Here’s my latest with Salvia and Pranayama….

It all started last night in my weekly Yoga class I take. There was only three of us there so the she-teacher asked if we had any special requests. Something I’ve been studying recently is an breath-retention and regulation technique I read about in “Secrets of Yoga” called pranayamas. I asked her to go over whatever she should regarding the topic…

She went on to explain how the mind and emotions are intimately connected with the breath. How our breathing rate is the accumulation of our total mind/body/spirit at any given time.

She also explained how regulation of the breath brings out hidden emotions… subconscious motives and fears. Envy, anger, lust – pick your poison. By the regulation of breath these nasty fragmentations of pure consciousness show their face in your psyche.

After a long class (about 3 hours!) I left with a wealth of knowledge and a burning desire to dig up some of my seeded emotions through this pranayama pratice. And that’s just what I did the next morning…

Enlisting the help of Salvia on this one, I took a couple deep breaths of some Salvia Dragon 10x burning in my incense burner and took a seat on my knees eastern style to practice what I learned the night before…

Regulating my breath so it took a full 12 seconds to inhale, 6 seconds hold at the apex of the inhalation, 12 seconds to exhale and another 6 seconds hold at the base of the breath was the ratio I choose to use. After about…. oh, I’d say 4 minutes – the emotions started to flow.

By this time the whole room was filled with the smoke for my Salvia incense burner – only aiding in my concentration and emotional attachment to what I was experiencing.

First came panic, panic to take a giant breath in and fufil my ‘lack’ of air. Mentally I knew it was all emotion, and there was no physical reason to need to gasp. It the was feeling of being smothered I was experiencing – yet all I had done was change my breathing pattern. Suddenly flashes of being locked in a box came through my head. Flashes of being at the bottom of a ‘dog pile’ when I was a boy – unable to breath or get them off of me. A dogpile is pictured atop. Imagine being the poor chap stuck on the bottom of that!

The same feeling of panic I had experienced in both those cases… years and years ago – I was experiencing again – right here and now – by just regulating my breath!

How amazing is that? Content with my findings I decided to return my breathing to normal to blend my mind with my emotion and try to totally annihilate the emotional defect. Appealing to a higher power I prayed for guidance. Just like a seed must receive water from above, I prayed for the illumination it would require to analyze and destroy this emotion defect into cosmic dust.

I then entered a state of deep relaxation where my thinking process stopped, but my heart was very active still. Staying conscious of the breath, I let the emotions and the body work it out.

Emerging from the trance-like state I felt “lighter” somehow. Like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. Sort of the like the lightness you feel after a fast, or after having released your bowels in the morning. It felt like that. But the only thing that changed as a spiritual insight to an emotional defect I had carried within myself – like a poison – for decades!

I have pranayamas, and the dragon to thank for this ‘toxic release’. I hope the same success in self conscious awarness and spiritual insight to all who might follow in my foot steps and try Salvia for themselves.