Pranayama Meditation

Pranayama is composed of two Sanskrit words: "prana" and "ayama" or "yama". Prana translates as "life force". Prana is the energy behind all life expressions, moving, thinking, feeling etc. "Ayama" means a lengthening or restraining and "yama" means to restrain or hold back. The word "yama" is the same as "yama" in Yama and Niyama (the restraints and observations in yogic philosophy). Putting the words together gives us "pranayama," meaning to "restrain or master the life force".

Swami Kripalu taught that most people expend their life force through indulgence and stress so much that it becomes very weak and is barely felt. Yogis traditionally lived a simple life that minimized expenditure of prana and did practices like postures and pranayama to raise the level of their prana or life force. Through these means, their prana became so strong it could be easily felt. With strong prana it was easy to connect with their inner knowing and live in attunement with spirit.

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika is an ancient yoga text that was very influential in the development of Kripalu Yoga. This text states that there are two reasons to practice pranayama. First, pranayama purifies the "nadis". Second, it makes prana flow in "sushumna". Let us examine these effects closely.

The Hatha Yoga texts say that our three bodies are full of tubes or channels called nadis. Our life experience is the flow of substances and energies through these tubes and our health is dependent on these tubes remaining unblocked.

On the level of the physical body, the tubes make up: circulatory system, digestive system, respiratory and lymphatic systems etc. If any of the tubes in these systems were blocked, our health or well being would be impaired.

On the level of the subtle body the nadis carry nerve impulses, thoughts and feelings. When these channels become blocked we lose our ability to feel, to connect with our environment or with ourselves. Painful experiences or even the fear of painful experiences can cause us to consciously or unconsciously restrict the flow of life force to some part of ourselves resulting in numbness or disassociation. The ability to do this is built in as a survival mechanism but for many people it becomes a way of life.

To say that pranayama purifies the nadis means that pranayama removes numbness and helps us to feel what is really happening inside of us on all the different levels. In other words, pranayama makes us more sensitive and aware of ourselves.

The Hatha Yoga texts say we have many thousands of nadis inside. One of them is different from the rest. It is called "sushumna," and, unlike the other nadis, it flows from the surface (physical body) directly to the soul. A goal of Hatha Yoga is to cause our prana to flow strongly in this nadi. When your prana is flowing in sushumna there is a strong state of introversion and inner absorption. The outer world fades into the background of our experience and an inner world unfolds. Stage Three of Kripalu Yoga happens in this place. Prana flowing in Sushumna causes a meditative experience of absorption. It occurs as we practice any of the yogic disciplines and the introversive effects of any yoga practice are enhanced when we add Yogic breathing.

In a beginning Kripalu Yoga class we use pranayama to draw students into the present moment and into their bodies. We use the sensitivity generated by pranayama to enhance the effects of postures and help students avoid injury by increasing body awareness. We use pranayama before and during the postures to cultivate the experience of prana flowing in subhuman, gradually leading the students to Stage Two and Three.