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Good morning, everyone. It is already noon, lunchtime, but it was nice that Umāpurījī gave you a very informative journey. It requires different training. Physically, it is of course okay, but more is about the breath and the lungs. It is a question of oxygen, and so the main practice is prāṇāyāma. Practice five hours a day—while walking, while practicing, working—and practice our Iḍā Piṅgalā, what we call Candra-Sūrya-vedan, and then Anuloma-Viloma-Kapālabhāti. The training is mostly to inhale through the nostrils and exhale through the mouth. If you inhale through the nose and exhale through the nose, it will cause trouble. Also, inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the nose is not advisable. We need to always use the breath we have, and it should go out quickly. When we walk here in the hills, we automatically breathe like this, no? This is the training, very good training. Anyhow, prāṇāyāma. We practiced yesterday also about what to do. Regarding food, try to reduce it. Do not reduce at once, and do not fast too long. Fasting is only for one day. People who fast for ten days or two weeks say, "Oh, I lost five kilos or two kilos, three kilos." That is not healthy, and when you begin to eat again, the work of two weeks you will undo in two or three days; your weight goes up again. We have one seed, a bean. It is very nice, solid, and very good. When you put it on the floor, it makes a good, solid sound. Then we put it in water overnight. It becomes double in size, and when you put it on the ground, there is no solid sound. So if we mostly try to fast and then begin to eat again, we become even more than we were. It takes you, or me, or us, two years. How? What will you eat? Let us say you are eating about a hundred bites. We shall reduce one bite tomorrow, two bites the next day. After one week, reduce three bites. So slowly, slowly reduce our diet. Then you will have strength in the body. You will have a lot of oxygen in the body, and you can do many things. You can go to the Himalayas. So, one year of training. After that, you can go up; you will not have so much problem. But even there, we have to go very slowly. There are some children giving lectures there. I think we can have two lectures at some time. So, prāṇāyāma. Prāṇa is life. Everything is life. Let us say breath. We can endure lack of water, drinking, cold, heat. But we cannot raise the breath, hold the air, too long. So the breath is life. It does not matter where we are—sleeping, deep sleeping, swimming, running—but we cannot hold the breath too long. The breath we inhale is not only the air we feel in the lungs. The quality of our breath, which we inhale, spreads into the hundreds or thousands of nerve systems. We know we have 72,000 nerves according to yogic anatomy. These 72,000 nerves are in the whole body. It is like a net, and each and every nerve gets nourishment. First, from the air. Then it comes to water. It gets the balance of warm and cold equally, nicely balanced. Then from the nourishment and the space. So these are the five tattvas, and these five tattvas are our body. In all of this, the nervous system is most important. When we see a plant, maybe it is only a very small plant, but when we take it out, how many roots are there? These roots, until the very end of the root, there is life, very strong life there. They try to search for space and get the water. Every root of the tree goes down into the soil of the earth. Those roots are the source of our life, that we have our trunk of the tree. It should remain healthy. Also, the branches, the beautiful leaves, the flowers or blossoms, and fruits. A tiny fruit, which is just developing to become a fruit, receives a very big concentration of nourishment from the whole plant and the roots. It is very interesting if we think about this process. Therefore, we say it is a life; it has a life. In our Indian life and languages, we say: Jal jahā Jagadīśa. Jagadīśa is God. Jaga is this world. Īśvara is Īśvara. And that is the water. So, jal jahā jagadīśa. Jal means the liquid, the water. Where there is water, there is God. What is God? It is called life. So, "Jal Jaha Jagadīśa"—where there is water, there is life. In European languages, mostly they say it. Czech, Slovak—all these languages say, "voda je život." Water is life. So Jagadīśa, Īśvara itself, here on our earth, water is very important, and water exists in many forms. We are sitting here in this room, and we all inhale and exhale. There is this air, and in the air is water. If the air is very dry, it can kill us. Or if there is no movement in the air, it can kill us. So this humidity, what we have on our skin also, this is jhal, and with that is the air. This is in the science of yoga, in yogic literature it is very preciously explained. So, the water: where there is water, there is God. And these are the roots, and the roots are our nerves. Now, when we drink water, the whole body needs the water. All of it comes and concentrates in our mouth. The mouth should always be humid; it cannot be dry. You know when you go to the dentist, and for a long time he is holding and working inside, and our lips are dry, and the tongue is also dry. What do we do when the doctor takes a few seconds? We bring our tongue like this, we make our lips... humid. That is the lips. From here it begins. Nowadays, there is a very bad habit that gives you immense damage in your body. Most people put some kind of substance on their lips. You think it provides humidity. It is no humidity. You are blocking those pores which receive humidity, water, through the lips. If you use what you call lipstick, it looks nice, like you just bit a living animal. Anyhow, all these lipsticks and some kind of lotion on the lips are very, very bad for our body. If you are blocking this water, this humidity through the lips, then it attacks the navel, what we call the pancreas. This pancreas is the root of our whole body. Our roots were there when our life began to develop. Here is a very practical, very, very practical example. Let us say you have a problem with your lips. They are very dry because you are using too much lipstick. Or there are some blisters on the lips, and you put some cream and this and that and some paste, but it does not heal quickly. Why? Because we are using unnatural things on our lips. Lips are very sensitive, with beautiful feelings. As soon as a little baby begins to drink from the mother's breast, when the baby touches the mother's breast, the whole body immediately relaxes, and energy goes to the body of the child from the mother. Now, let us say you have some blisters on your lips, and you are putting some white cream. There is another yogic technique, an Ayurvedic technique. In one night, it can heal. When you go to sleep, take pure cow ghee. If you do not have ghee, take butter, make it a little warm in your palm, and put one drop of the ghee on your navel. That is all. In the morning, everything is okay. Make an experiment. From the navel, the relation is to the lips and the tongue. The tongue is that organ—is it called an organ? It is connected to the navel. Everything that comes to the navel comes from the tip of the tongue. That means if you put ghee on your lips, it will take a long time, two or three days, because the ghee from there is too far from the lips. But you put the ghee on the navel, and it functions immediately. This is how the water and the air, prāṇa, the air and water, are together. And so prāṇāyāma, the yogic technique. There are many, many things. If you have a problem with your pancreas, a problem near the navel—either it is turned this side or that side—we might massage our stomach, jump down, jump up, take some medicine. But it does not help because the Vajra Nāḍī, according to yogic science, the Iḍā and Piṅgalā, these two nāḍīs are connecting to the navel. The Vajra Nāḍī from both sides is connecting to the navel. Therefore, it is said the prāṇa and apāna come together and then enter this energy that is called the kuṇḍalinī. This prāṇa, the prāṇa śakti, comes to the sahasrāra cakra, where it is like a samādhi. You are neither exhaling nor inhaling. But you have this prāṇa. That prāṇa is just maybe very fine, like a drop of fog. And so it comes to the nā, and therefore it is the prāṇāyāma, and the water. So, which part of our organs in the body? Either we take the yogic side, the problem of yogic practice, or, of course, the science—medical science—we should not deny medical science. I am for medical science. They can give our life back, bring our life back again; otherwise, we are half out and half in. But you know that often in operations, there are some doctors who, in one day, perform about 10 to 15 operations. They need a very, very high concentration. We have 72,000 nerves, and some are very subtle, and the knife is very quick. But still, the doctors are very careful. Yet, with one operation, how many nerves are damaged? If there are some big nerves, then of course you will always have some kind of pain. If it is something very fine, other nerves will overtake the function. That is why we use prāṇāyāma. This prāṇāyāma, when air goes into the lungs, is not only for the lungs. It goes to the whole body, and that is the science of yoga, the prāṇa. Now, prāṇa also means the life, the jīva, the life. We say "prāṇa gone." So prāṇa is gone out of your body, or we say "jīva gone," the soul is gone. This prāṇa and the soul are very, very close together. If you want to make an explanation and expression: a few years ago, we would plant one seed of an apple, and it would take at least three to four years to get apples. But now we have other techniques. We cut a branch, and that quickly gives fruit the next year. But that apple seed will not grow. It is very hard to get a real, good apple seed. There are some apple trees, beautiful, and how big is the apple? Just like this. You see sometimes very small apples, and from that they make what you call a cutting, what we call cultivating in a different way. Okay, so now, what happens? In the last few decades, people made experiments and are changing the seeds. What seed will grow only once? The crops from this one seed you can eat, but it will not give more seeds. So we are using and eating that kind of nourishment which has no more power to grow again, and you have no strength. You cannot get one child again. Maybe one, maybe two. So slowly, slowly, it even affects ourselves. Someone made an experiment in the Danube River. You know the Danube River? It comes from the Black Forest. Beautiful cities are along it—Linz, many Austrian cities, and Vienna. Austrians have more of any kind of what we call the new systems. It was in the newspaper. It is a mistake that I did not keep that newspaper. Why are there fewer fish in the Danube? Of course, pollution, a lot of pollution. But they made an experiment: the females, the women, are using capsules against pregnancy. These tablets that they are eating go through the urine into the toilet, and that goes into the river. Now it has an effect on the fish. So you see, the women, how powerful you are. Even the fish were affected, and more, something else. Anyhow, we are doing many things in nature which are not good for our health, our vegetation, our water, and it goes to the ocean, etc. So, let us go back to this prāṇāyāma. Our oxygen, which comes to our lungs. I am not a doctor. I did not see an operation. I only tell what doctors said: our lungs are so fine. They are fine like a fog, and if we spread them out, they are bigger than a football field. That much is folded inside our lungs. Can you imagine how many holes you have in your lungs? The first damaging factor is alcohol, or what you call pivo (beer). And the rest, of course, tobacco and other drugs, and not good water. That damages our lungs. Why did people live long, and why can we not live long anymore? Because we are using unnatural things in our body. Ayurveda and our modern medicine: the chemicals which go into the body, no matter how good they are, our body does not accept them. Ayurveda says the body accepts natural things because it is nature. So the body is nature, and a plant is nature. That the body will accept, but a chemical the body will not accept. So one disease or one pain will go down, but more damage will take place slowly, slowly. So it is in your hands. When we practice yogic science, we first have to understand, according to yogic science and nature, these are our five elements. This evening we will have a beautiful Himalayan journey. It is about twenty or thirty minutes. How beautiful it was. But he did not show what Umāpurījī talked about. Umāpurījī said, "They are Purīs. They are Purīs." You know, one step is like thirty steps, and that is because of the lungs. Oxygen. That is it. So one year of prāṇāyāma, prāṇāyāma... Then you go there, it will be much better. When you go to sleep, press your thumb on your navel and you will see the pulse. See if it is on the right side, left side, upside, downside, or in the middle. Then we will talk about this.