The first time that breathing caught my attention was at a meditation.

It was a meditation like usual.

I was entering deeper and deeper into meditation.

When I heard it, audible sounds of my breathing.

It is the breathing of one falling asleep.

I found myself moving into deep trance meditation.

After that, breathing becomes a clue to states of meditation.



When I breathe that way,

I know the meditative state is on me.

Something close to samadhi.

Where I go so deep, I astral travel to higher realms.

Sometimes, I am hardly conscious of breath.

And almost stop breathing.



“Stop breathing and you are dead,” was a response to me.

But no, Buddhist monks and Indian mystics are known to stop breathing.

There is a story about Paramahansa Yogananda.

A disciple wanted to witness his ability to stop breathing.

He asked Yogananda about it.

Sportingly, Yogananda obliged by demonstrating it.

He lay down on the couch and after a while, stopped breathing.

Five minutes into it and his disciples panicked.

And asked him to come back to life.

They did not want a dead body on their hands.



Most of the time my breaths are slow and deep.

When I get sick however, it is different.

Panicked hard breathing, my body in disarray.

Fighting the sickness.

It is then I apply healing breaths, focusing on my breaths.

Natural slow breathing to calm my body down.

Part of that calming down helps with the healing.



The few times I applied such healing breaths,

I knew the exact moment when the worst of the illness was over.

I just know it.

My body knows it.

However, it was never a complete instant healing.

If it were that, I might jump up and down, proclaiming, “It’s a miracle. “

That is the norm of healing for me.

The worst would be over.

And gradually, over the period of twenty hours,

I heal fully and get back to normal.