Breathe Meditation was founded in January 2020 in Washington D.C., in order to cultivate the breath not just as a powerful tool for calm amidst chaos, but as the most effective catalyst for deep meditation.

 

Just months later, the world was reeling under the onslaught of a pandemic, which is re-orienting the very paradigm of our lives, and compelling us to prioritize space and peace within our inner landscape.

 

The practices offered here are a timely and modest attempt to support and foster concentration, meditation and peace in our communities, using the one tool that is powerful, supremely nurturing and always available - our breath, our life-force, our Prana. Our breath is that which connects us with our life force energy, Prana, which in turn controls the mind and indeed the entire cosmos. By balancing our breath, we bring our life-force energy Prana, and thereby the mind into a state of balance and equilibrium, endowing us with equanimity. Explained variously in Sanskrit as sthitha prajna and sarvathra sama buddhaya,  equanimity is considered the supreme quality of a yogi.

 

Breathe Meditation is rooted in the infinite love, discipline, devotion and dedication (maha-tapas) with which the sacred knowledge (atma-vidya) of Pranayama has been cultivated and transmitted over millenia by the various lineages of teachers from the Indian sub-continent. The practices offered are infused with the organic flow of mindfulness approaches, my own personal practice of Kriya Yoga and inspired by insights from the field of contemplative neurosciences.

 

- Mahalakshmi Mahadevan, Ph.D., Founding Member, Washington D.C.