How to Practise the Oldest Yoga of All 🧘🏽‍♀️

Zahir Akram
Sep 24
2 min read

I have explained before how yoga can be both the journey and the destination.

But what does that destination actually mean? 😳

Legend tells us that Parvati (or Devi) once asked her husband, Shiva (the first yogi), to explain the mysteries of the universe.

“Oh Shiva,” she said, “What is your Reality?”

Shiva’s reply was simple but profound: man can go beyond the limits of human existence. If man is willing, man can go beyond.

Parvati asked: "How?"

And Shiva shared a series of techniques. The very first, and still the one that fascinates me most, is the pause between breaths.

That silence after an inhale, before the exhale 😤

In that moment, Shiva said, you cease to exist. Everything you think you are dissolves. You’re not alive, you’re not dead - you’re a witness in a space beyond both.

And over time, if you enter that silence with awareness, legend has it, you can become absorbed in it. You can become that space itself.

This is the union yoga speaks of. Not just “union” as in bringing two things together, but union with the infinite silence between breaths.

This is why I place so much emphasis on breath-holds in my teaching. Because in one sense, they are the most ancient practice we have. And in another sense, they are the most simple. An example of this in Sun Salutation - On an inhale you reach up, and before you exhale to bring your hands down, I cue you to hold your breath. Just for a moment, you can find yourself suspended in space and time.

Even science agrees: holding the breath builds carbon dioxide, changes the chemistry of the body, and calms the nervous system.

This is how teaching can bridge that intricate balance between science and tradition.

Being conscious of that pause between inhale and exhale is the single most yogic thing you will ever do. It changes what we do from glorified stretching and a workout to something that means so much more.

It doesn’t matter how you posture. No mudras are needed. No complicated Sanskrit words.

It is the simplest, yet the most profound thing you can do.

The irony is that simplicity is often what we avoid. If it looks too easy, our mind dismisses it. We’d rather chase the complicated, the elaborate, even the theatrical. But the deepest truths rarely dress themselves up. They hide in plain sight, in a moment of silence, in the space between two breaths.

The question is never whether the practice is deep enough. The question is whether we can bear the simplicity of it.

For more on the first Yogi Shiva - watch my video here 👉🏽 [YouTube Video]

Namaskar

Zahir

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