Downward Facing Blog

I can explore the breath endlessly. The more I practice, the more I realize that the practice of yoga for me is contained in the exploration of the dynamics of breathing.

To understand why pranayama is so important, an understanding of the sheaths of your body is useful. First is the physical body, then the breath (more subtle), than the mind…

Simply put: the breathing is the means by which we have access to the mind. The yoga texts declare that when “chitta moves, prana moves”, which means as the mind is, so is the breath. Of course, the opposite is also true, so the breath is the most powerful way by which we can tame the mind.

It’s nearly impossible to control the mind without a direct tool. The breath is that tool.

Patanjali’s yoga sutras gives a series of eight techniques to use when the mind is thrown off, all of them fairly simple. One is particularly simple: “exhale longer than your inhale”. Ahhh… the mind automatically changes. Perspective itself changes immediately, doesn’t it?

 Back to the sheath concept of the body: the layer of breath/energy (so close to each other they are nearly exchangeable terms) is composed of five basic parts, or movements of the energy body. These are apana (downward force), prana (inwards and upwards), samana (stabilizing, internalizing, digesting), udana (upwards and out force), and vyana (expanding force). Here is Wikipedia’s link about it 

Yoga is concerned primarily with the upward flow of prana and the downward flow of apana. Apana is in the body to enable downward elimination of any kind: mensturation, bowel movements, having a baby, or ejaculating.

The mind and the prana being so interconnected as it is, if the apana force is strong within the body then the mind gets pulled down simultaneously. This may for example result in a extreme preoccupation with sex, which likely makes the mind more rajasic and outward focused.

So this is the reason for mula bandha, to act as a sort of spring board for the natural redirection of the downward force. So for this reason it is important to inhale while holding the muscles of the perineum (mula bandha) lifted slightly… so that the breath rebounds, and heads upwards along the spine. This in turn, lifts the mind, and lifts our focus.

More on this later…