According to Osho, pranayama is not spiritually helpful as a primary path; it can aid health if practiced carefully, but any ‘support’ soon becomes a distraction. He advises living naturally and using simple, mindful breathing to establish rhythm and awareness, which quiets thoughts. Apply awareness to breath, movement, and daily acts—awareness empties mind; unconsciousness is mind, awareness is mindlessness.
Don’t chase breathing tricks; live simply and watch your breath and actions with awareness—this naturally calms the mind.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, some people say pranayama is helpful—does it really help?
No, in my understanding it is not helpful. That is why I deny every so‑called support. If I grant even a little, you will find in a few days that the support has become primary—you will start worrying about the support itself, and that becomes the whole work. No supports. I want to keep just one small point before your eyes: let nothing else come in between. No support. Otherwise, then everything in life becomes a support—eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, sitting—everything. Pranayama can be helpful for health. It is useful for health. But even that needs great care and understanding; otherwise it can also be useful in bringing ill‑health. About life and the body my view is: let them be lived very naturally, spontaneously. The more naturally and spontaneously you live them, the less you meddle, the better. Pranayama is not as valuable as simply allowing clean air…
Questioner: a great mystic of russia, george gurdjieff has written a memoir of his spirit ual adventures known as meetings with remarkable men. In the book he says that he was much impressed by a discussion with a sufi dervish on yogic pranayam and asanas. The dervish had warned him against all kinds of breathing exercises, because any change in the natural breathing system brings about disorder in life with disastrous results. What do you say about it?
My understanding is that sooner or later, this meditation that I am giving you is going to be a therapy of great significance, and it will unavoidably be come a way of treating the mentally ill and restoring them to health. And if it be possible that every child in the school goes through this meditation, he will be saved from insanity for the whole of his life. He will never be mad; he will be immune from this disease, because then he will be his own master, master of his body mind. The dervish, with whom Gurdjieff had a discussion on breathing, is a traveler of a different path. He never practiced breathing, and he experienced the situation of strangeness through some different way. And this is the trouble -- the trouble is, that the knower of one way loses no time in calling other ways wrong. But a…
Therefore one who masters pranayama becomes skillful in rising upward—he is expanding, extending, enlarging the upward current. These are two currents—two streams of air within the body. And between them sits Paramatma—or Atman, or consciousness—whatever name you wish. The thumb-sized Atman is present between these two currents. He pushes the air downward—He pushes the air upward. Prana—the air that goes upward. Apana—the air that goes downward. Western medical science has not yet recognized this double current; it holds that air is only of one kind. Hence many things based on the vital air which Ayurveda can accomplish allopathy cannot. One who understands these currents well can create great revolutions in life. A small child breathes: when a child breathes, his stomach rises and falls—the chest hardly moves. His breath is very deep. When you breathe, the chest rises and falls—your breath is shallow, not deep.
Osho: No, no, not at their expense. Tell them about this method. They themselves will feel it. They will certainly feel the change, the transformation. Let them practise it--just as an experiment with their disturbed mind, their doubts. Let them experiment, just as an experiment. If 'something' happens, then the practice goes by itself. There is no need to convince them. And, the anarchy that is within must be exploded. It should not be stilled or cramped down. It must be expressed in total intensity. The calmness, the serenity, the Nirvana comes not by stilling the mind but by explosion. Then the stillness comes but it is not a cultivated composure. Express what you are, totally. Of course that means madness, because we are mad. So, if you express it, the madness will come out. Even you yourself will feel strange about it, unknown to yourself.
Osho, in this verse the fourth and final yajna is called the Yoga Yajna. In the Gita Press translation it is called the Ashtanga Yoga Yajna. Please clarify this as well.
Now a lovely thing: Om has A, U, and M. If you emphasize M, vibration immediately occurs at the navel. Islam has the word Allah. Sufi fakirs use the word Allah as with Om. “Allah”—the H lands just where M lands. “Allahu”—the Hu lands exactly at the navel where Om lands. Allah and Om are entirely different words, but the intent is one, and the result is one; the meaning too is one. The Sufi begins with Allah—Allah, then Lah, then Lahu, and finally only Hu remains. And Hu’s blow lands on the navel; and at the navel the sleeping master begins to awaken. By a thousand methods yoga awakens the sleeping master. And as soon as that master awakens, integration arises in the personality—yoga happens. Fragments gather together. The marketplace disappears; soldiers in formation stand. Then the personality obeys command. In the market’s crowd no one obeys; there is…