We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points.

Everything changes, nothing remains the same.

Only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill; everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful — whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant — one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe.

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why you are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done. So, really, you are not breathing, because you are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. You are not required; breathing is something that goes on in spite of you.


It is one of the constant factors in your personality — that is the first thing. It is something that is very essential and basic to life — that is the second thing.

You cannot be alive without breath. So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both: prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.


Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body.

Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe that has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe — every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no longer in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no longer in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant...the most significant thing. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.


Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe.

We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing — no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing — we are born breathing and we will die breathing — but we are not aware of certain points. And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life.


There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors — the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness.

osho - The Book of Secrets

Then Rolfing will be good. Through Rolfing breathing will become natural, and then you can continue it.

Breathing is one of the things to be looked after because it is one of the most important things.


Then almost everywhere you will be withholding something, even in love. In talking even, you will be withholding. You will not communicate completely; something will always remain incomplete.

Once breathing is perfect everything else falls into line. Breathing is life. But people ignore it, they don’t worry about it at all, they don’t pay it any attention.


If for many years you have been breathing wrongly, shallow breathing, then your musculature becomes fixed. Then it is not just a question of your will It is as if somebody has not moved for years: legs have gone dead, the muscles have shrunk, blood flows no more. Suddenly the person decides one day to go for a long walk — it is beautiful, a sunset. But he cannot move; just by thinking it is not going to happen. Now much effort will be needed to bring those dead legs to life again.

The breathing passage has a certain musculature around it, and if you have been breathing wrongly — and almost everybody is — then the musculature has become fixed. Now it will take many years to change it by your own effort, and it will be an unnecessary waste of time. Through deep massage, particularly through Rolfing, those muscles relax and then you can start again. But after Rolfing, once you start breathing well don’t fall into the old habit again.


Everybody breathes wrongly because the whole society is based on very wrong conditions, notions, attitudes. For example, a small child is weeping and the mother says not to cry. What will the child do? — because crying is coming, and the mother says not to cry. He will start holding his breath because that is the only way to stop it. If you hold your breath everything stops — crying, tears, everything. Then by and by that becomes a fixed thing — don’t be angry, don’t cry, don’t do this, don’t do that.


Every child, boy or girl, starts playing with the genital organs because the feeling is pleasant. The child is completely unaware of the social taboos and nonsense, but if the mother or father or somebody sees you playing with your genitals they tell you to stop it immediately. And such condemnation is in their eyes you become shocked, and you become afraid of breathing deeply, because if you breathe deeply it massages your genital organs from within. That becomes troublesome, so you don’t breathe deeply; just shallow breathing so you are cut off from the genital organs.

All societies that are sex-repressive are bound to be shallow-breathing societies. Only primitive people who don’t have any repressive attitude about sex breathe perfectly. Their breathing is beautiful, it is complete and whole. They breathe like animals, they breathe like children.

So many things are involved....

 

becoming aware of breathing. As the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. So the method is to be aware of the belly, its rising and falling. Just the very awareness of the belly rising and falling ... And the belly is very close to the life sources because the child is joined with the mother's life through the navel. Behind the navel is his life's source. So when the belly rises up, it is really the life energy, the spring of life that is rising up and falling down with each breath. That too is not difficult, and perhaps may be even easier, because it is a single technique.
just the belly, moving up and down. And the result is the same. As you become more aware of the belly, the mind becomes silent, the heart becomes silent, the moods disappear.
be aware of the breath at the entrance, when the breath goes in through your nostrils. Feel it at that extreme ¯ the other polarity from the belly ¯ feel it from the nose. The breath going in gives a certain coolness to your nostrils. Then the breath going out ... breath going in, breath going out....
breathing from the belly is more natural, more relaxed.
In the night it happens when you sleep: you don't breathe from the chest, you breathe from the belly. That's why the night is such a relaxed experience. After your sleep, in the morning you feel so fresh, so young, because the whole night you were breathing naturally

As meditation becomes settled, mind silent, the ego will disappear. You will be there, but there will be no feeling of "I." Then the doors are open. Just wait with a loving longing, with a welcome in the heart for that great moment, the greatest moment in anybody's life ¯ enlightenment.

It comes ... it certainly comes. It has never delayed for a single moment. Once you are in the right tuning, it suddenly explodes in you, transforms you. The old human is dead and the new human has arrived.

-OSHO-