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Pranām Swamijī, Hari Om, brothers and sisters. I was given the task to say something nice, so I will try my best. But in truth, there are so many beautiful things on our Yoga path that it is genuinely difficult to choose which part, which thing to talk about. I was recently reminded of this during a consultation with one of our guru-sisters. She was facing some problems in life, but we agreed on something: our life is truly special. Not just my life or her life individually, but our life together—your life and our life. It is quite special. Because, as I observe others, ordinary life often seems like a bad boxing match. You get a punch and you are down. Hopefully, you stand up, continue, and then life hits you with another punch. You are down again. That is normal life. All of us, I think, have received these punches. But we have a fantastic, great blessing. We receive an infusion, time and time again, from Gurudev, from the paramparā, and from the Yoga in Life system. This allows us to get back up quite quickly and easily. Perhaps, after a while, we can even learn how to avoid those punches. It is our great fortune—I don't know how it came about—that we met the real source of light and knowledge. It is an incredible blessing. For our development, we receive clarity and purity. And for our life, we periodically get our batteries recharged. When you are down, you truly need some infusion to rise and continue. It is not easy, of course, but it is a great blessing. It is the blessing of the rain—good for you. (Sorry for that small joke.) One of the sources from which we gain this clarity and energy is the breathing exercise, Prāṇāyāma. I think we can agree that most of us practice āsanas, mantra, and meditation. We also, of course, practice Yoga Nidrā. But Prāṇāyāma is often something we do only "when we have time." We could utilize it much more. Recently, I was asked to give a lecture on Prāṇāyāma in Hungary for a group of psychologists, my colleagues. I began to think about what to tell them. As I collected my thoughts, I recalled a personal experience from about a year and a half ago. I was having trouble sleeping due to pain in my hip joints and shoulders. I tried everything: melatonin, tryptophan, herbal teas, various relaxation techniques, ensuring complete darkness—nothing helped. Then I checked the flow of breath in my nostrils. I realized that throughout the entire night, my left nostril was more or less blocked, and my right nostril was constantly open. Why? The solution relates to the pain. My right side was particularly painful, making it unpleasant to sleep on. So, I constantly slept either on my back or on my left side. This is the science we learn from Viśva Gurujī, from the paramparā, from Yoga—it is Svara Yoga. By sleeping on my left side, I was blocking the left armpit area, which kept the right nostril (the active, solar nāḍī) constantly open, keeping me in a state of activity. When I realized this, I consciously made an effort to find a way to sleep on my right side as well. Everything was resolved. I have since suggested this to a few patients with sleep problems, and for them, too, sleep was immediately fixed. This demonstrates the power of this knowledge—knowing how to work with the energies in your own body—that comes from Yoga and our paramparā. It is incredible. Another topic from my practice is panic attacks. In panic, certain factors must be considered. One is that panic often starts when your energy level is low. This ongoing fatigue can trigger panic if you have a genetic predisposition. But at an even deeper level, the cause is a sense of loss—losing something important to you, like a job (causing insecurity) or a person (causing emotional pain). The real problem is that your identity is connected to that person, object, or situation. It is the issue of "me and mine" again. This brings us back to the core topic of Yoga: how to establish your true identity, how to create a stable personality and a strong mind. We may be kind and helpful to others, but we should not be attached. Otherwise, losing these attachments creates an internal earthquake. For this, the Yoga in Life technique of self-inquiry meditation is one of the strongest tools to make you clear and strong from within. Panic is triggered by low energy, but the experience of panic comes from the breath process. A few years ago, a paper was published in the prestigious journal Science. Researchers found specific cells in the brainstem's breathing center that send signals to the cortex. These cells report whether the breathing process is calm or stressed. As Vivek Purījī said the other day, during stress, we engage in clavicular breathing—short, shallow breaths from the upper lungs. This sends a message from the breathing center to the brain: "Something is wrong. We are in trouble. Fight or flee." The body prepares to run. The problem with a panic attack is that this signal is so strong it creates a feeling of suffocation—as if you cannot breathe, as if there is no oxygen. Essentially, a panic attack is an imitation of suffocation, an exaggerated reaction where the body even seems to stop the breath. If you lack a strong inner structure and a stable mind, you start to worry intensely about this lack of oxygen, creating a double trouble—a downward spiral. So, how can we handle this? We return to the most basic element of Prāṇāyāma: the full Yoga breath. A slow, deep breath, especially into the abdomen, immediately sends information to your breathing center that everything is okay. That center then informs the higher brain, which signals the entire system to calm down. With such a simple tool as conscious, deep breathing, you can settle everything. Thus, Prāṇāyāma is a powerful tool for everyday life, even against certain illnesses. What we need for spiritual progress are two crucial things: clarity and energy. Without them, we are more or less lost. With Prāṇāyāma, both are in our hands. One way to release tension is not only through full Yoga breaths or special Prāṇāyāma techniques, but by becoming aware of something very useful. The breathing process is like a tube or a roll. When we inhale, part of the trunk expands; on exhalation, it contracts. This can be abdominal, chest, or clavicular breathing. This tube also has a bottom: the muscles of the pelvic floor. These muscles are very important, not only for their primary functions but also for creating sound. Without a strong pelvic diaphragm, you cannot produce a proper, strong sound. If they are weak, you can even develop a hernia. From the wisdom of the cakras, we know these areas can hold deep tension. These muscles are important for initiating action. For most of us living hectic daily lives, the problem is that we contract these muscles to get energy (it is a kind of bandha), but when we stop acting, we often fail to release them. They remain contracted, becoming a storehouse for our stress. In yogic knowledge, this area is known as a storehouse for stress, even from previous lives. We often work with the breath in the abdomen and chest, but how do we go deep in meditation or Prāṇāyāma? When you go deep into Prāṇāyāma, you also work with this lower part, the pelvic diaphragm. Try to check how deep your breath goes—not the volume of air, but how anatomically low you can feel the expansion and release. If you are breathing deeply, you can feel a gentle expansion there on the inhale and a release on the exhale. This is key for deep Prāṇāyāma, deep relaxation, and meditation. It retrains your brain, signaling that you are alright. With this simple, ever-present tool, you can release basic tensions from deep within the body and psyche. Try it tomorrow, or even today. When you consciously relax these parts, they respond quite quickly. Here in Střílky, with Gurudev, it is a little tricky because we are in an ocean of spiritual energy. Your energy level is high, you are generally relaxed, and you may not feel the tensions. But when you go home in a week, you will see. Now you have the tool. Experiment with it, play with it. It is really good. When you do Prāṇāyāma, observe how deep it can go and how much tension you can release, then utilize this awareness throughout the day. It is such a richness, what we have received through Yoga and Yoga in Life. It is incredible. The techniques are nice, but I often ask people who say they practice yoga, "What type, and where do you go?" Often, it is a Western type, more aerobic than Yoga. Even the names of the āsanas are changed—it is not Sumeru āsana, but "Downward Dog." That is something else entirely. While techniques work to some extent, the depth and clarity we can achieve come only from a source of spiritual knowledge and energy, which we have here. We periodically recharge our batteries by coming to Gurudev for darśan, bathing in this great blessing and energy. But there is another part: by attending weekend seminars, weekly programs, or going to India, we receive not only techniques and energy but also the blessing of wisdom and knowledge for life and spirituality. This is the source of the inner clarity, certainty, and purity we need to progress. I have observed in my consultations that one of the most important psychological issues is a lack of proper self-boundaries. This means not being fully aware of your identity and where your borders are. It is not a bad thing; you need to know your flexible limits—how much you let others use your time, energy, emotions, or money. Unfortunately, we often learn unhealthy boundaries in childhood, and they become neither clean, flexible, nor strong enough. This makes us vulnerable. Our system works automatically, coloring our reality. We see your reality and my reality, and they can be quite different. For example, one person sees a frog and thinks, "Wow, so nice, we are in nature." Another sees the same frog and reacts with fear. These are automatic responses. When you can clear this automatism—which involves areas of the brain like the frontal lobe and insula—you begin to see outer reality more as it is. I recall a lecture from Swāmījī about a certain center, a cakra, with immense power that must be clear. It is also called the third eye, not in an esoteric sense, but as the seat of intuition and understanding. When you clean it step by step and see outer reality clearly, that clarity becomes yours. Gurudev explained that this center has two parts: one facing outward and one facing inward. By cleaning at least the outward-facing part, the quality of your life jumps to a much higher level. What is our tool for this? It is self-inquiry meditation. It has eight parts. The initial parts deal with rāga and dveṣa—what you are attracted to and what you avoid. Through this self-inquiry and self-reflection, you learn step by step to observe your thoughts, inner qualities, and patterns. Ultimately, you become an observer from a higher point. You become much more objective and realistic than before, when you were caught in the net of your imagination, automatisms, and past patterns. This is a huge leap in the quality of your life. Again, this is the richness we have in our system and on our Yoga path. I utilize this in my consultations. To deeply release these automatisms and problems with self-boundaries, I often use meditation with my patients. I am always amazed and admiring of what can happen through this method. It is essentially about connecting to the source—the source of knowledge and energy—and inside, you can ask for help to release your tensions. And it happens. Thank you. Thank you. Mbakoana k’iche’au.