Pranayama and Feng Shui for personnel development and business success

15.3.2011

Autor: D. Harald Alke

A standpoint, not an encyclopedia entry. An experience report by D. Harald Alke – breathing, concentration and healthy room air in working life. Foundations: encyclopedia entries Pranayama and Feng Shui; on the method → Methods / Energy Training.

Pranayama and Feng Shui for personnel development and business success

My little book “Die Stufen des Pranayama – Das Geheimnis von Atmung und Konzentration!” (The Stages of Pranayama – The Secret of Breathing and Concentration!) is one of my bestsellers.

How I came to the banks

When I had bought, in 1989, the new building for the Kyborg Institute, the estate agent obtained for me not only a building that met my requirements optimally, but in addition a contact to the Montabaur Academy, where the management of the Volksbanks and Raiffeisenbanks is trained. He had himself been trained there before he set up on his own as an estate agent.

It is always good when one finds a hand that can open an important door! The director of the academy asked me what I could offer him and his guests (that others were not already doing), and I had to react quickly. I looked at the man and thought, if the people here are all of a similar sort, then Energy Training would simply be too much for them. They have other things on their minds than doing an intensive training for an hour or two daily. So I said, quickly resolved, “Breathing and concentration!” No further comment from my side. He was astonished. Such a short answer he had not expected. He also thought for only a few seconds, and then he said, “Okay, let us try it! I will call you!”

It was the beginning of a good, relaxed collaboration that lasted 7 years, until I finally ended it myself. Why? It became boring to me, and I saw better possibilities for deploying my energy. If one finds the right tone and is able to meet people where they just stand, then one can build a good relationship with many people, and all involved will profit from it. In my time at Montabaur Castle I had exclusively directors and board members in my seminars, and once a special seminar with the chief secretaries of these gentlemen.

“My boys” – pranayama in management

Most of these people are real professionals in their profession and are stuck in a permanent stress and pressure to succeed. They by no means all knew one another, even though they had completed the same academy. When the seminar started, all entered themselves in lists. In these lists they also entered how many millions or billions of turnover their own banking institute had achieved in the last year. From this list they obviously derived their mutual esteem. On the one side they handled millions, and on the other side they were people like you and me.

I found a whole series of friends in these circles and got, in the closing reports of the participants, only the best marks. There, every seminar leader got, at the end of the course, an assessment from every participant. It was a meaningful and instructive time for me, and these top managers (CEOs) were really satisfied with the change that such a simple theme as breathing and concentration brought into their life.

“My boys” were really a good bunch, but the majority of them used pranayama only for personal fitness. The spiritual aspects remained foreign to them. For this reason I turned, after 7 years, to another group of people, the seriously spiritually interested people, no matter from which profession. That has always been my concern. I did not want to pass on only a strongly reduced part of my teaching. It is difficult to deny a spiritual calling. My bank participants were, to be sure, astonishingly open-minded, but with really spiritual contents I was not allowed to come. Some of them sought me out privately, sought counselling or coaching, or invited me into their banks for personnel training.

And it is not my way to impose my mental attitude on other people. May everyone find salvation in their own fashion, and everyone will have good reasons for choosing and treading a special path of life with all its advantages and confusions. That we should always respect.

A workplace that makes one tired

In connection with my breathing techniques, we naturally also came to speak of other factors that are of significance for the success of a firm. Prompted by my talks, a participant asked me the following: “Although I have a beautiful workplace, I do not like to sit there. I get tired quickly and am unconcentrated.” He was quite sensitive, he was right, and I perceived on his aura a strong radiation burden.

Spontaneously I said, “What is behind the wall you sit at? Do PCs with screen devices stand there?” All were astonished. It was exactly right! People often think so short-sightedly. One has a beautiful room, a beautiful spot, but a dozen of the then-modern PCs stood one beside the other behind this wall. The man sat constantly in this radiation, which, with the old screen devices, easily reached 2 m far.

A week later he called me. He was very relieved. He now sat on the other side of the room at an outer wall, had a free view both of the entrance door and out of the window, and felt distinctly better.

That is applied Feng Shui. One should always see something pleasant, the view out of the window over the park, and be able to feel secure, the view of the entrance. There are so many simple tricks for how one can make life easier for oneself! One only has to know it! And once one masters these foundations, then our eye for the essential grows. We ourselves begin to question things in a new way. We recognise connections where before there seemingly were none.

Bad room air: the underestimated factors

A lack of prana is, from my view, often the cause of the very unpleasant climate conditions in department stores, where a sensitive person would most like to run away quickly. The miserable air in such rooms depends on several factors. The air is frequently positively ionised.

We humans feel most comfortable with negatively ionised, fresh air. That is the case everywhere at the sea or in the forest, and after every rain, when the air is fresh and moist. Dry, warm air many feel as a burden. The corporate leaders should offer their employees a healthy climate for an optimal performance. In an office that exhausts me without my lifting a finger, I cannot work freely. The thinking-performance declines, the brain works only reluctantly. In a department store where sensitive customers become unwell from the climate, the turnovers will never reach an optimal level. Reinforced-concrete constructions provide for strong electromagnetic fields. Iron grids in the ceilings act like antennas if they are not by chance earthed. The employees and customers then stand in magnetic fields against which they must struggle in order to preserve their concentration.

It may have a certain use if the customers wander about absent-mindedly and in the end buy every nonsense. Optimally conceived department stores would, however, surely attract more customers, because one feels comfortable in them. The electromagnetic fields just described, in connection with permanently flickering fluorescent tubes, destroy, in my experience, prana to a great extent.

Many people notice unconsciously that they do not feel comfortable for long in such rooms. And the concentration of pollutants in department stores is often considerable, above all in some clothing departments and in the departments that offer chemical products of various kinds. The atmosphere has a depressing effect. These six factors – positively ionised air, electrosmog and magnetic fields, fluorescent-light flickering, chemical burdens in the air and the destruction of prana – act unfavourably in almost all modern buildings. They are bad for the customers, for the employees and guaranteed bad for business. It is a matter of shaping our environment more life-friendly and more upbuilding.

Into new large buildings, and into already existing ones, a device can be introduced afterwards that aligns the ionisation of the air electrically negative. Ionisation devices serve this. An enrichment with fresh air and additionally with natural fragrances would bring with it a distinct easing of the stay. These are not extra expenditures, but valuable investments for the future of a business.

What pranayama means

Whoever begins to reflect on such connections can also occupy themselves with the various breathing techniques (pranayama). I am not the only one who offers breathing exercises, yet my decades-long experiences with the special methods of Kundalini Yoga speak for themselves. In my experience these are very effective methods from which many can profit.

Simply try it out! Behind the foundations of pranayama stand millennia of experience of Kundalini Yoga, the oldest science of the nature of the human.

Pranayama comes from Sanskrit and means prana = energy and yama = vehicle, freely translated energy and movement – that is, how one gets ahead and develops through the use of the natural energy.

Breathing is life: with the breathing we regulate our energy, and my method was good enough to school CEOs for 7 years and to ease their daily tasks for them. Whoever applies the exercises conscientiously can, in my experience, do much for their well-being.

Go step by step, experiment with the various methods (chapters 1 – 7), and then turn to those exercises that bring the most (chapters 8 and 9). The exercise from chapter 8 one practises best 3 × daily for about 5 minutes. The energy regulation through pranayama can help to dissolve gloomy thoughts and emotions and to bring the enthusiasm for life back into the foreground.

Pranayama can, beyond that, contribute to more joy of life. Also at the birth of our two children, my wife experienced the conscious breathing as a great help; both births ran, for her, calmly and short. That is a personal experience and no medical advice – decisions surrounding a birth belong in medical and midwifery hands.

Life is beautiful, our earth is beautiful, and we are a living part of it! That we should hold before our eyes again and again, and for that we should make a living contribution.

If you would like to attend seminars for Energy Training and pranayama, look into the dates published by me; there some of my pupils offer corresponding courses.

In this sense I wish you a good time, many beautiful experiences and the courage for success!

Just courage, live well!

Light on the way wishes you, your D. Harald Alke

Breathing is life!

Note: This article renders a personal, worldview-based view and is no medical advice. It replaces no medical diagnosis or treatment; with health questions please turn to a doctor or pharmacy.