The Channels: Iḍā, Piṅgalā, Suṣumnā (Nāḍī)
Three inner rivers of energy — and the yoga is to make the breath flow up the middle one.
The nāḍīs are the channels of the subtle body — the conduits along which the vital energy travels, said to number in the thousands. Three matter most: iḍā on the left (cooling, lunar), piṅgalā on the right (heating, solar), and suṣumnā, the central channel running up the spine. Ordinary breathing flows through the side channels; the haṭha-yogin's whole craft is to balance them so the energy enters the central suṣumnā and rises. Much of breath-control practice is aimed at exactly this.
How it traveled
- Chāndogya UpaniṣadKuru-Pañcāla region · -700explains
- Śiva-sūtraKashmir Valley · 825explains
- Haṭhayoga-pradīpikāKāśī (Varanasi) · 1450explains
Key passages(15)
There are a hundred and one arteries of the heart, one of them penetrates the crown of the head. Moving upwards by it, a man (at his death) reaches the Immortal; the other arteries serve for departing
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The Self is in the heart. There are the 101 arteries, and in each of them there are a hundred (smaller veins), and for each of these branches there are 72,000. In these the Vyâna (the back-breathing)
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Now those arteries of the heart consist of a brown substance, of a white, blue, yellow, and red substance, and so is the sun brown, white, blue, yellow, and red.
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
'There are in his body the veins called Hita, which are as small as a hair divided a thousandfold, full of white, blue, yellow, green, and red . Now when, as it were, they kill him, when, as it were t
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
Next, when he is in profound sleep, and knows nothing, there are the seventy-two thousand arteries called Hita, which from the heart spread through the body . Through them he moves forth and rests in
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