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Yoga Breathing Technique
In
this interview by Georg Feuerstein yoga therapy pioneer Gary Kraftsow
explains how in yoga breathing technique is fundamental in the
effective execution of asanas with intent.
Gary also talks about how the yoga breathing techniques of inhalation and exhalation are often misunderstood.
Yoga Breathing Technique - Bostures, Breath Work and Meditation
by Georg Feuerstein
Yoga World
1998
Georg: What do you mean when you say you are using the breath in the execution of asanas?
Gary:
There are different ways of controlling the flow of the breath that
will increase a certain structural potential or have a certain
physiological effect. Breathing can be controlled through both
inhalation and exhalation, and I always find it amusing that there
should be a controversy about all this.
Georg: What is the controversy?
Gary:
There is this notion in Yoga of inhalation as filling a bucket from the
bottom up, and yet air doesn't behave like water. It is possible to use
this kind of breathing for certain purposes, such as controlling high
blood pressure, but in general inhalation is more from the top down
during asana practice, because then you can maximize the effect of
expansion and extension.
A little bit of personal experimentation will
quickly demonstrate that inhalation into the abdomen brings one's
attention and energy down, whereas inhalation into the chest opens the
chest and encourages one's energy to rise.
(* Please see post-script at the end of the interview.)
Georg: Do you consciously work with the energy flow and the pranic flow in the body?
Gary:
Well , you could say that the pranic flow is the movement of attention.
In adaptation there is the adaptation of the form of the posture, there
is the adaptation of the style of breathing, and there also is an
adaptation related to moving attention in different ways.
Of course,
terms like 'pranic flow' can mean various things. From my perspective,
we can move prana by means of breathing technology or just by shifting
attention itself. For instance, if you mentally focus on your hand, you
can actually raise the temperature of your hand. Is that what you are
taking about?
Georg: Yes, something like that. Whether there
is a measurable physiological reaction depends on how deep the energy
flow is. There may not be such a reaction. In fact, you could have a
strong prana flow that does not register on any instruments at all. Are
you actually having students focus on a particular somatic locus
(desha), such as a cakra, during asana practice?
Gary: Yes, sometimes.
Georg: What would the purpose be?
Gary:
There are now contexts in which I recommend that. One is for
therapeutic reasons, and the other is in the context of a personal
ritual, which can also be therapeutic. For example, if you are
suffering from indigestion, I might ask you to focus your attention on
the region below the navel or on the solar plexus and the area of the
liver, kidney, spleen, and pancreas.
Georg: Do you combine this with visualization, or do you recommend simply paying attention?
Gary:
Both. I use visualization for visually oriented individuals. If work
needs to be done with emotional problems, I might use a very different
kind of visualization than in the case of someone who is very 'kaphic'.
Sometimes I also use a technique called nyasa, which means 'placement'.
This involves touching certain parts of the body, such as a specific
cakra, while chanting a mantra.
For example, I might ask a student to
extend his arms and while chanting a particular mantra during
exhalation bring his hands down to the heart. In the context of ritual,
I might recommend this technique in order to help a student develop a
personal meditation process.
In other words, nyasa can be used for
emotional therapy or as part of a process of spiritual growth.
I
use asana, pranayama, mantra recitation, visualization, and nyasa in an
integrated way to help students realize their own personal dharma. Of
course, if someone comes with neck pain. I don't use all that, but
focus on structural adaptation instead.
If a physiological problem is
obviously connected to emotional difficulties, however, then I might
use a combination of these techniques.
Georg: Traditionally,
a mantra is only a mantra when it has been received from a guru. Have
the mantras you are using with students been transmitted to you?
Gary:
It is my understanding that the potency of the mantra has very much to
do with the link between the person who gives it and the person who
receives it, as well as the context in which it is imparted.
In my book
I tell the story of a woman who had a lot of emotional problems. One
day, after we had been working together for a couple of months, she had
a very deep dream.
In the dream, she was nestled in the arms of her
grandmother, who was reading a biblical story to her. In fact, it was
Psalms 23 - her grandmother's favorite psalm. "Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will feel no evil: for
thou art with me..."
I had her read this psalm before her practice, and
spontaneously the phrase "thou art with me" became a mantra for her
which she used in her pranayama practice. That was pure therapy for
her.
Sometimes I use actual Sanskrit mantras. At other times, students
use English words or perhaps Greek expressions - whatever helps them
unlock certain neurotic patterns in their own mind. Sometimes people
come to me who have been given a mantra that they like, and I show them
how to integrate it into their practice.
Georg: Do you also use mantras in the traditional sense? Have you been given mantras that you can pass on to others?
Gary: Certain mantras, yes. My comments were in the context of therapeutic usage, but I also use some classic mantras.
Georg:
I believe it is not very common to use mantras in asana practice. So
what we are really talking about here is an asana practice that is
fully integrated with the psychological and spiritual context of a
person's life.
Gary: That's the intention. Yes, definitely.
Georg: This is rare, isn't it?
Gary:
Rare maybe, but it is Patanjali's Kriya Yoga: tapas, svadhyaya, and
ishvara-pranidhana. That is the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar approach.
My
second book with Penguin will be about that. But I want to be clear
that if people come to me with back problems, I don't put all this on
them. I just work with their back.
Often that's it, and I never see
them again. But some do come back, and over time they become more and
more interested and perhaps go on to meditation practice.
Georg: What role does meditation play in the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar approach?
Gary:
Meditation is very important. American Yoga practitioners don't always
seem to understand this, which is perhaps why they are turning to
vipassana, dzogchen, and other practices outside the Hindu Yoga
tradition.
Georg: Apart from being unaware of meditation
within the Yoga tradition, people also tend to rush into higher
meditation practices without having the necessary preparation. They
seem to be especially drawn to meditation practices that, like dzogchen
or mahamudra, which involve realizing the nondual state.
If one can
actually engage such meditation practice from the point of view of what
the Buddhists call 'emptiness', then there is no problem. But if an
individual doesn't have the ability to suspend mental constructs, then
meditation easily becomes just fantasy and wishful thinking.
Gary: Right. As with asana, people do make icons out of their meditation practice as well.
Georg:
Sometime ago, I was asked to write a foreword to a book describing the
author's experience of emptiness. I had to decline mainly because the
author put forward the notion that there is no need for spiritual
practice, which I think is a profound misconception.
Gary: I feel that there has been a similar distortion of Sri Ramana's teaching.
Georg:..because
some people think that all they have to do is presume their prior
enlightenment and it is true of them here and now, whereas Sri Ramana's
approach of Self-inquiry is a very profound method that needs to be
properly cultivated.
Otherwise, one merely deludes oneself. It is
possible to walk around for the rest of one's life affirming that "I am
the One," but if this is just an intellectual affirmation, it won't
accomplish anything. There will be no realization, no inner freedom,
and no true bliss whatsoever.
Gary: Practice has to
penetrate to make a real difference in our spiritual life. I use the
kosha model of the Upanishads according to which practice must
penetrate to the level of the heart, or the ananda-maya-kosha.
Otherwise it remains superficial.
Georg: David Frawley made
a good point in a recent article published in Yoga International: If
you don't experience pratyahara, or sensory inhibition, you aren't
meditating quite yet.
Gary: Deep sadhana always has two
aspects. One relates to what you want to eliminate, the other concerns
what you want to cultivate. As Patanjali states very clearly in the
Yoga-Sutra, [2.28], the light of knowledge or understanding dawns upon
the removal of the impurities by means of the practice of the limbs of
Yoga.
If there is toxicity in the body, it must be
eliminated first, and then the body can be nourished properly. The same
is true of spiritual practice. By the way, the word 'spiritual' always
seems a little odd to me. I am a samkhya-yogin, and from the point of
view of Samkhya-Yoga, the Spirit or purusha is completely unchanging.
So the practices are clearly not designed for the Spirit. 'Spiritual
practice' is something of a misnomer.
Georg: I agree, the entire process of transmutation happens at the level of prakriti.
Gary: So the practice is for the mind, for the person.
Georg:
That's why the Buddhists speak of 'mind training' rather than
'spiritual discipline'. For me, the word 'spiritual' is just a
convenient expression.
Gary: Well, people understand it when
you use it, but strictly speaking spiritual practice is mind training.
As Patanjali affirms, we must become ever more empty of our own form,
or sva-rupa-shunya.
My understanding of this is that, as you mature on
the path, the object of meditation becomes more refined, more subtle,
until it becomes sort of transparent, and then all it does is reveal
the Self. Krishnamacharya said that the only object worthy of
meditation is....
Georg: .....purusha.
Gary: No, he actually said ishvara, the Lord.
Georg: Ah, a true samkhya-yogin.
Gary:
Whatever the object of meditation, its purpose, in the words of the
Bhagavad-Gita [6.23], is to disconnect Yoga practitioners from
suffering, or duhkha, and to connect them to their higher potential.
The disconnection is called viyoga and the connection samyoga. This is
a gradual process. Some Western Yoga teachers try to right away
establish a meditation practice for their students, perhaps because it
makes them feel important, but my view is that it generally takes a
long time before a person is ready for meditation.
So in the
Kirishnamacharya/Desikachar system, we start with simple things, and
then slowly, as a student matures, introduce him or her to the more
profound practices of Yoga.
* "When we speak of inhalation
as a downward or an upward movement, or both an upward and downward
movement, we are not really speaking about the movement of the breath
(or air in the lungs) but rather the method of controlling the breath
(the way we use our respiratory musculature and our attention).
In
fact, there are multiple ways of controlling inhalation, and each way
has distinct effects on our system at structural, physiological, and
psycho-emotional levels.
In my training, we teach at least
five different methods of controlling inhalation. Our teaching is that
the practitioner should adopt the technique that maximizes specific
desired effects.
We may choose to use the breath for diverse purposes:
an excessive thoracic kyphosis, a recurring digestive problem, or a
state of chronic anxiety. In each of these cases, we will adopt a
slightly different technique of controlling the breath.
The
context of my original comment was in reference to the use of
inhalation in asana practice, where we usually want to emphasize the
expansion of the chest and extension of the spine on inhalation.
We
pick the technique of inhalation that maximizes this effect:
controlling the breath from the top downward. I want to stress that
this-or any-directional image relates to the method of muscular control
and flow of attention, and not to the way the breath moves.
The breath
always moves down into the lungs and then expands the lungs in all
directions simultaneously."
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