Haṃsa
हंस
भयानक Afraid · बीभत्स Ashamed · हास्य Amused · I can't tell
स as the breath comes in, हं as it goes out. Nothing is held and nothing is said aloud. The breath says it, and you listen.
Why this one
The Haṃsa Upaniṣad, as K. Narayanasvami Aiyar gives it, says that we breathe out with ha and in with sa, and that the two go round twenty one thousand six hundred times in a day and a night. It is the japa nobody has to begin, because it is already going.
Some later teachers give the syllables the other way round. The site follows the Upaniṣad, in on स and out on हं, which is also how सोऽहम्, its mirror, is breathed.
It is the breath for fear and for shame, for lightness, and for the times you cannot tell what is here. In and out are the same length, and nothing on this page asks the breath to stop.
Where it comes from: Haṃsa Upaniṣad, in K. Narayanasvami Aiyar, Thirty Minor Upanishads (Madras, 1914), p. 212 note 1: "we are said to exhale with Ha and to inhale with Sa"; and p. 214, 21,600 haṃsas in a day and night.
How long
In seconds. Take the one that is easy today; the longer ones are not better.
How many
Breaths. Eleven is a real practice.