Ancient sages inform us that breath is the mirror of our ever flowing emotions. It reflects the way we each perceive and process external stimuli, and how we position our consciousness in relation to it. Because breathing is so intimately interwoven with our mental states, our relationship to our breath can become a transformative tool we can readily engage in affecting the quality of our consciousness, and thus the quality of our lives. The flow of breath through our inner geography maps the ways in which we flow through our external geography. The way our breath behaves within us becomes a dynamic metaphor for the way we move on the outside. Full breaths are characteristic of living a full life, and visa-versa. As our breath becomes more expansive it becomes like great white-water rapids rushing between our material and spiritual planes of existence: a flowing river holding the potential to float our consciousness into the most profound region of our emotions. There we encounter our own divine nature.

   The Sanskrit word pranayama is used to describe this remarkable vehicular quality to our breath. Prana refers to our life and ayama implies extension. It points to the inherent potential within our breathing to deliver us to locations beyond our breathing, so that life is extended past impermanence and into the infinite and indestructible realm of Divinity. In bhakti-yoga, mastery of the breath connects us with a clear vision, like a candle illuminating our way. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (3.40-41) refer to this as an outward flowing radiance containing the innate potential to touch others. Like a lotus flower gracefully raising the yoga practitioner above "water, mud, thorns" and other obstacles, the mastery of breath elevates our previously muddy perspectives so we may view life through lenses of pure love: prema bhakti. The bhakta understands that it is only perspective that separates us from love's realm.

   Though we breathe an average of 18,000 to 30,000 breaths a day, most of them go unnoticed. It is said that our lifespan is measured by the number of breaths we take. For the practicing yogi, it is the quality of our breathing that measures the quality of our life. We shift from ordinary living and breathing, to yogic living and breathing through expanding our consciousness. In wrapping our awareness around our breath we simultaneously move closer to the forces that birth each breath. Are they full, love-breaths that will nourish life? Or constricted fear-breaths that will take from life? In our willingness to carefully observe something as accessible as our very breath, we open ourselves to letting love become the animating force behind every breath we breathe, and consequently, every action we take. Giving oneself unto this animating principle of love is at the very core of bhakti, or devotional, yoga.

   The anatomy of Bhakti, as illuminated by Narada in his Bhakta Sutra (text 2), incorporates three essential elements: The lover, the beloved and the location of pure love (prema) in which the two come together: "It is truly an offering unto him [the Beloved], it is that in which one is wholly devoted, it is pure love, Prema, its very nature" (Schweig trans. Forthcoming Columbia Univ. Press). Appropriately, as what sustains our very life, our breath reflects love's ingredients: Within every inhalation, one encounters Divinity lovingly drawing the bhakta in. Exhalations become one's offerings of love unto the Divine, and the gentle suspension between the two, where the inflow and the outflow conjunct, becomes the uniting force of Divine Love upon us.

            Divine Love is a delightful force that cannot take full effect on us unless we let it. This essential volitional element of love is most dramatically represented by our outward flowing breaths, in which we exercise our willingness to give ourselves to love. For this reason exhalations become the most important part of one's pranayama practice. The bhakti yogi wants to be breathed by love, thus they will lay their very-life breath upon the altar of divine love, of which Krishna informs Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita (4.29).

 

   The Lord's devotee acts out of love. The most prominent characteristic of bhaktas as described in the Bhagavad Gita (6.47) are their pure absorption in making offerings of love unto Divinity. A much more intimate glimpse into this devotional heart is given through the amorous poetry of the Rasa Lila. In this climactic part of the treasured Bhagavad Purana, the cowherd maidens of Vraja known as the Gopis, spontaneously devote their every thought, their every action, their every word and their every breath unto Krishna, the supreme object of their love. Without any conscious effort they offer their all unto Divinity. This spontaneous offering of the heart is the perfection of yoga described by Patanjali: Samadhi-siddhi isvara-pranidhanat (2.45). Within this full absorption in love, one's entire being is permeated with love's very essence. Here loving and breathing become one.

   The breath of divine love is ever flowing. The perfection of pranayama culminates in an absorption in love so grand it takes our breath away! To be left breathless is a state in which our focus on something captivates us to the point that our involuntary breathing is instantaneously arrested. It hints at the heart's innate understanding that we live on more than just our own breath. Like a beautiful landscape, the mere sight of our beloved can take our breath away. Pranayama asks us to relate to our breathing as we would relate to our lover by giving it our undivided attention. Within bhakti-yoga we align our very soul with this divine breath, letting ourselves be breathed by love. The love mystics of bhakti from antiquity to the present have paralleled a true bhakta's burning desire to attain prema (pure love) with a drowning man's desperate longings for a breath of air. The absence of it becomes commensurate with a threat to one's very existence, and thus breathing love becomes both the way and the goal upon which eternal Samadhi itself rests. As the Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi states,

There is one way of breathing that is

shameful and constricted.

Then there is another way;

A breath of love that takes you

All the way to infinity.

Rumi