These are all austerities:

Fasting; natural eating; deep, rhythmic breathing; yoga exercises; living a more and more natural, flexible, supple life; creating less and less suppressed attitudes; allowing the body to have its own say, following the wisdom of the body. 

There are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don't release them the body will remain heavy. Yoga exercises exist to release all sorts of accumulated poisons in the body. Yoga movements release them; and a yogi's body has a suppleness of its own. Yoga exercises are totally different from other exercises. They don't make your body strong; they make your body more flexible. And when your body is more flexible, you are strong in a very different sense: you are younger. They make your body more liquid, more flowing -- no blocks in the body. The whole body exists as an organic unity, in a deep rhythm of its own. It is not Like noise in the market; it is like an orchestra. A deep rhythm inside, no blocks, then the body is pure. Yoga exercises can be tremendously helpful.

VIDEO

Everybody is carrying much rubbish in the stomach, because that is the only space in the body where you can suppress things. There is no other space. If you want to suppress anything it has to be suppressed in the stomach. If you want to cry -- your wife has died, your beloved has died, your friend has died -- but it doesn't look good, looks as if you are a weakling, crying for a woman, you suppress it: where will you put that crying? Naturally, you have to suppress it in the stomach. That is the only space available in the body, the only hollow place, where you can force.

If you suppress in the stomach.... And everybody has suppressed many sorts of emotions: of love, of sexuality, of anger, of sadness, of weeping -- even of laughter. You cannot laugh a belly laugh. It looks rude, looks vulgar -- you are not cultured then. You have suppressed everything. Because of this suppression, you cannot breathe deeply, you have to breathe shallowly. Because if you breathe deeply then those wounds of suppression, they would release their energy. You are afraid. Everybody is afraid to move in the stomach.

Every child, when born, breathes through the belly. Look at a child sleeping: the belly goes up and down -- never the chest. No child breathes from the chest; they breathe from the belly. They are completely free now, nothing is suppressed. Their stomachs are empty, and that emptiness has a beauty in the body.

Once the stomach has too much suppression in it, the body is divided in two parts, the lower and the higher. Then you are not one; you are two. The lower part is the discarded part. The unity is lost; a duality has entered into your being. Now you cannot be beautiful, you cannot be graceful. You are carrying two bodies instead of one -- and there will always remain a gap between the two. You cannot walk beautifully. Somehow you have to carry your legs. In fact if the body is one, your legs will carry you. If the body is divided in two then you have to carry your legs.

You have to drag your body. It is like a burden. You cannot enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a good walk, you cannot enjoy a good swim, you cannot enjoy a fast run -- because the body is not one. For all these movements, and to enjoy them, the body needs to be reunited. A unison has to be created again: the stomach will have to be cleansed completely.

For the cleansing of the stomach, very deep breathing is needed, because when you inhale deeply and exhale deeply, the stomach throws all that it is carrying. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself . Hence the importance of pranayam, of deep rhythmic breathing. The emphasis should be on the exhalation so that everything that the stomach has been unnecessarily carrying is released.

And when the stomach is not carrying emotions inside, if you have constipation it will suddenly disappear. When you are suppressing emotions in the stomach there will be constipation because the stomach is not free to have its movements. You are deeply controlling it; you can't allow it freedom. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Constipation is more a mental disease than a physical one. It belongs to the mind more than it belongs to the body.

But remember, I am not dividing mind and body in two. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Mind and body are not two things. In fact to say "mind and body" is not good: "mind-body" will be the right expression. Your body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body, and body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel. If you are suppressing something in the mind, the body will start a suppressing journey. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything. That's why I emphasize catharsis very much. Catharsis is a cleansing process.

"Austerities destroy impurities...." These I call austerities. "Austerities" does not mean to torture the body. It means to create a living fire in the body so that the body is cleansed. As if you have thrown gold into the fire -- all that was not gold is burned. Only pure gold comes out.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #5 (In part.)
Chapter title: Purity and Power
3 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall