Main Lessons
Lesson 41
From: Yogani
Date: Thu Dec 11, 2003 8:15am
Subject: Pranayama – Spinal Breathing
New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"
We will now begin an advanced pranayama practice called spinal
breathing. It has several components to it, and is done right before
our daily meditation sessions. The procedure of meditation will not
change in any way. First we do our pranayama. Then we do our
meditation.
Sit comfortably with back support, and close your eyes just as you do
when you meditate. Now, keeping your mouth closed, breathe in and out
slowly and deeply through your nose, but not to the extreme. Be
relaxed and easy about it, breathing as slowly and deeply as possible
without discomfort. There is no need to be heroic. Work your muscles
so each breath begins in your belly and fills you up through your
chest to the top of your collarbones, and then comes back down
slowly. Next, with each rising inhalation of the breath, allow your
attention to travel upward inside a tiny thread, or tube, you
visualize beginning at your perineum, continuing up through the
center of your spine, and up through the stem of your brain to the
center of your head. At the center of your head the tiny nerve makes
a turn forward to the point between your eyebrows. With one slow,
deep inhalation let your attention travel gradually inside the nerve
from the perineum all the way to the point between the eyebrows. As
you exhale, retrace this path from the point between the eyebrows all
the way back down to the perineum. Then, come back up to the point
between the eyebrows with the next inhalation, and down to the
perineum with the next exhalation, and so on.
Begin by doing this spinal breathing practice for five minutes before
your regular meditations. We don't get up between pranayama and
meditation. Just keep your seat, and begin meditation when your
pranayama time is up. Take a minute or so before effortlessly
beginning the mantra, just as originally instructed. Once you get
comfortable in the routine of doing pranayama and meditation, one
after the other, increase the time of pranayama to ten minutes. You
will be doing ten minutes of pranayama and twenty minutes of
meditation twice each day. Continue with this practice.
In a week or so, or whenever you are feeling steady with the ten minutes of pranayama before your meditation, add the following features: On the exhalations, allow your epiglottis to close enough so that there is a small restriction of the air leaving your lungs. The epiglottis is the door in your throat that automatically closes your windpipe (trachea) when you hold your breath or swallow. By partially closing it as you exhale, a fine hissing sound will occur in your throat. This is called "ujjayi." Be easy about it. Don't strain. Keep the slow, deep rhythm of breathing you have become accustomed to as you add this small restriction in the throat during exhalations. On the inhalations, allow the throat to relax and open more than usual. Do not restrict the air coming in. Rather, allow the deepest part of your throat to open wide, comfortably. Do not change the slow, deep
rhythm of breathing you have been doing. Keep your mouth closed
during pranayama. An exception would be if your nose is stopped up
and you can't breath easily through it. In that case, use your mouth.
While all of these mechanical actions may seem complicated at first,
they will quickly become habit as you practice. Once the mechanical
habits are in place, all you will have to do during pranayama is
easily allow the attention to travel up and down inside the spinal
nerve with your automatic slow, deep breathing. When you realize that
your attention has slipped away from this easy up and down procedure
of traveling inside the nerve during spinal breathing, you will just
easily come back to it. No forcing, and no strain. We easily come
back to the prescribed route of attention in pranayama, just as we
easily come back to the mantra in meditation.
This pranayama will quiet the nervous system, and provide a fertile
ground for deep meditation. With this beginning in spinal breathing,
we are also laying the foundation for additional practices that will
greatly enhance the flow of prana in the body. Once we have
stabilized the practices we have learned so far, we will be ready to
begin gently awakening the huge storehouse of prana near the base of
our spine.
The guru is in you.