Pranayama is the yoga technique of expanding or controlling your breath. Prana means ‘life energy’ and ayama means ‘to control or expand’. We might call it breathwork or breath control in English.
Your breathing is managed on autopilot by your autonomic nervous system (the same system that controls the beating of your heart, the regulation of your temperature and the constriction of your blood vessels). This is how you’re still able to breathe while you sleep! However, you can also consciously control your breath. In fact, your breath is the only part of your autonomic nervous system that you can directly control.
Your autonomic nervous system also contains your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These are activated when you’re in danger, and they put you into fight, flight or freeze mode. My pranayama teacher taught me that your breath is the fastest way to access your nervous system. This means that tuning into your breath, and (with practice), consciously changing your breathing pattern, can shift your nervous system state. There are some pranayama techniques that activate your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to wake up your brain and body, but most of the techniques that I teach have the opposite effect and stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). In modern society, with our busy, stressful lives, these practices that deepen your breath can have a particularly soothing and calming effect on your nervous system.
In pranayama there are four parts to every breath – inhale, pause, exhale, pause. The pause after the inhale and the pause after the exhale are separate parts with their own names in sanskrit. These are differentiated in pranayama practices too for example some breath retention practices focus on retaining the breath on the inhale pause and some on the exhale pause.
Practicalities
Three or four minutes is optimal for a pranayama practice.
What time of day you practice will vary depending on which practice you’re doing and personal preference. It’s good to practice energising techniques like kapalabati (skull shine breath) in the morning on an empty stomach.
One of the best times to practice pranayama is at the end of or after a yoga asana class, when your body has had a chance to move and you’re feeling grounded.
Some information about posture:
- Many practices can be done seated, standing or lying down but there are some that can only be done in certain postures.
- It’s good to elevate your hips above your knees in seated postures. You can do this by sitting on a cushion or folded blanket or towel on the floor or on a chair. This gives your abdomen space to expand freely as you breathe.
- It’s good to sit upright to allow space in your rib cage and abdomen to fill. You don’t need to force yourself into an upright posture though – see my video on posture and breath for help with this if needed.
Pranayama in yoga philosophy
Pranayama is the fourth limb of yoga according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Pranayama is closely linked to the chakras and nadis. Nadis are tubular organs – or channels – for energy to flow throughout the body and where they cross we get the chakras.
Two of the nadis – pinagala and ida – start in the nostrils and weave throughout the body. The left nostril – pingala – has a cooling effect and carries lunar energy. The right nostril – ida – has a heating effect and carries solar energy.
In pranayama, when you close off one nostril and breathe through the other, you get the energetic quality of the nostril that you’re breathing through. This is actually backed by science (here’s one study but there have been many) – breathing through your left nostril stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, giving a calming effect. Breathing through your right nostril stimulates your sympathetic nervous system, giving an energising effect.
Useful resources
- What is pranayama – Art of Living article
- Light on Pranayama by B.K.S. Iyengar
- Breath by James Nestor
- How to move your breathing parts better article on Nutritious Movement