What’s in your toolbox? Yoga breathing techniques

I signed up for a yoga class in the past titled Yoga for the changing seasons that promised to address the energetic and physiological changes that occur during different seasons. Awesome, I thought there would be a lot of breathwork! It turns out, nope, there was a lot of talk about energy, but there was no pranayama in sight. That saddens me. Breath is the most direct and obvious tool we have to affect our energy and physiology. Asanas can be useful, too, but more in a supportive role.

Last week, we discussed when it would be useful to organize a practice around yoga breathing. This week, we will cover the types of yoga breathing techniques that we can choose from and what sort of preparation they require.

First, let’s make a distinction between two important terms: pranayama and breath adaptation in asana. Technically, pranayama is something you do with your breath in a seated position for the purpose of life force (prana) expansion (ayama). There are, of course, different intentions behind specific practices, but there are two qualities they share, according to Patanjali (Sutra 2.50): pranayama makes the breath longer (dirgha) and more subtle (sukshmah). This means that certain things that we usually think of as pranayama practices (like Kapalbhati, for example) are not pranayama but Kriyas (cleansing practices).

Breath adaptation in asana, on the other hand, is exactly what it says it is – you change your breath somehow WHILE doing asana. For example, you want to work with ratios and decide to hold your breath in for a couple of seconds and then hold it out for a couple of seconds. If you do it in a Warrior pose or whatever, it will be a breath adaptation in asana. If you do it in a seated position with a primary focus on the breath, it will become pramayama. Usually, we do breath adaptation in asana before we do pranayama to prepare both the breath and the mind.

Here are the options that we have when it comes to yoga breathing techniques (we call it a yoga teacher’s toolbox). Some of those breathing practices can be done in both asana and pranayama and others only during pranayama. Here are some examples:

And there are many others. Each one of those yoga breathing techniques will require some sort of preparation for both body and breath. If you want to spend some time doing pranayama, you need to make sure that your students are comfortable in a sitting position and don’t get distracted by physical discomforts. This means that you would need to prepare the lower back, upper back, neck, and hips for sitting. In addition, some of those techniques require specialized preparation. For example, if you are planning to do Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing), you know that the student will be holding the arm up for some time while working with the nostrils. Quite often, that causes the students to pull their shoulders up and strain their necks. We need to warm up the neck and shoulder to minimize the stress. Since Nadi Shodhana involves working with the right and left nostrils for the purpose of balancing the system, it would be useful to include the movements that facilitate right-left brain integration. And, of course, we would need to lengthen the breath during asana practice to make Nadi Shodhana more effective.

See Also

Three yoga models that describe different aspects of prana flow

There is some thought and planning that goes into creating an effective yoga breathing practice. 

Would you like to get the Breath Control Options in Yoga handout, which includes a compilation of most breath control options and suggestions on how to prepare the body and breath for each individual technique?

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