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undertakes. Shiva Swarodaya, the principal treatise on swara yoga, states (v. 270):
Millions of other powers are useless before the strength of the swara. One who has this knowledge is always powerful both in this world as the next.
An experimental study done at the Kaivalyadhama Institute, Lonavala, India, has verified that the flow of the breath through each nostril is rarely equal under normal circumstances. Of 204 subjects who were investigated at different times of the day, aged from 10 to 65 years and enjoying good general health, an unequal flow of breath in the nostrils was noted in 174, or 85.5 percent of cases.
Another electro-nasographic study carried out at Kaivalyadhama discovered that changes of electrical potential are continually occurring within the mucous membrane of each nostril. These changes were found to be unequal in the two nostrils, and are believed to be influenced by a subject's psycho-physiological state, as reflected in his breathing. This nasal potential is constantly changing in the same way that the human aura has been seen to change continually when photographed using high-voltage Kirlian techniques.
It has also been observed that the breath which goes through the left nostril has a slightly lower temperature than the breath which goes through the right. This is because the left nostril is related to ida nadi, the flow of mental energy, while the right nostril is related to pingala nadi, the flow of vital energy.
Nasal dominance and nasal airway resistance
What the ancient science of swara yoga describes has become a subject of scientific research in the last century. The nasal flow is termed nasal airway resistance in scientific parlance and the phenomenon of alternating flows is called nasal
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