tasmin sati śvāsa-praśvāsayor gati-vicchedaḥ prāṇāyāmaḥ
tasmin sati śvāsa-praśvāsayoḥ gati-vicchedaḥ prāṇāyāmaḥ

“Being in that [āsana], prāṇāyāma is the interruption of the [ordinary] movements of inhalation and exhalation.”

I spoke with a friend, a woman I study Sanskrit with, and I asked her, what teachings about breath have been important to her. She immediately mentioned her first yoga āsana class. She said, “It was the first time I had ever been asked to breathe differently. The teacher asked me to feel my breath in different parts of my body–like my belly or back…. I had never brought so much awareness to the breath before. I had thought it was just something you did.”

Patañjali will describe prāṇāyāma in the next five sūtras (II.49-53). This first sūtra connects back to II.46-48. Tasmin sati, “once doing that,” meaning āsana, he says, there is an interruption (viccheda) in the normal movements (gati) of inhalation and exhalation (śvāsa-praśvāsa). That interruption is prāṇāyāma.

Traditional commentators, beginning with Vyāsa, have interpreted viccheda to mean suspension of the breath, holding the breath, as in kumbhaka. Yet a larger meaning looms up. In an important way, āsana interrupts–changes, transforms–our ordinary breathing. Whatever state we are in when we begin practice, whatever pattern our breath is in, practice marks the start of paying attention. It is the time to feel the breath in the body and feel the body through the breath. We may direct the breath, or we may just watch it. Either way, the breath is affected. And we are affected by it.

My first experience of attending to the breath came not by means of yoga but was in body and movement classes at New York’s Laban Institute of Movement Studies. There, I was encouraged to feel the expansion and contraction of inhalation and exhalation, the biological rhythm of life in my body, and to connect my movements to that breath. (See quote below by Peggy Hackney, who describes principles developed by Irmgaard Bartenieff.) The observed movement of my breath softened and collected disjointed parts of myself; it freed up range in my stiff and guarded body. It was a profound thing for me. It led me to live in a more felt way, and to respect the body’s essential connection to mind.

In his Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Svatmarama begins his chapter on prāṇāyāma emphasizing the connection of citta (mind or consciousness) to breath:

cale vāte calam cittam
disturbed the breath, the mind disturbed
niścale niścalam cittam
undisturbed [the breath], the mind undisturbed
yogī sthānutvam āpnoti
the yogi stability reaches
tato vāyum nirodhayet
therefore, breath practice

—Hatha Yoga Pradipika, II.2

In clearer English: “When the breath is disturbed, the mind is disturbed. When the breath is undisturbed the mind is undisturbed, and the yogi reaches a stable state. Therefore, one should do breath practice.”

Svatmarama does not here seem to be describing stopping or suspending the breath (though he does include specific practices that do that later in the text). Instead, he addresses disturbed breathing. He says, Work with the breath to help the mind in a disturbed state (he uses the word cala, “disturbed,” from cal, “to tremble, shake, be agitated”).

Breath is core to the work of āsana. We work with the breath to find stability and ease (II.46) and to release unnecessary tension (II.47). With the breath, we anchor our awareness–we open ourselves to experience.

B.K.S. Iyengar describes prāṇa as the hub of yoga (see I.34) and says that it acts as a bridge to the inner body and to the soul. In Light on Life, he discusses the link between breath and the emotions, and in all his writings, he highlights that prāṇāyāma must not be forced. Prāṇa cannot be willed to steadiness.

What is a good translation for prāṇāyāma? Prāṇa is breath, life force, cosmic energy. Āyama means discipline, restraint–also, extension, expansion. This variety of meanings is often expressed by this fourth limb of yoga as “breath regulation.” One could also say breath restraint, breath control, or breath expansion. But words almost fail to describe the intimate, delicate process of breath awareness. In the end, I prefer “breath practice” (a term used in the Śiva Samhita). Do we sometimes direct the breath, locate it in one part of the body or another, alter its course? Yes. We do interrupt our ordinary breathing pattern. We tie our awareness to the breath, and the breath takes our awareness inward, to our inner weather, our inner state, our inner being. It is a kind of tender connection to our selves, a connection of love.

It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and tie the mind so that they swing between the arms of the Secret One you love.

–Kabir (interpreted by Robert Bly)

—–

“The body grows and shrinks as a single undifferentiated mass, as an amoeba, the simplest form of life, the most basic sense of being. The most fundamental movement, lungs and also oxygen in blood flow and saturation of cells (cellular breathing), moves through a rhythm of expanding and condensing. When breath is integrated throughout the body, then all parts of the body will move at least slightly in coordination with the in / out breath rhythm. Use the breath pattern to recuperate and get in touch with one’s own ‘internal state’, with one’s body self, ‘proprioceptive self’, ‘where you are in the moment’, to find your entire body connected through your internal core.” –Peggy Hackney, Making Connections – Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals, p. 53

“All vibrating energies are prāṇa. All physical energies such as heat, light, gravity, magnetism, and electricity are also prāṇa. It is the hidden and potential energy in all beings, released to the fullest extent as a response to any threat to one’s survival…. [It] is usually translated as breath, yet this is only one of its manifestations. According to the Upaniṣads, it is the principle of life and consciousness….We live with our individual consciousness with its limited intelligence, often feeling lonely and puny, when there is a conduit available directly to cosmic consciousness and intelligence. Through this conduit flows prāṇa, joining each individual among us to the highest original principle of Nature.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 66-68

“Our breath is interrupted and flows in a zigzag manner. Patañjali suggests the sādhaka [practitioner] regulate the in-breath and out-breath by listening to and maintaining a smooth, steady sound along with a soft flow” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sūtras, p. 155

“Steady observation alone is enough to bring about unforced changes in the breath’s shape and texture. Indeed, no form of conscious, deliberate effort can make the breath as soft and unhurried as it becomes spontaneously through sustained mindfulness. And as respiration grows inconceivably spacious and subtle, it ceases to be a suitable environment for agitated mental states.”  –Chip Hartranft, The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali,  p. 41

Questions:
• What teachings on breath have been important to you?
• Do you remember your first experience paying attention to the breath? What was the setting? What were you doing?
• What does awareness of your breath bring to your āsana practice? How do you use breath in your practice?
• What do you learn from pausing in your day and noticing your breath?