Pranayama in The Time of COVID-19: Harvard and Beyond
COVID-19 has brought the focus right back to the Breath, where modern
Science believes all things begin and end. Medical practitioners all
over the world are finding ways to tackle the virus, which enters, stays
and multiplies first in the upper respiratory system, and when
fortified, attacks the lower respiratory system.
The American born son of Russian Jewish parents, world renowned
violinist Yehudi Menuhin became a serious student of BKS Iyengar, making
Yoga a regular feature of his life. Because it was not practical for
Menuhin to return constantly to India to have lessons, he took Iyengar
with him to Britain, France and Switzerland. Iyengar met and taught some
of the most famous artistes and musicians in the world including
cellist Jacqueline du Pre. They, like Menuhin, discovered that yoga
releases everything (Classic fM)
Scenario
1: Northumbria University Associate Professor Sterghios Moschos is
leading research into a device to collect breath samples which could be
tested in minutes. If trials show it can detect the virus, its results
could be quicker and more reliable than current tests, he says.
His kit is
simple. All that you will be asked to do is: 'Please breathe into
this'. Current tests mostly use nose and throat swabs because chest
samples are only available if the patient coughs up mucus. Data in
papers released by Chinese researchers show that the swab method that is
being used worldwide right now is not reliable, says Dr Moschos. He
believes his device would work better because it tests the breath, which
has circulated in the chest.
Scenario 2: A journalist of Mother Jones
contacted Loren Rauch, a community ER doctor at Antelope Valley
Hospital in Los Angeles, to check the veracity of the claim that “the
new coronavirus may not show signs of infection for many days. By the
time you have fever and/or cough and go to the hospital, the lung is
usually 50 percent fibrosis.”
Rauch
replied, “That doesn’t mean anything. Fibrosis is a late scarring
process. You may have 50 percent of your lung affected by the virus,
causing pneumonia or fluid in your lungs. If you can breathe fine, do not go to the doctor. Only go if you cannot breathe or are very ill.”.
Scenario
3: The anxiety and stress is mounting. Dr John Sharp is a
board-certified psychiatrist on the faculty at Harvard Medical School
and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has been voted by
his peers for inclusion in Best Doctors in America for the past 10
years. On March 12, he posted suggestions on how to beat stress during
COVID-19, on the Harvard Medical School website (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/coping-with-coronavirus-anxiety-2020031219183).
He says:
“Here are some tried and true ways to relax: Yoga. Not a yoga person? No
need to start now unless you’d like to try it. Sometimes trying new
things and discovering new activities you can benefit from and enjoy can
be a welcome, healthy distraction. Meditation. Regular meditation is
very calming.”
And finally, controlled breathing.
“One simple technique is called square breathing. Visualize your breath
traveling along a square. As you follow the instructions to inhale,
hold your breath, or exhale, count slowly to three on each side. Try it
now. Inhale up the first side of the square. Slowly count one, two,
three. Hold your breath across the top. One, two, three. Exhale down the
other side of the square. One, two, three. Then hold your breath across
the bottom. One, two, three. After a few minutes of this you should be
feeling calmer and more centered.”
He is
perhaps referring to the nasal expiration and control of breath, with
which every single student of yoga is familiar with. To call it 'Square
Breathing' is unacceptable. He is essentially talking about:
प्रच्छर्दनविधारणाभ्यां वा प्राणस्य॥३४॥
pracchardana-vidhāraṇa-ābhyāṁ vā prāṇasya ॥34॥
Yoga Sutra, Samadhi Pada, Sutra 1.34
It
(Stability) can also be attained through the practice of gradual nasal
expiration and control of breath (Translation by James Haughton Woods in
his book The Yoga-System of Patanjali)
In India, the Sun’s energy is said to produce and preserve the
conditions necessary for life in all living beings. SK Ramachandra Rao
in his book Yoga and Tantra in India and Tibet says Yoga
techniques emphasise that it is not “consciousness that should be sought
to be corrected but the basic vital currents that should be handled in
order that the consciousness spontaneously gets expanded, relaxed and
deep.”
India has
developed a deep and profound system of breathing. Dr Rao writes:
“breath alternates during the course of the day between the left nostril
(connected with the ida, representing moon, and in effect cooling) and the right nostril (connected with pingala,
representing sun, and in effect heating). Normally, breathe passes
through the arteries 960 times an hour…During our normal respiration,
inhalation is an active process, and exhalation a passive one. Thoughts
arise and cease in accordance with the respiratory rate.”
Further,
“If breath does not alternate between the nostrils, but continues in one
nostril beyond the normal period of an hour and fifty minutes, it is
symptomatic of impairment of health, due to either excess of heat or of
cold. If the breath moves in and out through single nostril for as long
as 24 hours, the derangement of humours is serious; if the condition
prevails for two or more days, the illness is grave enough.”
In his foreword to Iyengar's book Light on Pranayama Menuhin
writes: “He (Iyengar) has placed in the hands of the layman…more
information, more knowledge and more wisdom in an integrated way than is
available to our most brilliant students of conventional medicine, for
it is a medicine of health and not of sickness, it is an understanding
of the spirit, body and mind that is as healing as it is invigorating.”
He
continues: “He teaches us in line with ancient Indian philosophy that
life is not only dust to dust, but air to air, that, as with the process
of fire, matter is transformed into heat, light and radiation from
which we may gather strength. But strength is more than the
transformation of matter into other forms of matter, it is the
transformation of the whole cycle of air and light into matter and back
again.
In fact, it (Pranayama) completes Einstein’s equation of matter and energy and translates it into the human, the living incarnation.”
“Ancient,
classical Indian texts, will provide illuminating guidelines to the
reconciliation of various practices of medicine from acupuncture to
touch and sound therapy to the mutual and reciprocal benefit of them
all. It will also teach us to respect those elements which we have
treated with such contempt – air, water and light, without which life
cannot survive.”
The Upanishads say that prana is the principle of life and consciousness. Prana
is the breathe of life and of all living beings in the universe. They
are born and live by it and when they die their individual breath
dissolves into the Cosmic Breath. And does not bite the dust.