In the last part of this series on the pancha pranas, Sadhguru reveals various aspects of vyana prana, including its significance in Kriya Yoga, ways to activate it, and how you can benefit from it.
Sadhguru: At this time of year, when the Northern Hemisphere is facing away from the Sun, the Sun’s influence is minimal, so the Moon becomes strong. The Sun is a kind of effervescence, while the Moon connects you to the earth or to the soil. You become more like the earth – a little slowed down but stable. If anything is going out of balance, the first thing you do is slow down. Slowing down is not just about your activity but the process of life itself.
Traditionally, in India, this is a time of music, dance, light, gaiety, and color, so that you do not go with the planetary depression that is happening. This is also a time to activate vyana prana because when the life process slows down, there is room for recovery and rejuvenation.
Vyana prana is in charge of preservation in the human system. It is the energy which knits these trillions of individual cells into one organism. If you want to have physical and psychological stability, it is important that the vyana is strong. Essentially, a spiritual process means something beyond the body becomes a living reality for you. If you activate vyana prana substantially, you will wear your body loosely.
Once you are neither stuck in the physiological nor the psychological process, knowing the nature of your existence will be a natural outcome. Vyana is the most important aspect of Kriya Yoga, and for one to progress on the spiritual path. In Kriya Yoga, there are powerful ways of activating vyana prana.
People are telling me, “Sadhguru, you do not do any exercise, but you seem to be well all the time.” If your vyana prana is good, the outermost layer of your body, the skin, or, in other words, the epithelial health will be extremely good. If the skin is in a certain way, the respiration through the pores of the skin is at its best. It takes in water and air easily, and the entire body feels energetic. When you activate vyana prana, the general integrity of the body will be very good. If vyana prana begins to dissipate, deterioration of the body will naturally happen.
If you do not have any other sadhana, a simple way to activate vyana prana is to keep in touch with the earth or the soil because the richness of the soil and the richness of the body are related. Maybe do a little gardening with bare feet and bare hands, or walk in your garden without footwear. If that is not possible, at least give yourself a mud bath. Get some soil, smear it across your body, and wait for it to dry up. After thirty to forty minutes, wash it off. You can do this at least once in a few months.
If the earth and you are not connected, then your vyana becomes very weak. If you vyana is not strong, you cannot do powerful kriyas. The idea of doing powerful kriyas is not just to live well, but to be able to do things with your energy. If you want to make this hall burst with energy, then you need a kind of malleability to throw your energies out and still not kill yourself. For this, you need very strong vyana prana. Activating energies that are effervescent in nature without a stable ground is not good.
Vyana is a vital part of Yoga sadhana. Unfortunately, very few people are eligible for more sadhana. Sadhana and the connection with the earth need to happen together. Stabilizing the system is essential if you want to go at a certain speed. If there is no balance, you will not dare to go fast. Speed is a way of crushing time and space. This is important because life is a limited amount of time, and it gives you little space. If you do not crush time and space, you will end up being a minimal life.
If you have substantial vyana prana, you become loose inside the body. Once there is a distinct experience of what is body and what is not body, of what is you and what is not you, then leaving the body at will or when it is time to do that, will become far more effortless. Living well will definitely happen, and dying well will also become a possibility. Unfortunately, a lot of people who live well do not die well.
You have probably heard of Paramahansa Yogananda, who was one of the first Yogis who went to the United States and created quite a stir. Swami Vivekananda plowed the land, but I would say it was Yogananda who planted the seeds of Yoga. On 7 March 1952, he left his body in Los Angeles, at a gathering. He had instructed his people that his body can be kept for twenty-one days, and it will be fine. There is a notarized certificate from the mortuary director saying that for three weeks, his body showed no signs of physical deterioration, without any preservatives or cooling. It was completely immutable. This is because if you have substantial vyana prana, there is no decay in the body.
That means if let’s say you are eighteen right now, and you enhance your vyana prana, your cellular age may remain there. You will be aging in other ways, but in terms of fundamental vital energy, and how the body functions and feels within yourself will remain the same. It is not that you are trying to be immortal. It is just that you want to put your life to effective use, both in terms of profoundness of experience and impact of activity.
If your vyana prana is not good, your experience will not be profound because your body will be an impediment in your life. Food, sexuality, and small pleasures are keeping people busy for their entire life. They complicate their survival to feel like they are doing something profound. Making the body a minimal influence upon your life means the body is not in the way. Once the body is not in the way, you are on the highway of spirituality, not just the spiritual path.
For this life to conduct itself, there are two dimensions of intelligence. One dimension of intelligence entirely depends on memory. There are different kinds of memory: evolutionary memory, genetic memory, karmic memory, and various other forms. Everything that happens in your body and most of what happens in your head is because of the memory that you carry. If we pull out the memory card, this whole physiological and psychological process will fall apart.
But there is another dimension of intelligence within you which is not dependent on memory. That is what is firing the life process within you. If you just go by the intelligence that functions with its roots in memory, you will be very limited. But normally, in the education systems around the world, being smart is defined as remembering a lot of things. The longing to expand your intelligence is crippled by the intelligence that is dedicated to survival and memory.
The way your physical body is and the way you are as an individual is because of the memory you carry. How much you allow your memory to rule you is your choice. To exercise this choice, you need vyana prana. Shakti Chalana Kriya is a sophisticated way of approaching it. For those of you who are practicing Shakti Chalana Kriya, Naga Kriya[1] is very important to stabilize the system with vyana prana.
[1] A Part of Shakti Chalana Kriya, a yogic practice taught in Isha’s Shoonya Intensive program
