Pranayama in Context

There are many methods and models which can be used when considering what type of yoga practice will be most helpful to someone. Everyone is different in terms of their interests and aims and needs to be individually catered for. However, generalisations can also be helpful.

One of these general models is the age model.

If someone is young (up to 25 years old) the focus of yoga practice is mainly to serve the growth and development of the body as well as the mind. In terms of overall practice times, whats recommended can be 75% asana and 25% pranayama, as the purpose of the practice is to develop strength, flexibility and energy for what is to come.

In middle age (25 to 70) the focus changes to maintaining stability at the physical,mental and emotional level. This stage of life often comes with a lot of responsibilities and challenges, and so practice needs to change to reflect this. While asana is still important to safeguard our physicality, pranayama becomes the most important feature as its purpose is to maintain and even improve our energy aspect. Now, asana can be done to prepare for pranayama practice rather than for its own sake. Ideally at least half the practice time is spent on pranayama.

It’s interesting to note that while asana and meditation are popular practices in the west, pranayama is less so. The effects of asana are felt more immediately, muscles become more relaxed and the mind slows down. With pranayama the effect is more subtle and it generally takes longer to be noticed, so patience and perseverance are needed to sustain practice.

Breath-centric asana, which uses the breath as a support for the breath, is not the same as seated pranayama, where the body now supports the breath. Pranayama is like a bridge between the body and the mind. Swami Muktibodhananda goes so far as to suggest that pranayama bypasses the mind so that meditation happens naturally.

The senior years (laya krama — approximately 70 and above) bring different needs. Ideally, external responsibilities are lessening and there is more time forenergy to become more reflective as it becomes more inwardly focused. Asana and pranayama are still practiced — but now in support of meditation.

So in focusing on pranayama practice, the science of controlling or exploring the dimensions of prana of which we are not ordinarily aware, advice from the yogasutras is often a good place to begin. There are 196 short threads in the sutras and only five are about pranayama practice.

The first one (YS2.49) says that experience in asana is a prerequisite to pranayama practice. “This knowledge of breath, gained through asana practice, is the foundation for beginning yoga pranayama practice” — Desikachar.

The second (YS2.50): “The phases of breathing are exhalation, inhalation and suspension (stillness). Observing them in space, time and number one is able to render breathing more harmonious in duration and subtlety.” — Bernard Bouanchaud.

The fourth (YS2.52) is the fruit of the previous sutras. “Then all that veils clarity of perception is swept away” — Bernard Bouanchaud.

Taking a certain amount of asana experience as a given, looking at YS2.50 creates a firm foundation from which to begin pranayama practice.

As with asana, you need to begin from where you are and proceed in sequential steps towards your goal (YS 3.6), to avoid difficulty. So the first foundational practice to prepare for pranayama focuses on the place the breath happens before learning anything else. This place can also be thought of as space, physically, within the body and also mentally, as all levels of being are interrelated.

Swami Satyananda, Swami Gitananda (course taught by Philip Xerri) and Andrea Van Lysbeth all recommend preparing to learn pranayama by beginning with a full yoga breath. You separately explore breath in the three different spaces of the lungs — the upper abdomen, the thorax and the clavicle area —before combining them into a full yoga breath.This can be called sectional breath This practice begins to establish control of the breath and helps to familiarise ourselves with the whole breathing apparatus of the lungs and diaphragm on a physical level.

This encourages optimum gas exchange and blood circulation. Complete yoga breathing also helps to rebalance the nervous system, this breath can he used for everyone including those who suffer with heart conditions, asthma and emphysema.

Philip Jones is an inspirational example of pranayama practice. While bed-bound with a life threatening lung condition, among the few things he could do was read. Among the many books he had was one about yoga and he practiced the breath exercises as asana was out of reach. He became known as the Welsh wizardof pranayama, went on to recover, and then taught yoga classes for the next 30 years.

Swami Gitananda takes this practice around space further by combining the full yoga breath with hand gestures (hasta mudras) and vowel chants. There are four different hand gestures used, whose purpose is to prevent the leakage of prana (individual life energy) through the fingers and to engage the bioenergy associated with the breathing centre in the brain, apraakasha bindhu. They also begin the process of switching on and attuning the nadis (energy channels). The sound introduces a vibration to the energy body.

Prana is the life force which exists in all things. There is cosmic prana, usually denoted with a capital P, and this flows into us as individual prana (vasti prana). This vasti prana flows through the pranayama kosha (subtle body of energy underlying the physical body) by way of the nadis (energy channels). The nadis are often considered to be the bioenergetic equivalent of the physical nervous system.

Under ordinary circumstances, our reservoir of prana can be quite low due to blockages to the flow of prana within the nadis. These nadis with blockages can be compared to electrical wiring which can only accommodate quite a low voltage of electricity, if the voltage (prana) is increased then the system can’t cope and a circuit blows. This is why pranayama needs to be done in incremental stages and ideally with an experienced teacher.

These blockages can be due to many factors, sedentary lifestyle, bad diet andunhealthy habitual breathing patterns just to mention some. Whatever the reasons, one of the aims of pranayama is to unblock, clean and condition the nadis so that they can accommodate a higher vibrational energy, prana can better circulate and eventually we can learn to expand, direct and control the prana.

“Through the practice of pranayama, the energy trapped in neurotic, unconscious mental patterns may be released for use in more