Learning to Exhale - Pranayama Week

Flying home on the 2^nd of three flights, I am engrossed in a movie (I’ll watch ANYTHING with Colin Firth) when I am pulled away by Dave, the gracious cabin attendant, who doesn’t want me to miss the scenery outside.  

I lift the window shades, and before me sprawls THIS gorgeous, arresting scenery.  As technology is literally at my fingertips, I press the flight map icon on the screen and see that we are over Kabul, Afghanistan.  My mind immediately goes to the conflicts in this part of the world, and everywhere else for that matter…the misunderstandings and poor communications between peoples, governments, religions.

At 30,000 feet, all that seems far and away as the perspective is endless, wondrous, vast, remote, untouched.  But then zooming in with the phone camera, I notice a cluster of structures, so, so isolated from any other sign of community.  In that snow-capped remoteness, in those deep contours, in that improbable landscape, it seems that a few folks have carved out life there. What that must be like!

The limitations of the perspective of this photo remind me of the challenges of conveying the close-up experience of being at the Iyengar Institute for a month. While from a distance, the outer form of a yoga posture might be described, what is felt inside -- zooming in, looking deep in ourselves, in our cells -- is a deeply personal experience.  Conveying that experience is the art of teaching.  Like bards and wise folk who spend hours, days, weeks, months crafting poetry that touches our hearts,  gifted teachers of pranayama -- the art and science of breath meditation -- craft their lessons to help us uncover, discover, or maybe recover a connection to ourselves, through our cells, through this practice.

And so, at last, and a bit wistfully, I arrive at my final post of this trip. What I experienced as a practitioner zooming in with the guiding hand of the teachers on the lens is personal and deep.  And, as a teacher myself, I couldn’t help but appreciate how each was also teaching about teaching. 

We got off to a wonderful start with Prashanti's Monday 7 am class...just a few poses taken, either inverted or seated and upright, exploring the breath in various parts of our embodiment.  

Whether in Salamba Sirsasana on the ropes, Virasana on height, or Padmasana, we leisurely explored the exhalation breath on "head-brain-face-skull-senses-facial skin" awareness.  We know how the lungs exhale, but can we perceive the head-brain complex as exhaling in the same way that our lungs do. And in drawing one's awareness to individual components of that including the sense organs, look at them both as organs of breath as well as recipients breath.  How does being inverted or upright affect that experience?

Then switching gears, imagine the organs and areas of the pelvic floor as "exhalating organs".   How much can the parts of this individually and collectively work either as the "Benefactor"or the "Beneficiary"of the breath, here utilizing a theme that has been present throughout the month in his classes.

Those of you familiar with Prashant's style of teaching will recognize his voice in the quoted text above.  While not atypical - his way of helping us think about yoga - Prashant's teaching brought a different quality to the practice as compared to my past experiences of doing a few preparatory poses, followed by supine and seated pranayama and savasana.  

More along those lines was Sunita's Saturday class.  What I truly appreciated was that she modeled the introduction/teaching of digital pranayama.  Patiently, meticulously, step by step, she laid out the order of learning.  

First, learn alignment of the nose, or more specifically, the septum.  Like hands on an analog clock showing 6 o'clock, the top and tip of the nose should be aligned, spinewise. 

Second, after relaxing, learn to feel the breath in the nostrils.  Inhale as if taking in the fragrance of a flower, gently, with interest in the sensations that arise. Then imagine being in the center of the flower, feeling the inhalation around you.  Pure poetry!

Third, learn the why and how of placing the fingers on the nose.  The convex tips of the fingers fit the concave space below the septum.  Lifting the skin slightly enhances the inhalation.  We worked with this first to understand the subtlety, and to give us a little strength from the inhalations, but of course, the learning sequence should be Anuloma, exhalation with partially closed nostrils first.  

Fun Sunita tip:  Practice/learn the mudra separately. Play with it, like a child plays.   "Maybe do while watching TV" she suggested with a smile.  When the hand gets more comfortable with it and bringing it to the nose feels more natural, then practice it with the pranayama.

Fourth, learn to create a favorable condition for the sitting posture, such that the body is both FIRM and RELAXED, the spine firm, the skin soft.  Additionally, to your condition of neck curvature, lift the chest and take the head down. 

I like to think of the skeleton as one of those wooden "valet" hangers, and the skin as the garment hanging effortlessly on that.  Sunita described that even though we have that firmness of the body and effortlessness of the skin, the core of us should be soft like a ripe, juicy fruit, receptive to the breath.

From that favorable condition, from Ujjayi, we explored Anuloma, exhalation with both nostrils partially, evenly open.  The detail with which she guided us I cannot detail here as it was so meticulous, creating so much sensitivity in us in our practice that day.  In listening to the recording just now, I am transported back, wanting to set aside this laptop and do Anuloma right here!   What I want to emphasize, importantly, is that her teaching was not just for us as as practitioners, but also as teachers, to be more sensitive to the complexities or obstacles for our students learning digital pranayama...nose alignment, feel the breath in the nostrils, holding the fingers, spine, jalandhara  bandha...so many things to coordinate.

Coordination in a different fashion was Abhijata's emphasis -- We explored the components of breath in asanas of according to Patañjali:  Deśa, Kāla and Sankhyā:

• Deśa is place
• Kāla is time or duration
• Sankhyā is number or precision

Here are just a few examples as the class was long and the examples were many:  

Desa is easier to understand.  Have a few cycles watching the breath in Tadasana, then compare where/how you feel the breath as you inhale and take the arms up...where does the awareness go?  How about taking the arms out to the side?  How does the direction of the arms change the sensation of the breath? Baddhanguliasana, Garudasana arms.

Physical freedom in the body is a must for pranayama, which, as we know, is why asana comes first.  Using Anatasana to lengthen the armpit and side trunk, with Adho Mukha Svanasana between to highlight the difference, more awareness is created about the freedom in the body being linked to the freedom in the breath.

Kāla we explored by doing Utthita Trikonasana and Full Arm Balance, observing which came first, the hand to the floor or the end of the exhalation?  Or the legs up at the wall..or the exhalation.  Try it a few times, quickly and without thinking, and you'll find that the hand/feet arrive before the breath is over.  Now, try to make the two match in time/duration.  What happens with a more forceful exhalation?  Try not to overshoot the arrival with the end of the exhalation. Working more forcefully with the exhalation, there is a connection to the future work that will be learned in Kapalabhati and Bhastrika.

Now sankhya...precision.  Here, again with Utthita Trikonasana, learning to arrive with the end of the exhalation BUT also with the two sides of the trunk equally extended so that the breath was equal on the sides, not pinched on the lower half of the rib cage.  There was more...but now I am about to board the third leg.

This lead up with the asanas creates different routes for learning pranayama, and as in all the classes this week, the focus was on exhalation.  The logic here was that while Inhalation gives us energy, the exhalation allows the inhalation to come with more freedom and ease.  

I want to end the post with a passage from Light on Life that Sunita was referring to in her class -- the three W's -- Work, Wisdom and Worship:  

Until next time, my friends!