Please sit straight with your spine erect, neck vertical, eyes closed, eye level horizontal. Breathe in through your nose very slowly and breathe out gracefully through the center of your lips. Please repeat this five times and enjoy the progressive silencing of the mind and the gradual relaxing of the body. If it takes a little longer, please repeat a few times.

Enjoy stomach rising as you breathe in and stomach receding as you breathe out. Very carefully observe the lungs expanding as you inhale and lungs contracting as you exhale. Feel further relaxation as you keep on exhaling.

Now visualize your upper body to be an x-rayed body showing only spine and rib cage. Enjoy rib cage expanding as you breathe in and the rib cage collapsing as you breathe out. How nice to witness this movement of expanding and collapsing! Observe the dancing movement of ribcage. It grows as you breathe in and it shrinks as you breathe out. It enlarges as you breathe in and it contracts as you breathe out.

Now observe the connection between ribs and the spine. Observe how ribs have been connected to the vertebrae. As the ribs move the vertebrae move. Some move forward, while the others move backwards. Try to feel the role of movement of disks and vertebrae. Feel the forward and backward movement of vertebrae. Such a subtle movement! Please do not let your mind wander. Treat your mind like a delicate baby. Observe the slowing down of the thoughts. Just observe but DO NOT entertain any of the thoughts.

Now observe the movements of vertebrae as you breathe in and as you breathe out. Some of the vertebrae will move forward while the other will move backwards. These movements will be very small, very little. These movements will be very subtle. Simultaneously, observe the movements in the disks between the vertebrae. The Jello-type substance moves forward in some cases and backwards in some other cases depending upon their location in the three “C” curves of the spine.

Now feel the subtle movements in the spine. Upward movement as you inhale and downward movement as you breathe out. Pretty soon you observe an upward force along the spine as you inhale and a downward force along the spine as you exhale. Feel Pràna along the spine as you breathe in and feel Apàna as you breathe out. Feel the Pràna moving upwards as you breathe and Apàna moving down the spine as you breathe out. It is the Pràna and Apàna that gives rise to subtle movements in the spine and disks, subtle movements in the vertebrae and disks. Those movements get translated into movements in the junctions between vertebrae and ribs. Those movements in turn get translated to the ribs and eventually to the lungs. As the ribs expand, lungs expand, and as the ribs collapse, lungs collapse. As the lungs expand, you inhale and as the lungs collapse, you breathe out. So to say, as Pràna moves up the spine you breathe in and when Apàna travels down the spine, you breathe out. So to say, breathing happens as Pràna and Apàna move up and down the spine. One may manipulate to a minor degree but breathing is happening and we are not doing.

As soon as you are born, breathing just happens. Breathing is a spontaneous action. There is no effort required on your part. Cosmic intelligence and cosmic power makes it happen. Countless things in cosmos happen. It appears in an illusionary manner that your efforts materialize into breathing. But it happens even when you are sleeping or unconscious or in a coma. Enjoy being in the state of happening. Enjoy the expansion of the world of happening. As a matter of fact, everything is happening. Countless things are happening.

To recognize and to be aware in that state of happening is meditation. Meditation happens.

Enjoy the state of happening with gratitude. Deeper the gratitude, more silent your mind becomes. More silence the mind becomes, your external identity changes into your true identity. Which is Sat Chit Ananda. Enjoy that state, so long as you remain in it.

Hari AUM