I have done some Kundalini Yoga and enjoyed the fire breathing that they did, which was like the breathing in the first stage of Osho Dynamic Meditation. I liked it, but it was hard!

     It is hard because it changes many things in the body structure; that's why it is hard. It changes the whole pattern of your body. Once it has changed it becomes very very easy.

     It is just as if you suddenly start walking. Your muscles have to be ready for it; otherwise you feel very tired. But by and by, when the body adjusts to it, your muscles get the tone and the shape and the strength. Then it is a simple thing and you can walk for miles with tremendous joy. You don't think about the body at all then. In fact if you know how to walk, you can completely forget the body. You can almost fly...you become weightless. The same happens with all sorts of new trainings.
This meditation is a training on many levels. First the body level; it has to change the musculature – particularly the breathing musculature which is the most important and which has much to do with your mind and the mind structure.
     Then it has to change your armor that you carry around your body – a very subtle armor...protective, defensive. That is the hardest part because you have completely forgotten that it is there.
     Then the mind structure.... Much repression is there that has to be brought out. The whole mind has to be stirred from the conscious, the subconscious, to the very unconscious – and even beyond that. Everything has to be stirred, thrown out and cleaned.
It is a house that has not been cleaned for millennia. Much dust has gathered, and when you start cleaning it, it is arduous. But once you have cleaned it, it becomes a temple. This very body becomes a temple. This very mind becomes a vehicle for no-mind. And then there are still deeper layers that have to be changed.
     So the whole pattern is going to be arduous. But it pays, it pays tremendously; the pay-off is very great.

Osho: "Dance Your Way to God"

How does this intense breathing awake the kundalini?

     There is a relationship, and a deep relationship at that, between the two processes. In fact, it is the breath that connects the soul with the body; breath forms the bridge between the two. That is why with the cessation of the breath life ceases to be. Life goes on even if the brain is damaged. One can survive even if one's eyes or other bodily limbs are amputated. But if the breath stops, life will come to an end immediately. Breathing really joins the body to the soul.
It is at the junction of the soul and the body, at their meeting point, where the energy known as kundalini resides. Kundalini, or whatever name you give it, is the same energy, and it resides at the junction of the body and soul.
     So this energy has two forms. When this energy flows towards the body it becomes sex; and when it flows towards the soul it becomes kundalini, or whatsoever you call it. This energy is descendent while moving to the body and it is ascendant while moving to the soul. So while kundalini is an ascending energy, sex is a descending one. But the seat of kundalini, the place of its location, is hammered and moved by breathing, deep and fast breathing.

      Deep breathing has a profound effect on the kundalini.
      Pranayama, the science of yogic breathing, was not discovered unnecessarily. Through long experiments and investigations and through enduring experiences it was known that a great deal can be accomplished with the help of breathing and its hammering on the kundalini. Really a lot can be done through deep and fast breathing. And the more intense and strong the hammering, the swifter the movement of energy. So far as we ordinary people whose kundalini has been asleep for countless lives, are concerned, the need for intense and hard hammering, hammering with all our strength is much greater.
      Breathing hits the kundalini, the basic center of energy.
      As your experience will deepen you will clearly see even with closed eyes the exact spot where it is hit by breathing. So it often happens that with the hammering through deep breathing one gets aroused sexually. It so happens because your body is acquainted only with this experience, the experience of sex being aroused through deep breathing. So as a matter of habit the body begins to move in the familiar direction of sex whenever you breathe deep and fast. That is the reason why many seekers – both men and women – have the feeling that deep breathing stimulates their sex center immediately.

      All the centers, which you call chakras, are nothing but halting places for the kundalini on its journey's way. These are the centers through which the kundalini passes.
      Ordinarily, there are any number of such centers, and there are different estimates of them. But broadly speaking there are seven important centers where the kundalini, while moving up and down, is likely to halt and rest for awhile. It will have its effect when it comes in contact with them, and its first effects will be felt on the center that is your most active center as such. For instance, if a person constantly works with his brain, then with deep breathing his head will become very heavy. It will be so because his brain center happens to be his most active center.
      So the most active center will be hit and stimulated first by deep and fast breathing. But very soon it will begin to affect other centers too. Accordingly a change, a transformation of the personality begins simultaneously. You will begin to know that you are changing; you are not the same person that you were up to now.

As the various centers are hit and activated, new dimensions of your life will begin to unfold and manifest themselves. And when all the centers are active together – that is, when energy will flow through them all uniformly – then for the first time we will live a whole life; we will live totally.

Osho: "In Search of the Miraculous"

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