Lord, the all-pervading, all-intelligent reality, is our best friend in the form of being consciously aware of our breath. Being consciously aware of one's breathing is a great tool for learning to pause when faced with a difficult emotion. When one is aware of one's breathing when faced with a difficult emotion, it gives one the space to compassionately allow the difficult emotion to be there, without acting upon it with the old reactive patterns. When one is able to be there compassionately for any difficult emotion, without acting upon it, what happens is that there is space for that emotion to dissipate and one finds that one is much bigger than the emotion. It becomes easy to recognize oneself to be the witness-consciousness, the awareful non-judgemental impartial conscious being in whose self-evident ever- presence the emotion is revealed, in whose presence the emotion however difficult it maybe because of one's identification with it, comes to go.
Prana Vikshanam or breath awareness, along with chanting of one's mantra can become a very powerful tool in the management and healing of old difficult charged emotions that come up from time to time in a sadhaka's life.
One must give time to develop the practice of consciously watching one's breath. The Buddhist tradition places great value on this practice, for very good reasons. It is a time-tested tool for a sadhaka of any tradition, which can help you to not only learn to master vikshepa (the restless discursive thinking) but can also help in the clearing of mala, the impurities in the heart, which stand as obstacles to one's owning up one's, innate abiding freedom.
Om Tat Sat
