If you can regulate breathing, you have power over your mind...

More on the breath...

Have you ever watched that whenever the mind changes, the rhythm of the breath immediately changes? If you do the opposite -- if you change that rhythm of the breath -- the mind has to change immediately. When you are angry you cannot breathe silently; otherwise the anger will disappear. Try. When you are feeling angry your breath goes chaotic, it becomes irregular, loses all rhythm, becomes noisy, restless. It is no longer a harmony. A discord starts being there; the accord is lost.

Try one thing: whenever you are getting angry just relax and let the breath be in rhythm. Suddenly you will feel the anger has disappeared. The anger cannot exist without a particular type of breathing in your body. When you are making love the breath changes, becomes very violent. When you are very much filled with sexuality, the breath changes, becomes very violent. Sex has a little violence in it. Lovers are known to bite each other and sometimes harm each other. And if you see two persons making love, you will see that some sort of fighting that is going on. There is a little violence in it. And both are breathing chaotically; their breathings are not in rhythm, not in unison.

In tantra, where much has been done with sex and the transformation of sex, they have worked very much on the rhythm of the breath. If two lovers, while making love, can remain in a rhythmic breathing, in unison, that both have the same rhythm, there will be no ejaculation. They can make love for hours, because ejaculation is possible only when the breath is not in rhythm; only then can the body throw the energy. If the breath is in rhythm, the body absorbs the energy; it never throws it out. Tantra developed many techniques of changing the rhythm of breath. Then you can make love for hours and you don't lose energy. Rather on the contrary you gain, because if a woman loves a man and a man loves a woman, they help each other to be recharged -- because they are opposite energies. When opposite energies meet and spark, they charge each other; otherwise energy is lost and, after the lovemaking, you feel a little cheated, deceived -- so much promise and nothing comes in hand, the hands remain empty.

After asan comes breath regulation, prarayam. Watch for a few days and just take notes: when you become angry what is the rhythm of your breathing -- whether exhalation is long or inhalation is long or they are the same, or inhalation is very small and exhalation very long, or exhalation very small, inhalation very long. Just watch the proportion of inhalation and exhalation.

When you are sexually aroused, watch, take note. When sometimes sitting silently and looking at the sky in the night, everything is quiet around you. just take note of how your breath is going. When you are feeling filled with compassion, watch, note down. When you are in a fighting mood, watch, note down. Just make a chart of your own breathing. and then you know much.

And that is not difficult. There is no need to ask any expert. Just keep a chart for one month of all your moods and states . Then you know which is the rhythm where you feel most restful, relaxed, in a deep let-go; which is the rhythm where you feel quiet, calm, collected, cool; which is the rhythm when, suddenly, you feel blissful. filled with something unknown, overflowing -- you have so much in that moment, you can give to the whole world and it will not be exhausted. Feel and watch the moment when you feel that you are one with the universe, when you feel the separateness is there no more , a bridge. When you feel one with the trees and the birds. and the rivers and the rocks, and the ocean and the sand -- watch You will find that there are many rhythms of your breath, a great spectrum: from the most violent, ugly, miserable hell-type, to the most silent heaven-type.

Pranayam is one of the greatest discoveries that has even happened to human consciousness. Compared to pranayam, going to the moon is nothing. It looks very exciting, but it is nothing, because even if you reach to the moon, what will you do there? Even if you reach to the moon you will remain the same. You will do the same nonsense that you are doing here. Pranayam is an inner journey.

And pranayam is the fourth -- and there are only eight steps. Half the journey is completed on pranayam. A man who has learned pranayam, not by a teacher -- because that is a false thing, I don't approve of it -- but by his own discovery and alertness, a man who has learned his rhythm of being, has achieved half the goal already. Pranayam is one of the most significant discoveries.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5

Chapter #5
Chapter title: The Eight Limbs of Yoga
5 July 1975 am in Buddha Hall