially when wearing ear plugs. i get a little squeamish at the sound of my heart beat  :'(  You don't feel that way?

Your story reminds me of some people I have met and spent time with. They may be impotent and can't believe I would actually be making an effort to practice celibacy. Or they just can't quite get their head around the idea of sitting for long periods meditating. To them you are "doing nothing". Or they may say that they 'don't have to set so long' to practice meditation. Or that they meditate when they are fishing. I just think to myself: That satanic force sure has a lot of ways of discouraging us.

Steve, but some of those answers are funny, like the one where they say they meditate while fishing. Maybe visualizing a fat catch.

My father used to tell me that meditation developed in India because over there they are starving, so they need to spend as less calories as possible. That also cracked me up.

Some people are encouraged rather than discouraged by denial, so the skepticism of other people motivates rather than discourages. Maybe we are like this, in many aspects I am.

I had some funny discussions with people and meditation, like, Always on oil rigs, a colleauge of mine told me he too would have been able to meditate for long periods, sitting there and thinking about pu$$y. He told it in a funny way so it made me laugh. Then I proceeded to explain to him that such an endeavour could not be defined meditation, rather concentration on a particularly materialistic issue. He did not retort then.

When on offshore rigs there were not many places to meditate and sometimes I just sat where I found a quieter corner. Some workers would see me but, since back then I was pretty fit and muscular, they thought it was all part of fitness training and respected that.

A training mate in the gym used to sit and meditate in a corner. They didn't bother him but once they tested him. 'Hey, man, your fiancee wants to see you in the front office', told him while he was meditating. He should have ignored them instead he stood up and failed the test.

There are more funny or interesting episodes about meditation, right now I'm missing them because I just meditate in seclusion.

Your story, Steve, about meditating in the bush and the policemen is a good one, maybe not to you, lol

What interferes with concentration?

 

Life energy

Breathing

Heart

Sex energy

Mind

Bhaktananda adds one more than Brother Turiyananda. Turiyananda leaves out the heart beat when explaining harmonizing the breath (see above post reply#7).
Bhaktananda said that all these can be put under control by practicing hong-sau.

Hold one thought until you reach superconsciousness.

 What is concentration? Master: “freeing the mind from all distractions” and “reducing the activities of the mind to one thought” or “keeping the mind one pointed”.

 What interferes with concentration?

 

Life energy

Breathing

Heart

Sex energy

Mind

 

It takes determination, you have to work at it. You can’t be wishy washy about things.
All five of these are controlled by Hong Sau.

 Use a woolen blanket under your chair or silk, or both. Sit with feet flat, good posture, eyes turned up. Practice the 20/20/20 breathing and the tensing and relaxing.

 Superconsciousness  takes over the body, like in hibernation. Do 20 minutes Hong Sau in the morning and 20 in the evening as a start. In the superconsciousness you are always aware of something – a heightened awareness, or else you are asleep.

 Then sit a long time in the stillness. Do not think. Gently close the eyes and say into the spiritual eye: “God, God, God”. For a time it helps.

 When we learn to meditate we don’t have to come back to this earth plane.

 
For insomnia – do Hong Sau
For any trouble – do Hong Sau

 
Leonardo Da Vinci saw visions and wrote them down by concentrating on hot coals for one and one half hours. So he saw future inventions.

Thanks for reminding Steve, I'm about to do my Hong Sau now.

Yes, watching the breath and be aware of it, no voluntary control on it, although the relaxed awareness should cause a decrease in the frequency of breathing cycles.

Unfortunately, in my case frequency decreases but breath never stops altogether.

Human being (and even animals) works by motivation, so it's not easy to go on with enthusiasm when you have no results from actions, even if carried out correctly.

This is my personal complaint related to techniques, they give little or no results compared to the time you devote to them. It's not easy to go on for hours when there is no feedback.

Of course that's my personal case, hope it is different for other devotees.

The latest reminder was from Scott;

"Hong Sau works to
make dynamic (visual) to our conscioiusness,
the "automatic" (autonomous nervous and organ systems) attunement
-- physical breath, sympathetic/parasympathetic, etc. --
of the Ida Pingala making the breath moving..."~ from Scott's last post.


Perhaps, as Scott has mentioned, much of the practice is to develop awareness... awareness of the breath and more subtle processes...however long it may take.

I appreciate the candid honesty. Hong Sau is like a constant prayer and affirmation in which we  are affirming 'i am he'. i believe it is diificult for most of us to go on praying but this gives a physical method. The motivations i have recieved are not so much in the practice but rather in the spiritual experiences that happen in life's day to day activities. If we look for a logical sequence of events it just doesn't always appear forthcoming like 'a' produces 'b'. This may b one of the impediments we experience in placing a
criteria for sucess on spiritual progress. We may have to evaluate it differently.

Since I'm still practicing haung sau and kryia of course I don't give vital importance to stopping the breath and plunging into superconsciousness.
But it would be a definite boost.

No doubt u know the story of Anandamoy asking P.Y. when he would have a similar experience and he answered 'soon now soon'. I also remember a similar story about Amma. A devotee always asked when she would get a spiritual name. Her response was always 'tomorrow'. i also remember her saying that 'even in heaven we have to wait in que.' And Anandamoy said ' I was always this way ' .... pointing to himself. Yes, no doubt we would get a boost but how many of us would think instead... how best we could serve?

I know for me; meditation, from the beginning, was all about me. It took a long while to even realize that.... How selfish i can be. Superconsciousness and Selfishness are like oil and water - they don't mix. Looking at the lives of say an Amma we quickly realize our idea of service is at best only the beginning. I have seen this in saints i have met. They have that one thought of serving the Lord. It is truly humbling when we are blessed to see their service in action. Whenever I have difficulties meditating i start looking at how much I have served lately. In many ways are journey has only begun. Attitude adjustment is also a part of our every day routine. But as soon as we are sincere we will be given many opportunities to see where we fall short. Perhaps yours is much different then mine.

Steve, I share your reasonings, but I might pose this question:

Would I, you, we, serve better with or without boost? The spiritual boost is supposed to influence our mind by fresh energy and enthusiasm. Would the boost promote ego or a serving attitude?

The boost may even be a test, whoever develops ego fails the test, whover develops a serving attitude passes the test.

I would just love to be tested though.

But maybe the test is just waiting patiently for the above test.

So we have a preliminary test, which is just: waiting for the test proper. The wait may be a very long one.
Then we have the test proper: a nice spiritual experience which may boost our pride or our altruism and unselfishness.

If our pride is boosted, than we are back to the preliminary test

I think I've failed the test many times.  :)

Too much meat in your diet! (Halarious laughter!) Be careful you may end up with vampirism or in a wild dog pack! Meat causes restlessness... very difficult to practice hong sau! You'll be panting all the time! Sorry Eric... i couldn't help it.... i know you can laugh at yourself though! Yea I've failed that test big time!

Hi Steve,
We're shining the same light but from different galaxies.



 

I just finished to meditate in front of the screen with this clock on:

http://www.clocktab.com/

Doing Hong Sau, I check how many breaths per minute and this is a way to try and calm the breath. Tonite the frequency was pretty irregular, sometimes 3 or 4 BPM, sometimes over 10, with very shallow and imperceptible breaths.

Although attention is somewhat diverted watching a clock with eyes open--- I think it is a novel idea and good one to implement in our routine from time to time. I intend on using it to see just how much the breath is slowing down.

I remember spending time with a therapist when I was younger. As a friend he took an interest in my excitement about meditation and showed me a device he had that measured and showed brain waves on a screen. It had wires that had electrodes on the ends to connect to your head and you could see on the screen how your brain waves changed as you started meditating and concentrated on focusing being calm. It was quite amazing how you could consciously change your brain waves from beta to alpha waves with some theta waves coming in! 😉

.http://www.binauralbeatsonline.com/functions-of-the-five-different-brain-waves/

I tried for a few minutes this morning. I'm about where u are mccoy...relaxed a bit more and got it to 3 bpm. Will try it some more...I like your experiment.

Steve, 3 bpm is pretty good, 2 starts being advanced pranayama, at one we would approach total control of breath.

One caveat to those who are reading though, there should be no conscious effort to breath deeply, that would be cheating, since that would naturally decrease bpms but would not involve total relaxation. We should not interfere at all with the natural rythm of breathing.

Just starting out hong-sau can be different from doing the practice after kriyas when the breath has been considerably slowed down. The challenge I am having with the phone clock u have given is that it constantly turns off and I have too touch the screen to get it going. I am going to try looking at a digital clock plugged in the wall. Perhaps u are using a larger screen on a computer. We must also consider that when we distract ourselves by looking at a clock it takes away from the deep focus that can be achieved during mantra practice. However there really is no way we can conduct any self study with out being somewhat consciously being distracted.

What also interests me is the many exercises the SRF lessons give in holding the breath specific amounts of time. The mantra technique is not to be practiced this way as u have mentioned but should be completely natural. However when we do observe the spaces in between breaths it has an effect of lengthening these spaces. When we do observe ourselves saying the mantra to the inhalations and exhalations it does seem to naturally lengthen those breaths. Why is this so? Because we are mindful of the breaths and consciously seeing what they are doing. Whenever you focus your concentration on anything like this the interior thought slows respiration to some degree.

Steve, I have a large screen and the clock image is steady. Maybe it's your energy saving program which is making it disappear. I don't know about any settings inside the software other than the display format.

I keep a dark background and huge numbers so I'm not very distracted.

Yes phones have energy saving programs. I just plugged in a digital alarm clock with brite red read out in the sleeping room so I can see what progress I am making with the mantra and breath.

Tonite this is what I found; While staring at my setting I was breathing 20 times a minute.

2. After setting a few minutes the breathing slowed to about 12 a minute.

3. Then I practiced Yoganandas' breathing 10-10-10 exercises and double breathing. The count went further down to 6 or 8 per minute.

4. Then I practiced kriyas and the count went to about 4 per minute.

5. Then I practiced jyoti mudra and the count went to about 2 or 3 per minute.

6. I stopped meditating to write this and my breath is about 8 per minute.

Interesting sequence, Steve, I'll have to try that out

Tonight I could not meditate properly because of some throat disturbance. As soon as I started my breath rate was 5 to 6, not decreasing after a few minutes. I could not do kryia because of a strange throat constriction, probably mucus. It is maybe natural that breath rate decreases after kryia and joty since such techniques oxygenate the body.

Thinking of you! Maybe you could practice the om technique since it does not require anything from the throat but just listening and chanting om internally.


Actually it was inspired by your idea of using the clock. Just realized using the om board would cause more activity.... Not good for slowing breath. I'll use it another time. This idea of stillness and slowing the breath and all body functions to have a similar effect on the brain activities requires quite a bit of awareness. The body and mind go on and on in their restless activity and chattering if unchecked.  Saddling the breath to a clock is also somewhat helpful since it seems our consciousness is like the wild horses that Krishna had to control. This whole thing is quite an art and science mccoy. It is easy to be undisciplined about it and careless. Because there is really no Zen master to hit us with a stick. There is really no policeman to tell us what the laws are. If we do not track our own behavior and progress during meditation who will? Sometimes I do not feel like doing anything but that is inertia and it takes an act of will or inspiration from those around us to get to our practice otherwise we will waste this incarnation away. Enervation sneaks up on us in a moment of stasis.

Steve, the throat thing is an occasional event but the brain construes it as suffocation so there is not much to do about it. I believe it's some excess mucus in the larynnx. Luckily it is rare or occasional.

This morning I tried again.

My initial breath rate was 4 to 6 per second. With Hong sau it dropped to 3 to 4 per second. After Kryia it was initially 3 then again 4 after a little while.

Tonite my initial rate was 4 to 6 BPM (breaths per minutes). After HS it went down to 2-3 BPM.
After Kryia I didn't check.

It amazes me how much the mind and its thoughts affect our meditation. We can say that we are not thinking but it is obvious u must think to count how many times u have breathed in a minute so the idea of breaths per minute is in your mind and this can be an obstacle to peaceful or blissful meditation. However we are just running an experiment here and it does help the endless wondering of thoughts that we must deal with during meditation.

Paramahansa Yogananda recommended affirming this before practicing the technique of breathlessness given in the hong-sau lesson:

"I know that breath is the cord that ties my soul to the body. In breathlessness I find my soul free to unite with thine omnipresent both within and beyond my body. The storm of breath causes ripples of sensation and thoughts on the lake of my mind and I behold a distorted image of thy presence. Oh Spirit! Stop the storm of breath. Conjure away ripples of restlessness. Teach me to behold thy moon presence in the unruffled lake of my consciousness." P.Y.

Hi mccoy. I started out at about 8 bpm with Hong Sau. After practicing the 10-10-10 and double breathing I went to 6 bpm . Then after kriyas 3 bpm. I did the joyti mudras and felt bliss creep up on me but then remembered the count and the bliss immediately left. We have a problem here. We may not be able to enjoy the possible fruits of meditation and counts breaths simultaneously. You said at one point you stopped counting during kriyas. It may be that occasional different states of consciousness slow the breath more and are not able to know studying ourselves. We may turn out to be what Sri Yukteswar called a 'budding experimentalist' when describing Paramahansa Yogananda since he was checking out whether Sri Yukteswar was breathing during meditation.

Mccoy thank-you for adding so much to this thread and creating an inspirational climate to want to practice this technique with more attention and interest.

Jitendra

Steve yes, I agree that counting may disrupt an initial state of bliss.

Personally I find it beneficial and when the timespan between breaths gets longer, there I feel the peace and do not need to coutn since the breath is still. So I find I can conciliate the two. Besides, right now it's giving me motivation, which I badly need.

As to Kryia and Joty, after these techniques I do not count breaths, since we are not practicing HS and breaths per minute are not a basic part of meditation proper. It may be useful to count the heart rate though, since a lowered heart rate leads to prathayara, and maybe this could be our addictional experimentation.

I agree that balance is needed in these experiments, I find I can count without identifying with the count itself and the counting helps me to focus on the technique.

Yesterday I went from 5-6 BPM to 2.5 BPM (average across the last 5 minutes of the technique).

I find that, from 3 BPM and below, the feeling of peace starts to creep in. The feeling of peace governs when BPM is around 2.

Focusing on the mantra also appears to have a definite power in calming breath.

I am unable to reconcile thinking of breath counts with bliss. What happens for me is that a feeling of bliss arises as a result of no thought....just awareness. As soon as thought re-enters awareness is disrupted.

ditto

Gooble gooble got. Tell me something that your snot.

via GIPHY

If things start happening don't worry, don't stew, just go right along and you'll start happening too!

The physical benefits of slow breathing, lower blood pressure, are surely reaped by pracrticing hong sau

It is an important study you have provided here mccoy. I wonder what the device guided mechanism was when commencing in this study. I have had someone monitor my brain waves while meditating with a monitoring screen and electrodes placed on my head to see the differing brain activity taking place during meditation. It was very reinforcing to affirm the physiological brain wave changes and see them on a screen as I continued the meditation practice. This was done at a psychologists office where I met a man interested in meditation practice.

The nice thing about Hong Sau is even if you may lay down and practice it before sleeping, it is a strong affirmation to bring into your nightly sojourn. And when you wake up and lay in bed practicing, it is a stimulant to sitting up and practicing it along with the other meditation routine you follow.