Pas Anfas: guarding the breath

Link to section: The short answerThe short answer

Pas-i anfas (پاس انفاس, "guarding the breaths") is a dhikr tied to the breath itself. In the clearest description I could verify, the practitioner says a silent "Allah" on the inhalation and "Hu" on the exhalation (verified in a primary source), so that no breath passes without the Name.11Ashfaq's English translation is online at archive.org; the passage and both epigraphs are on its first pages. The point is not a breathing exercise for its own sake. It is continuous attention: the breath cannot stop, so it is made to carry the remembrance.

Three terms are routinely run together, and they should be kept apart.

Link to section: What the best source saysWhat the best source says

The most careful treatment I found is Tariq Ashfaq's article in Oriens 6 (2009). It translates a passage from Shah Wahhaj al-Din Qalandar's ʿUyun al-Maʿarif, a Qalandariyya-Qadiriyya master. Ashfaq opens with two epigraphs. The first is a couplet: "If you are steadfast in guarding your breaths while invoking, you will reach the heavenly kingdom surely." The second is Ibn Arabi: "How is it that you do not smell Me in what you breathe?"

The framing is the Breath of the Merciful (نَفَس الرحمن). Inhalation and exhalation are mapped onto the pairs lahut and nasut, and tanzih and tashbih. The two syllables are synchronised with the two halves of the breath, so that death at any breath finds the practitioner in remembrance and is therefore blessed. Ashfaq characterises pas-i anfas as "more rajayogic than hathyogic": it works through attention, not through control or retention of the breath. That is the translator's gloss, not a claim from the Persian text.

The diagram shows the difference that matters for safety. Pas-i anfas has no retention. Habs-i nafas does.

Link to section: Where it appearsWhere it appears

Link to section: Hosh dar dam and the Eleven PrinciplesHosh dar dam and the Eleven Principles

Hosh dar dam is principle one of eleven.22See the Golden Sufi Center and Wikipedia pages in the sources. They agree on the eight-plus-three split. The first eight are attributed to Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduwani (d. 1179). The last three were added by Baha ad-din Naqshband (1318–1389). The others are nazar bar qadam (watch your step), safar dar watan (journey in the homeland), khalwat dar anjuman (solitude in the crowd), yad kard (remembrance), baz gasht (return), nigah dasht (watchfulness) and yad dasht (recollection).

Naqshband is quoted as saying: "The foundation of our work is in the breath… safeguard his breath in the time of his inhalation and exhalation and… in the interval between." The Naqshbandi writer Kashghari describes it as moving from breath to breath so that there is no heedlessness. Najm al-Din Kubra, in Fawatih al-Jamal, ties the "Ha" of Allah to every breath. These are quoted in the secondary sources I read, and I did not check them against the originals.

The practice is done under supervision. In this line the instruction is to be present to the breath, not to shape it.

Link to section: Owaisiah: the heart, not the breathOwaisiah: the heart, not the breath

The Owaisiah line (Allah Yar Khan, then Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan) teaches a different thing under a similar name.33From the order's own article "The Method of Zikr" and the archive.org text of Dhikr al-Qalbi. Its own pages say zikr is done "with the heart, not the breath". The method calls for rapid, vigorous breathing that produces heat, with rhythmic movement of the body. The remembrance is placed on seven subtle centres (lataif, لطائف) in order: Qalb, Ruh, Sirri, Khafi, Akhfa, Nafs and Sultan-ul-Azkar. It requires a shaykh and is followed by muraqabat. Awan calls critics of the method "ignorant".

A second Owaisiah-named site (awaisiah.com, the Ghulam Muhammad group) gives a beginner method of two to three minutes per latifa. It also makes sectarian claims, such as that one session with the shaykh outweighs a hundred alone. I treat those as claims by the order, not as findings.

This is the form with the most obvious physical risk, because the breath is forced. See the cautions below.

Link to section: What practitioners reportWhat practitioners report

I found little verified first-person material, and I want to say so plainly.

• The Rajarbag Shareef page expects the dhikr to become automatic and claims forgiveness, barakah in sustenance (rizq) and a good death.44The page says the practice runs night and day. It describes benefits as claims, not as measured results. These are the order's expectations.
• Irina Tweedie's Daughter of Fire is the nearest long first-person account of Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi training (five years with "Bhai Sahib"; she died in 1999; Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is her successor). Her breath-specific content is unverified (unverified) here, because I did not read the book.
• The "yoga-Sufi exchange" thread runs from the Amrtakunda to the Haud al-Hayat to Ghawth Gwaliyari's Bahr al-Hayat (1602, Shattari), and is Carl Ernst's work. I saw it only in a search summary, so treat the lineage as unverified (unverified).

The "stories of accomplishment" that circulate online are mostly anonymous testimonies. I discarded invented ones; see the register.

Link to section: What the evidence supportsWhat the evidence supports

Almost nothing about pas-i anfas as such has been measured. The closest research is on slow, soft breathing with a spoken or silent "Allah", and it is small and uncontrolled. The detail is in What the studies on dhikr breathing show.

Link to section: CautionsCautions

Link to section: Register of claimsRegister of claims

Link to section: Further readingFurther reading

• Tariq Ashfaq, Oriens 6 (2009) — the primary anchor for this paper.
• Hamid Algar, "The Naqshbandi Order: A Preliminary Survey", Studia Islamica 44 (1976).
• Carl Ernst, Refractions of Islam in India.
• Arthur Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet.
• Irina Tweedie, Daughter of Fire.
• Allah Yar Khan, Zikr-ay-Qalbi Pas-Anfas, and the works of Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan.
• Urdu search terms: پاس انفاس, حبس دم, ذکر قلبی, لطائف, اسم ذات.

For the Qadiri line specifically, continue to The Qadiri silsila and Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani.