Why pranayama is important:
Breath regulates mood, attention, and physiology. IDL Pranayama cultivates awareness of life energy (prana) as a stabilizing and integrative force.
Why does IDL have seven octaves of breathing?
Each octave amplifies and balances a different integral set of core competencies supportive of healing, balancing, and transformation.
The first octave, observation of breath itself, as a sensory experience, grounds us in our bodies as healthy animals.
The second octave anchors your breath to the round of your day and the cycle of your entire life, integrating microcosm and macrocosm, inner and outer realities.
The third octave is devotional and affirmative. It uses breath to ground you in support/security and an awareness of life as gratitude.
The fourth octave of IDL pranayama amplifies core qualities that are emphasized by interviewed emerging potentials in IDL interviewing. Together they generate a strong qualitative foundation for life.
The fifth octave emphasizes qualities that open us to expansive, transcendent, transpersonal experience. They use breath to anchor us in the non-dual.
The sixth octave is associated with formless/causal states of meditation and mysticism. They are “thanatomimetic,” imitative of death, amplifying emptying, non-attachment, and openness to a radical selfless reorganization at the edge of chaos.
The seventh octave invites us to breathe from the perspective of life itself. This amplifies a sense of oneness with nature, with life in a way that is deathless.
Demonstration/practice of level 1, sensory identification
How it works:
Conscious breathing balances sympathetic and parasympathetic activation, anchoring the body in the present and supporting lucid awareness. It also refocuses attention from thinking to somatic grounding, amplifying flow with sensory embodiment.
Interview to Engage:
Interview “My Breath,” “Stillness,” or “Flow.”
Application/Homework:
- Practice one round of IDL Pranayama morning and evening.
- Record sensations and mental clarity before and after.
- Use breathwork before interviews or sleep.