Prana

Prana ( Skt. प्राण prāṇa ^IAST -letters “breath” or “life”) - in yoga , traditional Indian medicine , esotericism - the idea of ​​vital energy, life. In yoga, it is believed that prana pervades the entire universe, although invisible to the eyes.

Yogis believe that prana fills the pranic body of a person (or animal) with each breath through the system of the smallest channels - nadi ; Kshurika Upanishad and Hatha Yoga Pradipika are called 72 thousand nadi; Prapanchasara Tantra and Goraksha-Paddhati - 300 thousand; Shiva-samhita - 350 thousand. Nadis, intertwined, form numerous energy centers - chakras . There are ten main nadi, three of which are considered the most important: ida , pingala and sushumna . These three channels (nadi), according to the yogis, are located directly along the spine and play an important role in human life, they also connect the six main chakras (from muladhara to ajna ). It should be noted that Sushumna runs from muladhara to sahasrara and is a channel for kundalini fire.

In Tibetan medicine , two concepts are used simultaneously - both prana and qi .

Carl Gustav Jung , analyzing the large-scale import of exotic religious systems of the East to the West that began in the 19th century, noted the problems associated with this:

Indian thinking easily operates with concepts such as prana. The West is another matter. Having the bad habit of believing and developed scientific and philosophical criticism, he inevitably faces a dilemma: he either falls into the trap of faith and swallows concepts such as prana, atman , chakras , samadhi , etc., or his scientific criticism at once discards them as "pure mysticism." The split of the Western mind from the very beginning makes impossible any adequate use of the possibilities of yoga. It becomes either a purely religious affair, or something like gymnastics, breath control, eurhythmics, etc. We do not find here a trace of the unity of this natural integrity that is so characteristic of yoga. The Indian never forgets either the body or the mind, while the European always forgets one thing or the other. Thanks to this forgetfulness, he conquered the whole world today. Not so with the Indian: he remembers not only his own nature, but also that he himself belongs to nature. The European, on the contrary, has a science of nature and surprisingly little knows about his own essence, about his inner nature. For the Indian, knowledge of the method, allowing him to control the higher power of nature within and without himself, seems to be a blessed gift from above. For a European, the suppression of his own nature, already distorted, voluntarily turning himself into a kind of robot would seem like hell ...
The rich metaphysical and symbolic thought of the East expresses the most important parts of the unconscious, thereby reducing its potential. When a yogi says prana, he means something much more than just breathing. The word "prana" is loaded for him with the entirety of metaphysics, he seems to know right away what prana means in this regard. The European only imitates him, he memorizes ideas and cannot express his subjective experience with the help of Indian concepts. I more than doubt that the European will express his corresponding experience, even if he is able to get it through such intuitive concepts as “prana” ^[1] .