Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Immunity

How to build prana, vitality, and agni, the digestive fire using Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda

This article is part of a Video Lecture on Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Immunity. The full lecture is available in the Big Shakti Store.

The lecture contains extra material not included in this article because it includes detailed visual descriptions of Samkhya, the oldest Indian philosophy, which is the foundation for both Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda. It also explains yoga-tantra methods of increasing prana and agni.

Click here to see the recording.

The Article

Yogic theory tells us that the key to staving off viruses is to make your life force (prana) stronger than the life force of the virus. Otherwise, your immunity (fire, agni) can't cope, and the virus wins.

We live in interesting times! (Said to be an old Chinese curse)

Global warming, epidemics crashing through the boundaries of nation-states, and financial disruption. All this distress is not good for you. If you do not have a way to remedy this distress, it can weaken your immune system, making you more prone to physical and mental illnesses. such as the coronavirus, if you don’t know how to defend yourself and reduce the negative impact of all this stress.

By combining the ancient wisdom of the East with modern science and medicine, you can reduce the negative impact of stress and improve your health, immunity, and resilience.

Eastern systems of self-development, such as yoga, which incorporates breathing and meditation practices, and the ancient science of Ayurveda, are invaluable in building your prana, vitality, and good digestion, enabling you to control your physical and mental health more.

If you haven’t been practicing some form of yoga or meditation and, therefore, have not been building your prana or your vitality, now is the time to start. Within a few short weeks of practicing the appropriate practices that build vitality, along with some lifestyle modifications, you will feel stronger and more relaxed.

The key message is that if you are suffering from chronic illness, then your prana and your agni are not working properly. It is estimated that approximately 80% of the world is functioning at less-than-optimal metabolic health; that is, their prana and agni are low or dysfunctional.

Prana and Agni in Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Immunity

Now let’s talk about prana, your life force, vitality, energy, and agni, inner digestive fire, and immunity.

From the yoga therapy and Ayurvedic perspective, the key to preventing serious illness is building your life force, prana, and immunity, agni.

Prana - life-force

Prana, your vitality and life force, is like the wind, called vayu, in Sanskrit. It is called prana vayu or prana shakti. The characteristic of prana is movement and change. When it is healthy, it flows smoothly and is like a cool breeze on a summer’s night. If it is unhealthy, it either blows too strong, weak, or erratic. It can also be blocked by unconsciously held physical and mental tensions that cause the contractions that block flow. One of the best ways to cultivate prana is by yogic breathing techniques (pranayama) and pranic healing meditations.

Agni - Digestive Fire, Resilience, and Immunity

The word agni means fire in general and has a particular reference to your digestive fire and to the sacred fires used in sacred Indian rituals to send mantras and prayers to the gods. This is a metaphor for the power of digestion, your capacity to digest life in all forms, including food for the body, knowledge for the mind, and emotions for the heart.

Agni is the foundation of digestion, cellular intelligence, and immunity, which is your body’s capacity to determine what is healthy and what is not. If your cellular intelligence is healthy, your agni can “burn up” what is not healthy to protect you.

If agni is unhealthy, it cannot determine what needs to be burned, so unwanted and undigested material remains in the system and clogs things up. The ancients called this toxic undigested material ama. In extreme cases, ama is the cause of auto-immune disease and cancer, cells that have lost their innate intelligence and have forgotten how to function in harmony with the totality of us. One of the best ways to maintain a healthy agni is by pranic meditations, eating well, and looking after your digestion.

Prana and Agni Have a Special Relationship.

Prana is like the wind that fuels the flame of agni.

• If your prana is weak or erratic, your agni will be weak or erratic. If there are blockages due to tensions, prana can't flow to maintain a healthy agni. Your fire will go out.
• If agni is weak, there is insufficient fire to burn oxygen, and your metabolism slows down. For example, if prana is blocked in your chest, you are likely to suffer from respiratory and heart disease, such as asthma and blocked arteries; if prana is not flowing in your belly, you will suffer from digestive problems and be unable to use prana, your breath, to fan your digestive fire. You will not be able to build a robust and resilient body.

We teach you how to manage your prana through our Prana and Pranic Healing Training Program and the Life Force Meditation Series.

The key is to remember that immunity depends mainly on a healthy digestive fire, the fire that warms your blood and sends food to nourish every cell in your body. Strong prana and agni are also required for mental health and emotional immunity, which we call resilience.

Yogis in India have cultivated their prana and agni. Yogis have always said that most diseases start in the stomach, and modern science is now showing that poor eating habits and a lack of good bacteria is at the root of many illnesses due to increased inflammation. Inflammation is the soil that nourishes viruses, bacteria, and toxins.

When I was traveling in India in the early 1970s, I met several yogis who claimed that they could digest any poison because, they said, they had increased their agni, their digestive fire, to superhuman levels. Although I never actually saw them consume poison, I also never saw them become sick. On the contrary, they were glowing with health, even in the harshest environment.

As part of my yoga therapy training, I was lucky to have the opportunity to ask them about their methods for increasing both prana and agni because I knew that prana and agni are interdependent and that the ability to manage both consciously is the key to glowing, vital health. Even if you get coronavirus, yogic theory states that if your prana and agni are strong, you have the best chance to fight off the virus.

Indian Philosophy

I will now give you a brief overview of the Indian philosophies that provide the keys to a profound understanding of physical, mental, and spiritual immunity.

Yoga therapy and Ayurveda are based on four of India's eight classical philosophies: Samkhya, Raja Yoga, Vedanta, and Tantra.

Samkhya - Theory of Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Immunity

Samkhya is the oldest and most fundamental of India's Philosophical Systems. It is cosmology, and it describes the creation of the universe and the 25 elements that make up human existence.

Samkhya provides the theory for yoga therapy, Ayurveda, and Yoga Tantra techniques, which provide techniques to awaken higher consciousness and improve physical, mental, and spiritual health.

This is the map of the microcosm that describes the relationships of the 25 elements within Samkhya.

The map is described in detail in the video of this lecture: Yoga Therapy, Ayurveda, and Immunity in the Big Shakti store in the Big Shakti store.

Though it seems complex at first glance, this map is the key to understanding yoga philosophy and psychology. It is a map you can use to explore all the dimensions of being and existence. It is the basis of understanding how to develop total physical and mental health and enlightenment.

The Maha Gunas - the Keys to Health and Wellbeing

The key to understanding the Samkhya map is to understand the maha gunas, the three great forces of nature that create the world. The maha gunas are:

• Sattwa is light and revelation, luminous balance, and, in this context, health, joy, purity, and freedom. It reveals and, therefore, is the basis of all revelation, knowledge, and understanding. The aim of all yoga practices and Ayurveda is to increase sattwa. When sattwa is strong, your prana, agni, and immunity are all strong.
• Tamas is darkness, inertia, and unconsciousness, for example, sleep. In the mind, it is responsible for ignorance, disconnection, disease, toxicity, stuckness, resistance to change, and dullness. When tamas is stronger than sattwa, your prana, agni, and immunity are weak, and you are prone to both physical and mental illness.
• Rajas is momentum and desire. You either desire to move towards sattwa or tamas. Most of us have to experience tamas, which can be an opportunity to gain wisdom.

Please note that tamas is the dominant force in creation, which is why the world is full of unconsciousness, disconnection, and chaos. Also, it is much harder to generate sattwa than to generate tamas. Tamas increases on its own without any effort from you, as it is the basis of entropy and decay. Sattwa only arises as the result of self-effort, which is a result of the proper application of rajas and meditation.

Sattwa Must Control Tamas

The most crucial thing in terms of good immunity is that sattwa controls rajas and tamas.

Sattwa

Under the influence of sattwa, the intuitive or knowing mind, buddhi comes into existence. This is the part of you in charge of ethics, morals, aesthetics, wisdom, peace, contentment, forgiveness, empathy, and compassion. Sattwa enables self-awareness, knowledge, health, and vitality.

Rajas

Rajas forms the ego, your identity. An important role of the ego is to create duality, to divide your conscious reality into two parts: subject and object, me and you, attraction and repulsion, and likes and dislikes. It is in charge of desire. Too much rajas will cause you to dissipate your prāna and reduce the power of your agni, your ability to digest food, knowledge, and life experiences.

Tamas

Tamas forms the sensorial, thinking mind, which oversees intention, will, desire, reflection, doubt, and confusion. It causes stagnation of prana and agni

If sattwa is dominant, you have discriminative wisdom, dispassion and non-attachment, mental power, and virtuous behavior. This must be developed if you are to have a strong prana, agni, and immunity. Suppose it is affected by excess rajas and tamas. In that case, you lack self-awareness, feel confused, and are likely to indulge in behaviors that weaken your prana and agni and damage your immunity.

Tamas creates the five sense objects and the five elements that construct the world, our objective universe. The five elements create the three doshas, vata, pitta, and kapha, which further organize our body and mind.

The Doshas

The doshas are the biological energies or forces formed from the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and space, that govern the body's various physical and mental processes. The doshas form the basis of Ayurveda. They are also utilized in yoga therapy's approach to treating mental illness.

While Ayurveda focuses mainly on the three doshas, yoga therapy focuses more on the five elements and the four organs of mind in its approach to improving immunity. Of course, Ayurveda is a medical system where a physician treats you, while yoga is a process of developing self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery.

Samkhya and the Chakras

The Samkhya map can be translated onto the chakra system, where most of the theories and techniques used for creating good health and strong immunity and treating physical and mental illness in yoga therapy are derived from. These can be synergistically combined with Ayurvedic therapies.

This map and its relationship to the chakras are visualized in detail in the lecture. 

If you want to dive deeply into Samkhya, we recommend taking our Introduction to Yoga Psychology and Psychotherapy program.

Building Immunity

There are many yoga tantra techniques to relax, purify, and strengthen the five elements and the three doshas and bring them into alignment with the higher sattwic, knowing mind. When the elements are aligned, your immunity is enhanced.

The key to increasing immunity is to use techniques that bring the higher intuitive mind, with its enhanced clarity of perception and cognition, into a relationship with the fire element, agni. The best way to do this is to work with the chakras, such as the navel chakra manipūra, which controls the fire element, digestion, health, power, and vitality, and the third eye, ajna chakra, which controls the mind and awareness.

One of the most important of these techniques is a modified version of Ajapa Japa, the movement of the breath, mantra, and awareness in the psychic passages linking those chakras. It focuses on balancing prana as a way of enhancing agni. Rather than focusing on the three doshas, which are the foundation of Ayurvedic theory and treatments, yoga therapy focuses more on the individual elements. It uses ajapa japa to align the individual elements.

Other techniques include Big Shakti’s Chakra Purification training program and the Core Strength Calm Mind program. These, along with Ajapa Japa, are all included in the Life Force Meditation Bundle.

The Four Pillars of Health

I will now briefly discuss the four pillars of health that increase health and immunity. These pillars are deep, restful sleep, good nutrition, plenty of exercise and activity, and a peaceful mind under all circumstances.

Sleep

Deep, restful sleep is the foundation of good health. Resting deeply and for sufficient time is essential for good health, recharging your batteries and your prana, and good digestion. Unfortunately, lack of deep, restful sleep, poor sleep hygiene, and insufficient rest are in epidemic proportions. Even one night of poor sleep decreases your immune system’s ability to fight viruses by 70%.

Meditation before sleep, especially mantra practices such as japa and Ajapa Japa, can discharge the day's tensions and support deep, restful sleep. Other helpful pre-sleep ideas are hot baths with magnesium salts, which can be very relaxing and soothe muscular tensions.

If you are not getting enough deep, restful sleep, you need to practice Yoga Nidra. It enables complete rest and recuperation. It is a passive technique in which you take your awareness through the layers of your body and mind, removing tensions, contractions, and blockages to prana.

Prana Nidra, like Yoga Nidra, is practiced in the lying position. It both relaxes the body and mind and recharges prana. Both Yoga Nidra and Prana Nidra increase agni.

Food

The second pillar is good nutrition and never eating too much. Yogis have known for millennia what scientists are just now discovering regarding the vital role digestion plays in immunity and longevity.

Activity & exercise

Activity/exercise includes aerobic exercise, strength training, and stretching. Of course, yoga postures, asana, excel at improving health and immunity.  

The Hatha Yoga Pradīpika, one of the great and classic yogic texts, says, “The practice of the spinal twist (matsyendrasana), when performed correctly, increases the digestive fire to such an incredible capacity that it is the means of removing diseases and thus awakening the serpent power.” (Ch1, v27)

A Calm, Peaceful Mind Under all Circumstances

The fourth pillar is a calm, peaceful mind under all circumstances. Good immunity is based on these four pillars. We have discussed this pillar in detail in this article.

Conclusion

The ancient practices of Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda offer profound insights and practical techniques for strengthening immunity, vitality, and resilience.

You can improve your physical and mental health by cultivating prana, the life force, and agni, the digestive fire, to navigate modern-day stressors better.

The holistic approach of these sister sciences emphasizes balance in body, mind, and spirit, helping to create a foundation of strong immunity, mental clarity, and inner peace.

Embracing these timeless principles enables us to not only protect ourselves but also thrive with vitality and wellness in an ever-changing world.

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