How Pranayama Can Help Lengthen Your Life, According to Ancient Yogis

In yoga, breath and life force (or prana) are deeply connected. The yogis believed that controlling your breath directly influences the flow of prana within your body. It’s almost like a balancing act—when you control the breath, you gain mastery over the flow of energy that sustains you. By becoming more aware of your breathing patterns, you can tap into more of this vital life force. This is where pranayama, the yogic science of breath control, comes into play.

Pranayama and Life Force

The practice of pranayama is designed to control the life force (prana) within the body by regulating the breath. By controlling your breath, you can free up more of your prana. The yogis believed that the breath and prana are directly connected, and that controlling the breath allows you to control the flow of prana in the body.

Extending the Breath

Through pranayama techniques, you learn to extend your breath—not by taking unnaturally long inhalations, but by consciously slowing down and deepening each breath. This is achieved by directing the breath with awareness to each part of the lungs, making use of more of the lung capacity with deep, controlled breathing.

Breath and Lifespan

The yogis found that by extending the breath, you also expand your life force, which in turn lengthens the span of your life. By slowing down the breath, you reduce the number of breaths you take per minute, which they believed could help prolong life. Many pranayama techniques, therefore, focus on lengthening the exhalation and incorporating breath retention to enhance this effect.

Breath and Energy

The breath, according to ancient yogis, teaches us about the cycles of receiving and giving, holding and letting go. They observed that the breath points us towards the subtle, invisible forces of life. By learning to control and extend the breath, we tap into these forces, cultivating more energy and vitality.

In Summary

The ancient yogis believed that controlling and extending the breath through pranayama was directly linked to expanding life force and lengthening lifespan. Rather than focusing on the number of years lived, they emphasised the quality of each breath. Breath, in their view, was a powerful tool for controlling energy and promoting well-being.