The Yoga of Breath summary

Pranayama means learning how to control your breath, but that’s not all there is to this ancient practice. As part of yoga tradition, pranayama is accompanied by certain rituals that you should observe. These simple rituals, as well as breath control, will form a key part of your practice. 

The most basic pranayama rituals are concerned with regularity, time, and space. 

As a new student of pranayama, you’ll probably be keen to start your practice – excited to change how you breathe, and how you feel. Many eager students start their pranayama journey with complicated breathing exercises. This is a problem, because they have not yet completed the groundwork for their practice. So before you rush off on your journey, remember: in order to know where you want to go, you first have to understand where you are. 

Before you begin pranayama, get comfortable with an exercise that will help you gain more insight into both your mind and your body. 

It would be foolish to set out on a journey without a map. The same is true for your pranayama journey. But you won’t be able to buy your pranayama map in any store. Instead, you’ll be making it yourself, with a little help from your witness. 

At the outset of your pranayama practice, you’ll map your body’s surface –  including the areas you can’t see. 

By now, you’ve met your witness and mapped your body. But you’ll need a few more tools to start your pranayama journey in earnest. One simple but essential pranayama tool is nasal balance. Mastering this technique will help you prepare for more complex techniques further along your journey. 

Bringing your nostrils into balance is important, because your breath does not flow equally through both of your nostrils. At any given time, you are primarily breathing through either your right or left nostril, and the other one is somewhat blocked. This phenomenon is known as nostril dominance. You unconsciously swap between nostrils about every two hours. 

In Sanskrit, ujjayi means “to conquer.” So our next tool, ujjayi pranayama, is known as Conqueror's breath. When you perform Conqueror’s breath correctly, you will proudly puff out your chest like a military general. This will cause your lungs to swell to their true capacity. 

To prepare for Conqueror's breath, sit up straight or recline. First, bring your nostrils into balance by using the clenched fist technique. Once this is done, call upon your witness to observe how you are breathing. At this stage, you should not be trying to control your breath. Instead, just notice what’s already happening – imperfections and all. If you can, don’t think of yourself as breathing – think of your body as breathing you. 

Just because you think about doing something doesn’t always mean you’re going to do it. It is often in this gap between thinking and doing that we reflect on ourselves and what we really want. In other words, this gap brings us to greater awareness of ourselves. This is also true for breathing. If you think about inhaling or exhaling, but then choose to delay or interrupt it, you achieve greater awareness of your breath. 

This technique is known as viloma pranayama, or Against-the-Grain breath. It runs counter to how you usually breathe. Normally, your breaths go from start to finish without interruption. But when you breathe using the Against-the-Grain technique, you interrupt your breath. You make it stop and go intermittently.