Breathing and thinking are deeply connected

 

 

Patanjali gives other alternatives also. If you can do this -- being happy with happy people, friendly; compassion with the miserable, joy with the virtuous, indifference with the evil ones -- if you can do this, then you enter from the transformation of the mind towards the supermind. If you cannot do -- because it is difficult, not easy -- then there are other ways. Don't feel depressed.

 

Says Patanjali:

THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.

 

Then you enter through the physiology. This is entering through the mind -- the first: the second is entering through the physiology. Breathing and thinking are deeply connected, as if they are two poles of one thing. You also sometimes become aware, if you are a little mindful, that whenever the mind changes, the breathing changes. For example, you are angry: immediately the breathing changes, the rhythm is gone. The breathing has a different quality. It is non-rhythmic.

 

When you have passion, lust, sex takes over, the breathing changes; it becomes feverish, mad. when you are silent, just not doing anything, just feeling very relaxed, the breathing has a different rhythm. If you watch, 'and Patanjali must have watched very deeply... he says if you watch deeply you can find what type of breathing and its rhythm creates what type of mind. If you feel friendly, the breathing is different. If you feel antagonistic, angry, the breathing is different. So either change the mind and the breathing will change, or you can do the opposite: change the breathing and the mind will change. Change the rhythm of breathing, and the mind will immediately change.

 

When you feel happy, silent, joyous, remember the rhythm of the breathing. Next time when anger comes, you don't allow the breathing to change; you retain the rhythm of breathing as if you are happy. Anger is not possible then because the breathing creates the situation. The breathing forces the inner glands in the body which release chemicals in the blood.

 

That's why you become red when you are angry: certain chemicals have come into the blood, and you become feverish. Your temperature goes high. The body is ready to fight or take flight; the body is in an emergency. Through hammering of the breathing, this change comes.

 

Don't change the breathing. Just retain as if you are silent; just the breathing just has to follow a silent pattern -- you will feel it impossible to become angry. When you are feeling very passionate, lust, sex takes over. Just try to be tranquil in the breathing, and you feel sex has disappeared. Here he suggests a method:

 

THE MIND ALSO BECOMES TRANQUIL BY ALTERNATELY EXPELLING AND RETAINING THE BREATH.

 

You can do two things: whenever you feel the mind is not tranquil -- tense, worried, chattering, anxiety, constantly dreaming -- do one thing: first exhale deeply. Always start by exhaling. Exhale deeply: as much as you can, throw the air out. With the throwing of the air the mood will be thrown out, because breathing is everything.

 

And then expel the breath as far as possible. Take the belly in and retain for few seconds -- don't inhale. Let the air be out, and you don't inhale for few seconds. Then allow the body to inhale. Inhale deeply -- as much as you can. Again stop for few seconds. The same should be the gap as you retain the breath out -- if you retain for three seconds, retain the breath in three seconds. Throw it out; retain for three seconds. Take in; retain for three seconds. But it has to be thrown out completely. Exhale totally and inhale totally, and make a rhythm. Retain, in; retain, out. Retain, in; retain, out. Immediately you will feel a change coming into your whole being. The mood is gone. A new climate has entered into you.

 

What happens? Why is it so? For many reasons: one, when you start creating this rhythm, your mind is completely diverted. You cannot be angry, because a new thing has started, and mind cannot have two things together. Your mind is now filled with exhaling, inhaling, retaining, creating a rhythm. You are completely absorbed in it, the cooperation with anger is broken: one thing.

 

This exhaling, inhaling, cleanses the whole body. When you exhale out and retain for three seconds or five seconds -- as much as you want, as much as you can -- what happens inside? The whole body throws all that is poisonous into the blood. Air is out and the body gets a gap. In that gap all the poisons are thrown out. They come to the heart, they accumulate there -- poisonous gases, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, they all gather together there.

 

You don't give a chance for them to gather together. You go on breathing in and out. There is no gap, no pause. In that pause, a gap is created, an emptiness. In that emptiness, everything flows and fills it. Then you take a deep inhalation and then you retain. All those poisonous gases become mixed with the breathing; then you again exhale and throw them out. Again pause. Let the poisons gather. And this is a way of throwing things out.

 

Mind and breath are so much connected -- have to be, because breathing is life. A man can be without mind, but cannot be without breathing. Breathing is deeper than mind. Your brain can be operated completely; you will be alive if you can breathe. If the breathing continues, you will be alive. The brain can be taken out completely. You will vegetate, but you will be alive. You will not be able to open the eyes and talk or do anything, but on the bed you can be alive, vegetating for many years. But mind cannot If the breathing stops, mind disappears.

 

Yoga found this basic thing -- that breathing is deeper than thinking. If you change breathing, you change thinking. And once you know the key, that breathing has the key, you can create any climate that you want: it is up to you. The way you breathe it depends on it. Just you do one thing: for seven days, you just make a notebook of the different types of breathing that happen with different moods. You are angry: take a notebook and just count breathing -- how much you inhale and how much you exhale. Five counts you inhale, three counts you exhale -- note it down.

 

Sometime you are feeling very, very beautiful -- note it down, what is the proportion of inhalation and exhalation, what is the length, is there any pause -- note it down. And for seven days just make a diary to feel your own breathing, how it is connected with your moods. Then you can sort it out. Then whenever you want to drop a mood, just use the opposite pattern. Or, if you want to bring a mood, then use the pattern.

 

Actors, knowingly, unknowingly, come to know it because sometimes they have to be angry without being angry. So what they will do? They will have to create the breathing pattern. They may not be aware, but they will start breathing as if they are angry, and soon the blood rushes in and poisons are released. And without being angry their eyes are red, and they are in a subtle anger state without being angry. They have to make love without being in love; they have to show love without being in love. How they do it? They know a certain secret of yoga.

 

That's why I always say a yogi can become the most perfect actor. He isl His stage is vast, that's all. He is acting -- not acting on the stage, but on the stage of the world. He is an actor; he is not a doer. And the difference is that he is taking part in a great drama and he can remain a witness to it and he can remain aloof and detached.

 

- Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega, Vol 2, #9"