“Prana, the Sanskrit word for breath, is also the word for the life force deemed by the Vedic sages of ancient India to permeate all reality. In describing the beginning of our Universe … as the moment of an ongoing Big Breath, I reflect this perception of the whole world as a vital outbreath of Brahman, the creative impulse of cosmic mind.
“All Gaia’s organic children breathe. Inherited from their deep past, most archaea and many bacteria continue to use primordial means to do so. Plants breathe carbon dioxide, fish breathe oxygen dissolved in water, and animals breathe oxygen from the atmosphere. Yet the atmospheric air we breathe now is vastly different from the air prior to 2.0 Ga. Even the oxygenated air since has varied dramatically in the amounts it has sustained. Before plants inhabited the land some 500 million years ago, oxygen levels were still so low that we would have suffocated for its lack.
“For most of the time, I’m not aware of my breathing, with the incredible intelligence of my nervous system autonomously controlling its regularity. The tradition of yoga has, though, for many thousands of years, practiced pranayama, or conscious breathing, to reduce stress and anxiety and promote health.”
