Introduction: Origins of the Kyy Breath
The exercise I call the Kyy Breath (pronounced kiuu or kee-oo) was given to me during meditation as a warm-up method for visionary expansion. This exercise generates an immense amount of prana as it loosens up the entire chakra system and aligns it for imaginative release. Each time I do the breathing exercise and then ease into the meditation, I experience an immense rush of energy throughout my body and an immediate opening up of my visionary potential. I find that after doing this preparatory pranayam, I very quickly am invited into conversation with various spirit guides—most often local elementals and devas.
The exercise is named after the kyy snake of Finland and was given to me by the kyy spirits themselves as a kind of initiation into my shamanic relationship to the spirits of Finland and its neighboring spirit domain, which includes Russian Karelia and Estonia. The kyy snake began speaking to me just one or two days after I first arrived in Finland when my wife Anna and I came across one on a hiking trail on Porkkala Peninsula (Porkkalaniemi) west of Helsinki on the Baltic coast. I immediately found myself in close contact with the kyy spirit as it led me through several meditations over a period of three weeks, culminating in the presentation of this breathing exercise.
The primary visual component involves the imaginative connection of earth and sky through the erect body of the kyy as it extends from out of the earth through your spine or sushumna and up into the heavens. In this way the breath leads the practitioner to function as a physical and spiritual conduit of earth and sky energies while simultaneously involving the meditator with the spirit of the kyy and other local spirits. As such, the breath becomes a tool or practice for cosmic unification and vibratory cooperation and harmony. I now begin each day with this sacred technique. Enjoy!
— Dr. Gabriel Hartley
Purpose: As with any pranayama or yogic breathing exercise, the purpose of the Kyy Breath is to bring the meditator into an awareness of the union of body and soul. The word yoga, after all, means union. Pranayams stimulate multiple systems, and these systemic charges open our awareness to this union, an awareness that becomes heightened and focused. Each cell of the body is itself a being with its own consciousness and purpose in existence. As we take in the air molecules with each inhalation, the atoms of those molecules mingle with the atoms of our cellular structure and initiate a divine internal dance. Oxygen passes through the lungs to the blood supply and thereby throughout the body, where it stimulates the optimal functioning of each cell. The dizzyness or rush we feel in the brain is simply one of the more dramatic sensory expressions of this divine interaction of beings within and without our bodies and, thus, our consciousness.
