Śivasaṃhitā 3.74

The «karma mountains» (karmakūṭāni, literally «karma summits») is an image of extraordinary visual power: accumulated karma not as record but as physical mass, as mountains that oppress and limit. The praṇava as tool for destroying them acts from the source: if karma emerges from identification with the separate ego, and praṇava is the sound that precedes and dissolves all ego, then the destruction is direct and radical.

Drinking air through the crow’s beak (kākacañcvā) at the two sandhyā moments — dawn and twilight — with the visualization that air goes toward kuṇḍalinī’s mouth is a practice integrating posture (labial seal), pranayama (cool inhalation), contemplation (visualization of the power serpent), and time (cosmically potent moments). All four elements of complete tantric practice in a single gesture.

The curing of rajayakṣmā (phthisis, pulmonary tuberculosis) through this practice is the chapter’s most specific therapeutic affirmation. Tuberculosis was medieval India’s most feared disease: it slowly weakened the lungs, prāṇa’s most physical vehicle. The text’s affirmation of its cure through prāṇāyāma reflects the conviction that weak lungs are a consequence of weak prāṇa, and that strengthening prāṇa physiologically strengthens pulmonary tissues.