Our breath is shallow most of the time. Disorders like headache, acidity, flatulence, sleeplessness, and high blood pressure, which are indicative of poor health creep in; in response to our restlessness, we turn to medication and even, intoxication.
We also do not notice it when our organs of perception start deteriorating. Our mouth becomes dry, our eyes get weak or our skin becomes oversensitive. By the time we realise these changes in the senses, it is already an advanced stage of fatigue. We are unable to discern the fatigue at the nervous level in the early stages because it does not affect our day-to-day life immediately. However, in Pranayama, our breath helps us focus on our senses.
Draw the senses inward and look within. Use these senses to understand the flow of your breath and slowly increase the capacity of the breath. In Savasana, as you inhale and exhale, use your ears to listen to the breath, feel the breath touching your chest (top, middle, bottom), let your eyes search for the contact of the breath with the chest, let your tongue relax on the lower palate to withdraw the saliva (as swallowing the saliva fluctuates the mind). We do not want any organic movement except the movement of our breath. The voluntary muscles must come to a standstill for the involuntary muscles to perform optimally.
It is better to focus on just one sense at a time – for instance, ears can streamline our breath. Hence, in olden days, people covered their ears while sleeping. Increasing the strength of our ears can be very helpful in Pranayama to improve our breathing capacity. Our ears can be our first teacher.