Monday night was the night for the big experiment...

I've wanted for a while now to test out the nostril breathing on my insomnia, which is both stress and age related...

It does, though, require an empirical, and unfortunately awake, mindset, so it is hard to run it on a heavy weight experimental basis...

But the universe conspired with the ideal test ground: work related stress work me at about four in the morning this past Monday, and I start to toss and turn a bit. When I started to breath meditatively I noticed that my nose was drawing air in through the right nostril - so then I remembered the "yogic wisdom" that if you lie on the opposite side to that of the nostril you want to be open then you nose will oblige you. So I lay on my right side for a while, my left nostril opened and I passed blissfully into sleep from about five to 6.30, when I had to rouse myself for a day in London.

That's why I return time and again to Swami Rama's book. His story in brief is that he went to the US in the 1960s from India and has since past onto other shores. He founded the Himalaya Institute, dedicated to bringing yogic knowledge to the west.

Scientifically, it seems that right nostril air stimulates the sympathetic part of our autonomic nervous system - which gives us our "fight and flight" energies. Left-nostrilled air resonates with the parasympathetic part - giving us the space to "rest and digest."

The yogis, according to Swami Rama, had this down to a much finer art...more tomorrow as I am feeling a bit on the sleepy side, thanks to the left nostril intake!