Your body has a natural rhythm: your heart beats, your lungs breathe, and your mind thinks: heartbeats, breaths, and thoughts: singularly, consecutively and constantly.
While it’s technically impossible to stop any one of those three (let alone all three simultaneously) and survive more than minutes, ancient Raja Yoga texts tell tales of yogis surviving being buried alive for DAYS.
While the stories are likely exaggerated for entertainment or emphasis, initially Raja Yoga was purported to enable enthusiastic practitioners to virtually still their heartbeats, breaths and thoughts to the point of feigning death.
Why would anyone want to do that?! Yogis believe that it’s only at the point of virtual stillness or cessation of bodily and mental functioning that we experience our true essence: our consciousness.
Why is THAT a big deal? There’s no stress when you identify with your eternal consciousness rather than your temporal body and mind. Nothing (no attachment, fear, emotion, or action perpetuated by you, another, or Mother Nature) affects your consciousness – unlike your body and mind which are naturally, constantly changing and subject to the vagaries of time and space.
