When a man is born on this earth, the first thing that connects him to life is breath. Doctors tap at the back of a newborn to ensure that he cries. Once he breathes in only then he can cry. Breath is our first relationship with this life and it is also our last relationship with this life. Man is nothing more than a breath. Therefore, breathing is automatic. Once a newborn begins breathing, the body breathes by itself automatically to the last. Thinking is not needed. Then whatever activity you do, be it talking, walking, thinking, eating, running, and sleeping, breathing automatically continues all life.
In breathlessness one comes to know about one’s breathing. In extreme breathlessness, you come to realise the criticality of breathing in your life. Therefore, breathlessness becomes an extreme emergency to life. Other critical ailments can wait but with breathlessness, you are either alive or dead next moment.
Breath is unceasingly there with you. You are not needed in the activity of inhaling and exhaling. If there is no breathing. You would not be there. The most basic to life is breathing. Breath is an interrupted life. Your life is your breath. Breath is a connection you have with your body and it connects you to the body and on the other hand, it connects you to the universe.
Breath is the source of life, the source of Prana, the vitality. Breath has two points. One where it touches your body and the other where it touches you which is the ‘nobody’ in the body. Nobody that you can call soul or atma is your gateway. Prana comes through the gateway into the body. Vitality and aliveness come from the gateway into your body. Prana reaches every cell in the body to each of the 90 trillion cells to make them alive. Each cell is made by atoms. Every atom is an individual and it manifests like matter. Human is nothing but a mass behaviour of cells and atoms. Every atom is part of the universe as much as you are part of it, as much as the earth, trees, air, and water are part of it.
Life is one. Existence is one. You are one. You touch any point of existence and the whole existence vibrates. Recently quantum scientists have discovered that atoms immerse into each other by vibrations. In this oneness, you become one with the existence. One part there is a body another part there is the universe. In between, you are there. This pendulum-like movement from the body to nobodiness from matter to non-matter is what you call life. Therefore, each coming breath is life and going breath is death.
Earth is one. The universe is one. It is all organic. Earth is organic. Earth is dependent on the universe and the universe is also dependent on the earth for being this earth-side part of the universe. Earth depends on the sun. Life on earth depends on the sun. Sun depends on other suns that we call the universe. If the sun goes off, life will immediately end on earth. It means we are part of the sun as much as sun is dependent on us for being parts of the sun. We breathe because of the environment as air is there. Air happened on earth as a backlash to breath. Therefore, this whole earth was oxygenated. We inhale and exhale. We receive and give back. Don’t think that we receive the breath as much and what if we don’t exhale. The environment of the earth also depends on our exhaling as much as we depend on inhaling. It is nothing in our hands. Oxygenation of the earth began as a backlash to the growth of life on earth and it took a billion years to oxygenate the earth naturally. And if it is to end by de-oxygenation it will take a billion years naturally to de-oxygenate. Then it might take a few billion years for organisms to use some other energy.
There is oxygen in the air that our body has evolved to inhale through our orifices. Everything that is precious on earth comes free. Nature gives that all to us in abundance. Like water, air and food. Air is free. Oxygen is free. It is 21% of the environment. One thing is clear, the oxygenation of the environment happened because of life. It is also a scientific mystery how oxygenation reached the present levels of 21% and how it sustains at that. But it is fast de-oxygenating.
The oxygen that we breathe in is our energy. Like a car runs on a combustible engine, our body also works on that model but more efficiently. We breathe oxygen that gets burned and produces energy to make our pistons throb the heart transporting oxygen to cells via red blood cells to keep the combustion of cells in operation. Cells do exhale waste gas carbon dioxide which is carried back through the bloodstream and removed by exhaling. This oxidisation happens when glucose comes from sugar. Therefore, food full of oxidants oxidises the body well so carbon dioxide is released and more oxygen is inhaled.
Mankind is making all-out efforts to de-oxygenate the earth unnaturally. Oxygen on earth comes for free. Compare this to the present-day pandemic. The pandemic has deoxygenated oxygen from our blood.
Blood carrying arteries have low oxygen saturation relative to blood leaving the lungs. That which causes that is a virus. The human body is relative. We are also in a way little parts of the sun who are igniting the combustible engine of our bodies. We are dependent on this environment for oxygen. But if you look at rapid industrialisation and human greed have deoxygenated our environment. Denuding forests and destruction of water bodies amounts to deoxygenating the earth that means choking life on this earth. Humans are in a way choking themselves in the name of progress and de-oxygenating the earth.
Life is relative. We are part of the environment as much as it is part of us. And if you look at the way this virus works. This virus attacks our capacity to breathe oxygen. The origin of such viruses in nature is the end result of the rapid destruction of lungs of nature. We have denuded forests and permanently contaminated water bodies. Life is choking on the planet. The virus that attacks the body exactly chokes the body-paralysing and infecting lungs integration. The virus replicates an act that humans are performing otherwise the rapid cutting of trees destruction of nature in the name of progress. Organically this type of virus has emerged as a result of our desire to get ourselves choked. Nature and oxygen have evolved as part of living beings. When living beings needed oxygen, the earth was oxygenated and now de-oxygenation of the environment, as a result, ought to reduce our capacity to consume oxygen and nature has its own ways to do that. Today it is a virus. Tomorrow by evolving into shorter lungs sizes and so on. It all depends on the environment we are evolving into.
We should improve the availability of fresh air on the earth by planting more trees and cleaning our water bodies. Pandemic such as these is the offshoots of the destruction of the planet that is making our plant de-oxygenated. Let’s oxygenate ourselves by oxygenating the planet.
And to oxygenate our bodies, Yoga can help systematise breathing to improve strength, health and longevity—as much as this relates to the body. But if you wish to reach that nobody that forms the body then again breath becomes a medium to touch that nobody. Breath is the only connection with the universe.
Your breath is here and now. Watching one’s breath come and go is the technique used by Buddha. You can improve your breathing by correcting your posture by 30%. People sitting on a chair for a long time or on computers, the mobile phones often bend their ribs and neck and don’t breathe as much as they can. Take a walk and breathe fully. Second just lie down on a bed. Inhale slowly and deeply to let the breath touch the point of the navel. Exhale with your full strength. When you don’t exhale with full strength, your capacity to inhale goes down. Focus on exhaling with full strength, it will build your capacity to inhale automatically.
The writer is a spiritual teacher and an advisor on policy, governance and leadership. He can be contacted at arunavalokitta@gmail.com