There are many similarity between sneezing and orgasm. But does sneezing fit into our yoga practices (like sex)? Are we depleting or charging ourselves with sneezing?
For me i don’t feel much difference. And it’s not quite reasonable that something our body do automatically during sickness is depleting for us. So I think sneezing is just a natural neuro-response which has very little to do with yoga.
Any ideas?
Alvin,
I think that sneezing may even be stimulating in a positive way, which may be why people have used ‘snuff’ in the past (and I presume they still do in many places). I really don’t think it creates the depletion of orgasm.
-D
It is such an odd thing, a sneeze. So many of the body’s natural functions are oddly pleasurable. I’ve been trying to freezeframe the sensation of the sneeze as I do with orgasm. Who know’s why? Perhaps just out of curiousity and an attempt to gain more influence over previously uncontrolled processes.
I’ve been trying to, too, for pretty much the same reason. But the most helpful and urgent uncontrollable process that I would like to master: when I don’t have enough sleep, unlike most people, I would not fall into sleep say in a public transport. This makes me unable to rest fully. I seems to be more agitated when I don’t have enough sleep. Tension built up in my forehead as if I have over-practiced yoga…
Any ideas?
Sleep is a tough thing to get a hold of. I used to have absolutely aweful insomnia.
When I get that agitated feeling from not getting enough rest, which seems to carry through the day, I find the best way to get relief is to do 3 things.
A rejuvinating, deep, but short meditation. Doing it standing up or in a fairly simple activity is good.
Doing an exercise like running for just five minutes at a decent pace.
And though I am not currently well rested, planning well ahead for a time whre I can, which often involved going a day or two without full rest. Basically, I have to get up early whether I want to or not for the sake of the sleep rhythm, until I am able to hit that pillow and fall into restful sleep.
Thankfully, I’ve noticed, like most here, less need of sleep. Perhaps the lack of sleep just doesn’t impact one as greatly as before, though I imagine the negative affects it can have on our deep meditations is all the more apparent.
I have mastered the sneeze. My trick to staying at the climax of the sneeze is pressing on the outside of the nostrils, so that it rubs the insides together, which holds off the explosion.
Kind of silly, but maybe you guys will like it.
I would do sambhavi and relax my mind, only witness the tendency to sneeze. Witness every moment of the sneeze without encouraging it to continue.
This works when the sneeze doesn’t come too quickly.
Katrine mentioned trying to stay with the sneeze in a post a few months back and so I have been experimenting with it. I find it such a curious thing, I feel the sneeze coming, I put my full awareness into it and completely surrender to it and it just dissipates and it feels like the energy stays within.
It doesn’t feel like it is going to work sometimes but it always does.
Something to play with.
A
Similar experience here. But I think sneezing may be a spontaneus bhastrika which I’m not sure if I need to dissipate it.
Hi guys
I’ve been successful with Katrine’s “technique” too. The allergies that are my constant companion give me countless opportunities to experience sneezing, snot and various other nasal entertainments. Another thing I do is take the pre-sneeze in-breath all the way past the top in a calm manner, and then watch the sneeze fall away. Unfortunately snot almost always ensues. If I avoid, or bypass the sneeze in this way the snot runs worse, and more violent sneezes comes up until I blow whatever culprit out of the offended membranes. Watching the sneeze go away as Katrine posted about some time ago (as Andrew mentioned 
) can for me sometimes put an end to all of it if I am really still and present. You know, it is a lot like avoiding orgasm. There’s a lot of sex going on in these heads of ours (kechari, sneeze climaxes) 
Presence, Alan
Hahaha! 
I have been a nasal freak for a long time. Nose fetishist! This is hilarious! I shall immediately start to be more aware when sneezing!
Well Alvin, the Kechari has a lot to do with ecstasy within the nostrils… maybe why you feel that way on the verge of the a-tishoo!
But excuse my ignorance please
Seems only an epidermal tease
Or a block, perhaps, released
Not a sniff here of birds and bees.
I don’t know about sneezing but I’ve been trying to study yawning, what energetic processes are involved etc…
I discovered something really funny about yawning, I have really bad migraine attacks sometimes and for some reason at the moment of the peak of a yawn (when you feel the head and tympans trembling), for that second the headache is gone.
Bliss,
I’ve been noticing that yawning is the body’s natural form of kumbhaka. I’ve been yawning and cat stretching (which is the body’s natural means of asana). I’m sure increasing oxygen levels isn’t all that yawning is good for…if you come up with anything let me know.
Hi Alvin and all,
Thanks for the sneeze awareness thread. Last night I had my first aware pre-sneeze without a sneeze where I felt like my mere observation prevented the sneeze. Strained a rib.
But the main thing I wanted to mention here is my experience with a voluntary pre-sneeze: Three quick little in-breaths. I noticed that it does consistently stimulate some “conductivity” from lungs up to crown.
Thanks for your question Alvin about how to describe this thing we are calling “ecstatic conductivity.” It seems quite likely that you have experienced “it” spontaneously in the moment before a sneeze. Fine observation.
I had a bunch of times a sneeze building up during Deep Meditation, which put me in the unusual position to cleanly witness the build-up of the sneeze, which extended the duration of the build-up, and then also led to a subtle and intuitive way to interfere with the build-up, probably in an attempt to reduce the disruption of the actual sneeze on the DM flow. Since it is clear that there will come a point during the build-up of the sneeze after which a gentle favoring of the mantra will be impossible, it also makes sense to treat this as an instance to switch into the exceptional witnessing mode of DM. A sneeze during DM happens so rarely that I’m not worried if instead I rather should try to favor the mantra throughout the sneeze, which could be a fun thing to try.
But those few occasions made me very curious about the yogic dimension of the sneeze. So I searched the forums, where this thread came up. A lot of my questions have been also posed in this old chat, but no consensus was reached, that’s why I resurrected it.
Here is what I would like to know:
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What is the pranic dimension of a sneeze? Is it energizing or depleting?
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In either case, is there a yogic advantage in learning to interfere with a sneeze build-up, e.g. a sneeze-tantra where we try to stay in front of the sneeze? There are some obvious similarities to sex and orgasm: The build-up of the sneeze is accompanied by a build-up in pleasure, and the actual sneeze ends that pleasure build-up. The nose is a pleasure zone, that we can actively stimulate throughout the day or in AYP sitting practices using kechari.
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The thread above contains a few replies of people that experimented with holding back the sneeze. Someone suggested pressing on the outside of the nostrils the nose with the fingers right before the sneeze, and someone else likes to do sambhavi and relax the mind and witness the sneeze “without encouraging it to continue.” These two processes are reminiscent of ways of holding back an orgasm. Is there anything about sneeze control mentioned in yogic texts?
Since my last post above the urge to sneeze came up once more during Deep Meditation. This time, though, I did an experiment which I planned ahead for that occasion. Which was to simply continue easily favoring the mantra for as long as possible and see what happens. I expected that most likely the sneeze will make it impossible to easily favor the mantra (this was my previous excuse to interrupt the DM flow to witness the sneeze as soon as the feeling showed up). Or, less likely, I thought that I somehow manage to easily favor the mantra through the entire sneezing process. Possibility three was that by favoring the mantra, the urge to sneeze would dissipate, which turned out to be the case.
We all know how it feels like when the sense of an impending sneeze rises, but then surprisingly disappears (often to just rise shortly afterwards again to get the job done). This is how it felt like during meditation (and the sneeze didn’t come back). So nothing special. But it gives me a new idea for an experiment to handle a sneeze outside of meditation 
And so I also did some more research on sneezing in the yogic context, and found the three things below.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda mentions a sub-category of pranic currents, called upapranas, two of which (krikara and devadatta) are said to be responsible for sneezing. But nothing is mentioned about possible yogic uses of sneezing.
In the verse 118 of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra it says, translated by Christopher Wallis:
Just before or after a sneeze, at the onset or cessation of anger, in fear, in deep sorrow,
when fleeing from conflict or from joy, in curiosity or wonder, at the onset and
cessation of hunger: [in all these states and more], the state replete with Being the
Absolute [is available].
It is interesting that sneezing is in that list of seemingly random other haphazard life situations where “the state replete with Being the Absolute [is available]”.
My third find is The Book of Secrets by Osho, where it says about the sneeze:
What can you do? You feel the sensation that the sneeze
is coming: stop! Do not try to stop the sneeze, just you yourself stop. Do not
do anything. Remain completely unmoving, with not even your breath going in or coming
out. For a moment, stop, and you will feel that the impulse has gone back, that
it has dropped. And in this dropping of the impulse a subtle energy is released
which is used in going toward the center, because in a sneeze you are throwing
some energy out – in any impulse.
This is interesting because it describes my original approach to just witnessing the sneeze, but with a different outcome: the impulse is supposed to go away. Maybe I never truly witnessed the sneezing process but slightly manipulated it without noticing? And also contrary to that quote, when I just recently continued gently favoring the mantra over the growing impulse to sneeze, that impulse disappeared. So it disappeared by doing something (gently favoring the mantra), rather than “stopping myself”.
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Are the texts just pointing out that before a sneeze we have the opportunity to be in a samadhi state because our attention is completely taken up by being in ‘readiness’ for the sneeze?
It’s also interesting that as a kid, it was said that putting your tongue on the roof of your mouth help to quell the oncoming need to sneeze. 
I haven’t heard before of the trick with the tongue you mentioned. I learned some tricks to quell a hick-up. None of them seemed to work 
There’s actually more in that Osho book about sneezing in chapter 41, and how to use a sneeze as a daytime opportunity for a micro-meditation. It also provides a different translation of that verse 118 in the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, and a whole discussion about using the sneeze as an opportunity to witness.
Osho also discusses some energetic aspect of the sneeze, suggesting that indeed somehow the energy of the sneeze can be repurposed:
When the alertness comes, the sneeze may not come. If really you are alert, it will not; it may not happen at all. Then a third thing happens. The energy that was going to be released through a sneeze, where does it move? It moves to your alertness. Suddenly there is a flash, a lightning. You become more alert. The energy, that was going to be thrown by the sneeze moves into alertness. Suddenly you become more alert.
Makes sense, when we feel a sneeze coming on our attention is completely consumed by controlling it, so if we let go of the attention towards the sneeze, what is left?