Susie Sy

The Power of Breath

Breath carries more than oxygen. In Kundalini yoga, it's treated as the carrier of prana — life force itself, the thing that animates the body before any thought or movement does. It's the first thing you ever do, and the last.

Conscious breath work, pranayam, is the foundation the rest of the practice is built on — not a warm-up before the real work starts, but the real work itself, in its simplest form. Different patterns of breath do different things: some calm a racing mind, some build energy, some clear out what's stuck.

Learning to use breath on purpose is learning to operate the one part of your nervous system you're actually allowed to reach by hand.

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