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Someone asked me recently ‘what is prana and why does it have a role in initiation’? This question could take a book to answer, but here are my comments on the subject.

I like the concept of the "five bodies" (Skt.:pancha-kosha), it's a model that works well.

One of these 5 "bodies" is the pranic body (Skt.: prana-maya-kosha). In it resides the channels and chakras, where you can discover the bioenergetic root or essence of prana, kundalini. Prana is connected to a number of things. One is breath or breathing. The other is time.

But this is not the body we normally see. The body we see with our gross eyes is the body-made-of-food (Skt.: anna-maya-kosha). It's our physical body.

Nestled inside this is the pranic body (Skt.: prana-maya-kosha). Simply in it’s placement it becomes obvious that the pranic body is a kind of bridge between the physical and the mental, because huddled inside this is the mental body (Skt.: mano-maya-kosha). Some call this the astral body.

Nestled inside this is the Bliss Body (Skt.: ananda-maya-kosha).

And inside this is the Body of Transcendent Wisdom. identical with the Absolute (Skt. Brahman). This where our individual karmas are stored. This sheath covers what I will call the Pure Self. It projects karmas out, through the other bodies. The karmas we share with our families, clan, race, city, region and country are stored in the Bliss body. As karmas "ripen", they make there way out of the two inner bodies and project into the Mental Body. The mind then moves the pranic body which causes the physical body to move and create good or bad actions.

Practitioners of Inner Tantra use prana to reverse this process by dividing prana into solar and lunar parts and UNITING them. The mind stops and karma is eradicated in this way. Karmic prana, becomes Jnanic (transcendental) prana. This is why it can be used for initiation: it has the ability to take karmic traces and transform them into the play of our own wisdom energy.

When other parts of these bodies are damaged by experiences they cannot digest, it causes problems. Of course we know physical abuse harms the body. But different types of trauma also damage mind--and even the way prana flows. Prana tends to flow in ways that parallels the way the mind flows. Mess with one, you mess with the other. For example someone who is sexually abused as a child or experiences starvation/neglect, the mind is greatly disturbed--but so is the pranic body. The pranic body will try to "re-weave" itself. However if the environment which created the trauma still exists, as in parental abuse or a country experiencing mass starvation, the pranic body is not allowed to re-weave correctly and so the mind remains disturbed. The body tenses the muscles to hold onto to feelings it doesn't dare express. External elements (Skt.: bhutas) can superimpose their lifeforces into such traumatized beings and mental illness can result. This is why techniques such as Shamanic journeying and "Soul Retrieval" (Tib.: "Lalu", lit. "buying the soul back") works.

Destroying the flow of life-force/prana will also effect these bodies from the outside, not only because we are bioenergetically connected--we karmically incarnated into this same place. Destroy the lifeforce which brings rain or healthy crops, etc. and it trickles both down and up: into the environement and into the individual.
 

There are five forms or aspects of prana which regulate all forms of life. These are:

1. Udana
2. Prana
3. Samana
4. Vyana
5. Apana

Udana is an upward moving current of prana. It is associated with the element EARTH which seems a bit odd, but in its actual function, in moving upward, it activates the senses. Thus it activates our outwardly going experience of the physical dimension as experienced by the senses in the head and by the sense of touch. It is also the energy specifically behind thought energy. Udana is particularly activated when prana enters the upper chakras. In mundane reality, when udana is prevalent, the person would be filled with a barrage of thoughts. The yogin uses it to control thought, memory and to attain the Void and stillness at the throat chakra--and the intense bliss of the crown centers. When perfected one can levitate or fly. On the level of dream one can mentally "fly"--mental projection: you think about it and your mental body takes you there. Thus you can conquer either gravity or being stuck to place.

When imbalanced or wrongly directed into the head it can create different forms of insanity or mental illness.

Prana (as one of the five forms of prana) is life-force which is centered in the area of the heart. If it is strong, you appear vital; if weak, you seem drained and fragile. When it goes, life goes. Often when a person experiences a heart attack, you can very tangibly see this force leave quickly. The person develops an immediate pallor as all color and "life" leaves their face. Prana repesents the space element of all the pranas. Those who master it can leave their bodies at will and even enter other bodies (as in yogis who "body jump". In dream one can create other bodies and occupy them all simultaneously.

Samana is the digestive fire and not surprisingly, the element fire. It is the sun which distributes nutrients, our metabolism throughout our personal solar system, our microcosm. It is also the inner fire, the same fire used to generate the blissful fire of gTummo. This gives rise to a contentment, a deep bliss which is lasting through all change in life, all of the ups or downs. Since fire is connected to light it is also connected with the Clear Light, the subtle light which is the basis of all experience. It also represents the ability to be aware in dream. When it is out of balance one may have dreams of running away or if it appears in retreat you may get the sudden desire to get up and run away.

Vyana is the "pervasive prana" and represents the life-force which connects everything in the body. It is like the element air and airy Mercury. When one sees great scenery and has a sense of oneness and joy throughout the body this is the prana vyana. The sense of being in a group of people and sharing a deep sense of comraderie, love and sharing is vyana connecting together people. A feeling of joy or sadness which expresses itself in our faces is vyana communicating what is in our hearts to our faces. The subtle network of communication in the body is run by vyana and the external net of ley lines, the "dakini net", the net of Indra is the outer expression. Vyana helps the benefits of your spiritual practices "spread" throughout your life and experience. It is also the bridge of time and space, esp. that connecting lifetimes.

Apana is the downward flowing prana which is responsible for defecation, ejaculation, orgasm, birth delivery, etc. It is watery and like water seeks its own lowest level. Since Apana is the opposite of upward moving forms of prana, it is often used to merge with these opposites. Certain asanas or bodily positions may place the heel at the perineum to block the downward flow and to force it to combine with prana. This annihilation allows to mind to pierce the chakras and find the calm center of the central channel (Skt.: avadhuti). When it does all the chakras collapse and perfect interiorization is the result. Consequently it is an important prana for the Hatha yogin or the Tsa-Lung practitioner but also for anyone learning to "center" their awareness into the calm state. Apana is the great eliminator, it allows us to not only eliminate physical waste but remove things we don't want in our life.

For the yogin or yogini the idea is to unify these pranas and head back to the source of everything through absorption (Skt.: samadhi). In tantric terminology one can find words like sama-dhi joined together in one word to symbolize this state of union, this state of silence (sama = "silent" dhi = "mind"). Often these are hidden in word games that only initiates will recognize. One such word is Candali (Kandali). It conceals the two letters Ka and A and the words for 'consonant' and 'vowel' (kali and ali). Candali literally means "a women of low caste". But in this case it refers to an actual practice of generating bliss by merging the solar and lunar channels to cause a flame to ignite in the gut, causing the amrita of the lunar centers in the brain to melt and flow down over the chakras, generating intense bliss and sensation. Staring directly into this sensation of bliss riding on top of emptiness, one can "jump" into the Void.

This teaching appears in Tibet where the technique of Candali was manifested as "tummo" (Tib.: gTummo), the yoga of the mystic heat.

The two Sankrit letters "A" and "Ha" represent the 'phonic bookends' of sonic creation: they are the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. As with many of these words (or letters) when they are joined they make a third word indicative of the state of union or two-in-one. "A", when added to "Ha" and the mantric terminator "m" spells "aham" or the word for self-identification or the "ego", "I-ness": "I am". This is particularly revealing in what it can tell us. By dividing the ego into its two constituent opposites and uniting them in silence ("M", the "single-point" or bindu) one can transcend the habit of self-identification.

A+Ha+M is also unique in the way it describes the play of opposites in the creation of mental silence and the creation of the Sound of Twilight, the sandhyaya-shabda. "A" is the primordial letter not only because it is the "first" letter in the sequence of Sanskrit letters but also because it is the only letter pronounced unmodified by the tongue. Most letters somehow use the tongue to shape the sound it creates. The sound "A" (as in "open wide and say "Ahhhhh"") comes straight from the lungs, through the throat and out the lips. The Bindu or terminator of Aham, "M" is the end result of fusing "A" with "Ha": silence. The humming "mmmmmmmm..." sound is the sound symbolic of the two-in-one state. It is emblematic of silence as it is the sound that is produced when the lips are completely closed. For this reason it is used in many mantras as a terminator, an ending sound. It is that which takes you into silence and the imperishable Void (Skt.: akshara) present behind all time-spatiality.

Some of the other words often used for opposite forms of prana and the third state are actually rivers. The Sanskrit word for the subtle pranic channels nadi actually means river. To those who can see these energy streams, this is also how they appear to the subtle vision.
 

The end result of all of these methods are similar: silence, heat and bliss. Their great variety points to an interesting insight: all the different yogins who revealed many different tantras revealed a direct manifestation of the Sambhogakaya/Energy dimension as a way to attain complete enlightenment. They were almost all revealed by a single person and fleshed out and expounded by the direct in-group of the yogis surrounding the revealer. And we should expect to see wider and wilder variety as tantras begin to manifest in the west: the manifestation of enlightened energy knows no limitation. The only question that remains is "what is the expression these new tantras will take, esp. in the west?" "In what way will the twilight language, the code-words of duality leading to the non-dual state show their poetry?" "How will all the true manifestations of tantra appear?"

Directed skillfully by the minds of a new generation of practitioners these new methods will represent the ultimate doorway to the wonderful way of life in the west.