Pranic depletion

When the body is rested but the life force is tired.

There is a tiredness that sleep does not touch. You wake after eight hours and something is still flat. The body is rested; the prana is not.

Prana — life force, chi, breath in its deepest sense — is spent not only by effort but by leakage. Scattered attention, half-finished conversations, a phone checked two hundred times a day. None of it is dramatic. All of it drains.

The remedy is rarely more rest. It is coherence. Bringing the breath, the attention and the body back into one place, even for a few minutes, refills what sleep cannot. This is why a good kriya can leave you more awake than a nap.

Start with the breath you already have. Lengthen the exhale until it is longer than the inhale. Do it for three minutes. Notice that the flatness has a floor, and that you can stand on it.