Pranayamas

The first stage of raja yoga is pranayama, which is translated as “working with energy”.

Pranayama is purification technique, concluding in "pumping" an air light energy (prana) through the one's parts of body and within the “cocoon” that surrounds it.

Sometimes this term is incorrectly interpreted as “breathing exercises”. This is an atheistic error. In reality it is the energy of consciousness that gets moving during pranayamas, but one may perform this – for convenience – keeping time with one’s breath.