Peacedog wrote:Finally, you have Indian style pranayama which is the softest of the three, generally involves much less movement, is exclusively done sitting and focuses more on the empty breath than the other two. This pulls the energy down and in. The bandas result in the more refined energies moving upward, while largely keeping the heat and vital forces below in the chest cavity.
The group I worked with felt the retentions cooked and refined the energies of the belly into a "quintessence", a bright, bubbly energy that rose naturally as the bandhas were slowly released
This is essentially using a blunt force method to open the senses without any specifc efforts to train the ability to focus, as you having in say Zen and Hermetics, or training the senses as we do in Taoist and Hermetic practice. The general rejection of development of the more physical effects, what we call thaumaturgy in Hermetics, is on display here as well as this shift in perception is driven inward versus outward. Useful for theurgy, not so much for practical application.
I think breath counting was designed as the introductory concentration exercise, prior the more advanced and potentially explosive results of breath retention.
For me breath retention is now mostly about dispassionately watching the body's unconscious will to survive during a prologued state of hypoxia. Touching those states over time awakens a resilience to endure (as opposed to chi gung strength), clarifies the mind and erodes the fear of death. I suspect there's a kidney hormonal component to this "awakening" that's related to adrenaline, but it's much smoother, slows the heart rate, sharpens the attention span and expands peripheral perception.