Gurudev, why does the breath slow down and even stop while meditating when we are still alive. Can you please explain?
While meditating, the breath becomes slower as activity goes down in the body and deep rest comes to both body and mind. This leads to the fourth state of consciousness.
There are three states of consciousness: waking dreaming and sleeping. But other than that there is a state where you are awake and yet fully at rest, and that is meditation. In that state the breath is almost feeble, and almost not there for few seconds. After that activity comes up, and stress gets released and the mind becomes more active. When the mind becomes calmer, physical activity increases, it is a phenomenon.
Similarly, if you see, when you breathe in, you are accumulating energy. When you breathe out, you are relaxing the whole system. So the in breath and out breath also has a specific impact.