It's all Power, All the Time: Unity as Breath

The primacy of power that I described in an earlier post combined with its bad general reputation is not good for clarity of thought. If fundamental truths are ignored, elaborate systems are contrived to provide work arounds to avoid the truth. 

At one point, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous trumpets "lack of power is our dilemma." Having tried every self-help approach, the authors of the Big Book finally conceded that lack of power was the primary issue so that led to a search for the necessary power "to restore sanity."

If power is primary, then the primary principle of power is unity. The reason love songs dominate musical charts is because the natural pattern of love is unity. As two become one, so power is increased. But right there is how we avoid power as primary. It sounds callous to say they are together for power unless you are a friend of mine who claims, "she married me for my body, but keeps me for my money."

But unity starts at home. Spinoza describes singular things as those which have complex parts but all express as one effect - elegantly connecting unity to power. The word yoga comes from the sanskrit word "yuj" for unity or oneness. (Give me another year of Covid and sanskrit will be mine!) The emphasis of yoga is to establish an internal unity so that the body functions as a whole as if a well-directed orchestra, rather than fighting within itself through internal divisions of body and mind as a dissonant experience. What's yoga's secret to this?

The essence of yoga is breathing rooted in the word prana as "breath-spirit." In breathing the body is unified. Underlying this concept is the term spiritual which is just Latin for breath. In the Big Book, the authors are looking for a spiritual solution. Here breath is connected to unity is connected to power. Breathing is the fundamental way that we experience unity which brings power. But its regularity and continuity hides its characteristics.

The first time I became aware of breathing as an act was when I was working out with a personal trainer. She assured me that holding my breath while I bench pressed weights was not helpful. That struck me. Why was I doing that counterproductive activity? It's simply that I perceived that by shutting down all activities except for the bench press would lead to a better outcome. But it doesn't; unity always outperforms division.

Breathing is all important. Longer out breaths drive a slowdown in a cooling of the unity and shorter out breaths drive a ramp up in a heating of the unity. Pranayama is a set of breath exercises that are not only designed to enhance unity but express that unity in different ways.