Hello,
I’ve started with the Hong-Sau and energization exercises for a very short time, like 2 weeks ago, but yesterday I was doing Hong-Sau and I experienced that I had no or almost no breath, like taking a little drop of it. The feeling of my lungs can be compared with if you hold your breath out and move you abs a very little bit in and out. And I felt strange feelings through my body, and I felt bigger than I normally should be, and it felt very fine.
What this can be?
Greetings, Roberto
—Roberto, Netherlands
Dear Roberto,
This is quite wonderful what you are experiencing, just after two weeks!
What happens is that the “Divine Fisherman” often blesses beginning seekers, to show that the results of meditation will be indeed special. In this way He “catches” the seeker. Often, after these beginning blessings, our long-time work begins, day for day, with patience and persistence, month for month, year by year.
For now enjoy as fully as you can your experience of almost-breathlessness, if it comes again. This is the state which all deep yogis desire. The breath is the cord that binds the soul to the body. The more the breath disappears, the more the soul becomes free.
The main goal of the Hong-Sau technique is exactly this: the absence of breath, natural breathlessness.
You are experiencing some of its results. The “strange feelings in the body” are inner movements of energy. These movements can be experienced numerous ways: you may feel heavy as a rock, or very light, or, as you have experienced, one may feel very tall, much taller than the physical body. Or the spine may feel very stiff all over a sudden, or you feel like swirling with the body etc.
And yes, as you write, it feels “very fine.” Breathlessness is deathlessness, it is the beginning of soul experience, which is made of bliss (ananda). And you are having a little first experience of it.
The best counsel for you is to keep meditating with Hong-Sau, to keep this blessing alive. If it goes away at some point, say thank you, and still keep meditating. If on the other hand it should deepen, again say thank you, and keep meditating.
Here is a quote by Yogananda about Hong Sau. Please understand his term “conscious passivity” in the right way. One needs to be intensely active while meditating, but not controlling the breath, just observing it (passive in observing it):
“The purpose of this technique is conscious passivity. It teaches one how to free his attention from sense entanglements. Breath is the cord that binds the soul to the body. Man lives in and requires the atmosphere of air, just as a fish needs water. When he learns to rise above breath, man ascends into the celestial realms of the angels.”
May you “ascend into the celestial realms of the angels”!
Best spiritual wishes, jayadev
