The Inward Journey Begins

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"The apprentice's preparation for clearing the space that separates him from the world of gods and spirits is as scrupulous as that required for organizing a trip to the North Pole.

He must train himself mentally and physically and must forget nothing, since this journey is difficult and necessitates the total abandoning of the familiar world before making the jump towards an unknown universe, which is not the universe of life, but of eternity.

We inevitably perceive the outer world through the intermediary of the senses, which are narrow portholes allowing us a fragmentary and deformed glimpse of the reality outside.

Even if the great cosmos is reluctant to reveal its secrets, however, there is another cosmos within us, from which we are not separated by the same barriers. If we wish to try to understand the secret nature of things, we must seek it within ourselves, where the limitations of the senses do not interpose between our consciousness and our perceptions.

It is by studying the microcosm that we can understand the macrocosm; it is through our own impermanent being that we can reach the Universal Being. It is in the cavern of our heart that we can realize the immensity of spaces, and by controlling our own vital rhythms we can escape the power of time. By reaching the source of life, we can escape the power of death.

By exploring the unknown spheres within ourselves, we can visit the celestial and infernal worlds."

Alain Danielou, "Yoga: Mastering the Secrets of Matter and the Universe"

Phenomenology is a contemporary analog of ancient Hindu cosmology/psychology/physiology, aka yoga. As an analog, it isn't a copy, or worse, a cheap fake. It's the expression of an impulse that points pretty much the same direction now as it did 10,000 years ago. It looks and feels different in some ways, because humans, and the world, are different.

The most important feature yoga and phenomenology have in common is the inward turn. Even if this were the only common feature, it would be sufficient to suggest that a phenomenologist might learn a practical thing or two from the practitioners of the previous 'incarnation' of phenomenology, aka yogis.

One essential technique is breath control (a distinct though not separate thread of pranayama - life force control). Your breathing is one of the surest, most productive starting points for the practice of yoga. Using a simple technique of paying close attention to your breathing while sitting still with your eyes closed, the inward journey begins.

Can this also be the start for pheno-praxis? And would this yoga technique be practiced along with the epoche? Would yoga be a tool of phenomenology, or vice versa? Or both oscillating back and forth?