Hindu Medicine c8.137

c8.137

These particular notions about the breathing process are based on actual experience in yoga practice; they form the empirical background for the Hindu theory of breath and breathing. Prāṇa pervades, enlivens and governs the microcosm, just as its great counterpart, the divine Lord Wind, fills and rules the body of the universe through its incessant motion. Prāṇa protrudes before the gates of nose and mouth, and it can be trained to fill various parts of the organism. The activity of the lungs is ignored. Instead, all yoga doctrines and yoga Upaniṣads referring to breathing have one theory in common, that there exist two channels which start at the two nostrils and go downward to the lower end of the spinal column, crossing one another and entwining the backbone.