As per Scientific American, Pranayam is Cardiac coherence breathing

An article in Scientific American titled ‘Proper Breathing Brings Better Health’ is going viral on social media platforms in India. In its tweet sharing the article, the journal wrote, “Cardiac coherence breathing exercises can stabilize the heartbeat and have a powerful ability to dampen anxiety” with a photo showing what Indians know better as the yoga technique ‘pranayama’.

Naturally, the Indians were miffed and targeted the journal as well as the Western institutions for blatantly stealing Indian customs, techniques and rebranding them to sell to the foreign audience. While some claimed it was “cultural appropriation”, others slammed the journal for its ignorance.

Safe to say, Atul Mishra, founder of TFI Media bashed the journals with some tweeting, “They stole the number system They stole Calculus They stole planetary motion concepts They turned Yoga into a PT drill They are appropriating Ghee and Pattal And now they are calling pranayama cardiac coherence breathing. And we are busy bashing our own past.”

However, this is not the first time that the Western world that usually sneers down upon any Indian invention or discovery, only to later take it to heart, has been caught with its pants down.

What is known in the world today as the modern calculus of the 17th century due to Newton and Leibniz was the direct result of the use of all the fundamentals (infinitesimals, infinite series, since cosine series etc.) that were developed independently in India.

Aryabhata (476–550 CE) and Brahmagupta calculated instantaneous speed (or rate of change) of certain orbital parameters rather than just an average speed (integral calculus) and called this instantaneous motion tat-Kalika (Sanskrit for instantaneous velocity). Moreover, they gave the formula for it long back, much before the Europeans or the Chinese even developed it or ‘took reference from’.

Read More: The Story of Calculus: How Europeans Claimed Credit for this Branch of Mathematics that India invented

Mathematicians who belonged to Kerala School (1300-1600 CE), a well-known centre of mathematics and astronomy in the 15th and 16th centuries, developed comprehensive theories about the development of Infinitesimal series and its applications which were central to calculus and codified the science in palm leaf bundles (granthas) equivalent to (but far superior yet) modern-day books. Those included Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, Varahamihira, and so on.

The text Yukti Bhasha, written by the Indian astronomer Jyesthadeva of this school, was a veritable textbook of original calculus and offers detailed explanations of most of the results used today.

Series expansion for trigonometric functions was described by Neelakanta in Sanskrit verses in an astronomical treatise called Tantrasangraha. The same expansions of sine, cosine and arctan functions became the Taylor series of today. Neelakanta in the same book proposed models that became the ‘Tychonic model’ of planetary motion (published by Tycho Brahe in 1583), centuries later.

Indians and their ancient texts also point out what the Westerners took centuries to unfold and that is the Earth is spherical. In his third avatar called Varaha, Lord Vishnu is depicted as a boar. Welding Sudarshana chakra and Kaumodaki gada, the avatar of Vishnu is associated with the legend of lifting the Earth (Bhudevi) out of the cosmic ocean. 

When the demon Hiranyaksha stole the earth and hid her in the primordial waters, Vishnu appeared as Varaha to rescue her. Varaha slew the demon and retrieved the Earth from the ocean, lifting it on his tusks, and restored Bhudevi to her place in the universe. It is pertinent to note that Earth was shown spherical back then when no telescopes existed. Checkmate for flat earthers and Westerners.

Varaha is most commonly associated with the legend of lifting the Earth (personified as the goddess Bhudevi) out of the cosmic ocean. When the demon Hiranyaksha stole the earth and hid her in the primordial waters, Vishnu appeared as Varaha to rescue her. Varaha slew the demon and retrieved the Earth from the ocean, lifting it on his tusks, and restored Bhudevi to her place in the universe.

Furthermore, Hindus have been performing Navgrah Puja since olden times to worship the 9 Graha or planets. It is conducted to pray for health, success, and prosperity. However, the underlying message even then has been that there were nine planets in the solar system. 

While Indians had made the discovery much earlier with facts, it was only four centuries ago that Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei suggested the idea of a heliocentric solar system. However, the supposed sophisticated Catholic Church classified it as a heresy and hounded Galileo for almost two decades. It was believed that even during his death, he was tortured by the Church. 

Similarly, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when Colgate was trying to convert charcoal users to tooth powder, it had launched a commercial that hogged prime time space on Doordarshan. In the ad, when a bodybuilder asks his sister-in-law, understandably in a village, to bring him some “doodh-badam” (almond in milk) and “koyla” (charcoal), she immediately retorts: ” Arreb wah devarji, badan ke liyedoodh-badaam, aurdaaton ke liye koyla? (Wow! a health drink for the body but charcoal for the teeth?)”.

A voice-over then prods viewers to use Colgate tooth powder because “khurdare padaarth” (abrasive substances) can spoil enamel -the outermost covering of the teeth.

And look at Colgate and every other FMCG company today, from charcoal-based toothpaste to charcoal based facewash, they are using charcoal as their USP to sell the products. Indians have been using Charcoal and Neem for centuries before the Westerners came and ridiculed us for using them. Not surprisingly, we as the naïve and gullible public took their quackery and pseudo-science as the voice of rationality and dropped the custom.

Remember Pattal and how Indian households had a tradition of eating in it since the time of dawn, the West has now only caught up with it and is terming it as a ‘biodegradable plate’ which is kind of some revolutionary development for them. Only they don’t know that Indians have been using such revolutionary inventions for centuries.

Indians crave validation and until an exotic foreigner doesn’t approve of our methods and customs, we tend to look down upon them. A person eating in pattal might be termed poor, ignorant but a white man eating on a biodegradable plate will be dubbed an eco-warrior and overall good samaritan. 

We Indians need to rise above our petty squabbles and turn inwards to recognise our rich history and legacy. We have enough knowledge and know-how to go about our business without adulterating it with any stolen foreign knowledge. It’s also the time we start to take pride in our customs — after all the West comes around to ape it several thousand years later. 

Yoga is purely connected to its Indian and Hindu roots, one cannot refute the fact and those saying that yoga is not connected to any religious belief are simply deniers who do not want Hindus to receive the credit for gifting something so beneficial to mankind. Such is the casual racism that Indian customs and Hindus receive. And that certainly needs to change. Pushing back against journals should be done at a mass scale so that the message can be sent across the board.