Although there has been some awareness of the breath and its realtionship with health and oneness in all cultures of the world, there is not much foormal literature available on the subject. Informally, people from times immemoral have known the realtionship of breathing with mental calm. Irrespective of where you go, you hear this or similar admonition, "Take a deep breath, colm down."
The earliest formal knowledge about the role of the breath in human life comes from the Indian Vedic literature dating back to prehistoric times. It was well understtod that the breath ordinarily is an autonomic function of the body and taking conscious charge of it can be immensely important in human welfare and growth. References on Pranayama (consciously regulated breath) abound in Vedic literature. There are specific forms of breath regulation meant for specic purposes. Pranayama comprises a vital component of the formal descipline of Yoga meant for determined beings to use for achieving their full potential. The meaning of the Sanskrit: Yoga is union. The discipline called Yoga is to unite person with his/her full potential in all domains whether it is physical, mental or spiritual.
Yoga Sutra of Patanjali specifes eight components of Yoga for a full well rounded development of a human being. Consciously regulated breathing is one of them. Yogic literature claims that any one of the eight components can unite a person with his/her optimum potential.
Over millenia, India experienced a decline in the ancient Yogic culture. As a result, the people of India were suffering. They suffered poverty, disease and discorders when Gautama Buddha was born about 2,600 years ago. Ashe grew in age, he experienced the suffering of people. He was full of compassion. He researched hard to find a way to alleviate their physical, mental and spiritual suffering. He rediscovered in India the power of the conscious breath. He presented his findings formally in the form of Anapanasati Sutra. He spent the rest of his life teaching the establishment of fourfold mindfulness with the practce of conscious breathing. His teachings form the basis of the practce of meditation known as minfdfulness meditation.
In addition to the ancient Indian sources, breathing is studied formally in modern discipline of physiology. Freud relates psychology with physiology with his model of the mind consisting of a realm of the unconscious, ond of the subconscious and another of the conscious mind. The unconscious mind runs the autonomic physiological functions of survival including the breath, the subconscious running the emotional life and the conscious running the conscious waking functioning of life. The conscious realm of the human life also has an ability to run breathing normally run by the unconscious realm.
Lately there is a comprehensive body of recent research in developing fields of cell biology, genetics, epigenetics, neurology, biochemistry, immunology etc throwing light on the relationship of the practice of conscious breathing with health, wellness, learning ability, behavior and human development.
Here, we make an attrempt to use all ancient and modern knowledge of the practical use of onscious breathing and human welfare.