Freedom from the Skull
From Breath to Samādhi
Samādhi is the freedom to go anywhere,
be anyone, and bring things forth
Prānāyāma is usually translated as breath control, but that sells it short. Āyāma means extension, a stretching out. Prānāyāma is the expansion of the life force, the practice of growing the breath long and the person large.
Yoga is another way of saying samādhi
And samādhi is free flowing access, with no differentiation between inside or outside. No here or there, no coming or going. All is here and available. To live this state we must become free of the skull and all it implies.
The skull implies incessant linearity, billions of small incremental moments, a state of microscopic limitation subject to a supposed external world.
The state of yoga is when a human being lives as the expanded body, larger in all directions. The yogi identifies as their vast and rarified subtle bodies.
It is such a relief to be free of the tiny skull.
Freedom from
the Skull
The source of breath is the same as that of the mind.
Ramana Maharshi
New CPD short course
From Breath to Samādhi
• Purifying the subtle channels
• Immortal consciousness as life-force
• Spontaneous suspension, beyond breath
Not all breathwork is the same
Yoga prescribes a more progressive sustained path that tends to be embedded extremely well, permanently, in the entity.
There are others though, more modern and varied, that take a looser line and rarely call for the same martial arts style of long term discipline. In classical yoga, prānāyāma was often forbidden for those with less than ten years of daily practice.
Toothless tigers
Without āsana and prānāyāma, meditation is a toothless tiger. Yes, it does give some relief from stress, suffering and excessive attachment, but this is akin to reducing posture to its health benefits.
Gregor Maehle, Pranayama
Patañjali and yogis in general say the path is not to become “one with everything,” but to abide in consciousness, aware of everything, yet knowing itself to be different.
Laying down kind of encourages prakṛti-laya, the absorption into nothingness, and that’s not really what we want.
Altered states
Much modern breathwork is a form of prolonged mouth-breathing while lying down, and this kind of sustained hyperventilation, often lasting 20 to 60 minutes, is reported to bring on altered states of consciousness.
Some of these methods resemble bhastrikā, though where they call for long sessions of intense open-mouth breathing, classical yoga prescribes bhastrikā in short bursts of a few minutes, followed by kumbhaka, breath retention.
These are strong states, and their effects can be hard to predict, which is why classical yoga approaches them gradually and with care.
Such is ripening practice of the three-fold bandha, devoid of inhale and exhale, burning the flow of mental constructs. I honour the spontaneous suspension, marked by revelatory flashes, called kevala kumbhaka.
Yoga Tārāvalī 8
This is the pivot of prānāyāma
Curious about prānāyāma, or wary of where breathwork has wandered?
Yoga gives us a couple of elementary steps, behavioural guidelines, sometimes described as morals and ethics. They are behavioural tips that allow you to exist as the large self outside the constraints of the human skull. All are centred around the truth statement that I choose how I feel. No matter the circumstance, if I choose sadness, bitterness, happiness or joy, it is always 100% of the time my choice. This is yama and niyama.
After that we have the third limb, physical yoga. Again it’s about freedom from the skull, the small tiny existence. The third limb of yoga is to move, stand up straight, run, jump, be happy, swing the arms around, take up space in the world.
Then we come to stretching the lungs and the ribs. The breath is one of those interesting autonomic functions that is also consciously controllable when we want to. So we learn to exercise the balloon. Be able to become very small and become very, very large at the same time.
The axial yogic limb
Neither posture practice nor meditation practice can harness the breath, the prāna, the life force. And it is exactly this that prānāyāma is designed to do.
Prāna is also ātma. It is also Puruṣa, as the life force, the immortal consciousness. We are not simply talking about prāna as the breath.
If the practice is restricted to āsana only, the benefit is simply a strengthened body and improved blood circulation. For health and longevity, intellectual strength, clarity and strength of expression, prānāyāma needs to be added.
Prāna becomes the rein that holds the horses and the chariot. If you don’t have the prānāyāma and want to go directly, then you have to carry the chariot and all the horses with you.
David Frawley, relaying Yogananda’s image
Sit up straight and be Śiva
You can only practise prānāyāma if you can sit extensively in one of the prescribed postures, and that excludes lying down, sitting in a chair, leaning against a wall or sitting simply cross-legged with the knees off the floor.
Advanced practitioners stop breathing altogether for an eerily long time. Under an experienced teacher, they hyperventilate for a minute or two, and then, amazingly, hold the breath for several minutes, passing through a magical threshold where fear of death disappears.
Kevala kumbhaka is the goal of prānāyāma. It is a spontaneous suspension of prāna, which accompanies or invokes samādhi.
Gregor Maehle, Pranayama
Kevala kumbhaka means going beyond breath. It does not mean that the yogi stops the breath wilfully but that the breath stops by itself.
Patañjali calls it the fourth, chaturtaḥ, which also links it to turīya, the fourth state of the Mānḍūkya Upaniṣad. This fourth state is the only one that is permanent. It is the state that occurs in all the others.
Prāna and apāna, nāda and bindu
By sixteen prānāyāmas the foremost of yogis burns away the many sins and merits gathered in former lives.
Śiva Samhitā 3.50
As the fire of dissolution consumes a heap of cotton, so too quickly it burns scratches and glints alike, the conditioning supposed to have come from former lives.
Śiva Samhitā 3.51
Then by degrees of excellence the retention grows to three ghaṭikās, and by this the yogi gains, beyond doubt, every perfection he longs for.
Śiva Samhitā 3.53
Perfected speech, movement at will, far sight and far hearing, subtle sight, entry into other bodies, converting the mundane to precious, the power to vanish from view, and travel through the open sky, all these arise for the yogi.
Śiva Samhitā 3.54
Because prāna and apāna, nāda and bindu, the individual self and the supreme Self come together and join (ghaṭate), this state is called the ghaṭa, the joining.
Śiva Samhitā 3.56
When he can hold the breath for a full yāma, the wonder of pratyāhāra arises in that very moment, and never again does it leave.
Śiva Samhitā 3.57
When a full yāma is completed through steady practice, the yogi performs a single kumbhaka, and when for eight dandas his breath grows wholly still, then by his own power the wise one stands like a madman.
Śiva Samhitā 3.59
Scope of practice
A registered teacher introduces prānāyāma gradually and in person. The student practises, the breath lengthens over months, retention builds over years, and the teacher watches for the energetic biases described below as the student develops. Prolonged hyperventilation protocols, breathwork offered as therapy, and any claim to treat a condition ought to be avoided unless the teacher has suitable expertise. The teacher’s craft is the drip feed and the bestowing of empowerment, so that when the adept reaches the threshold and must blast through, they are conditioned for the crossing.
Contraindications
Patañjali and Svātmārāma, among others, note preconditions for commencing prāṇāyāma. Patañjali sets the seat first, steady and comfortable, the effort in holding it fallen away.
Once that is accomplished, the cutting off of the movement of inhalation and exhalation is prāṇāyāma.
Yogasūtra 2.49
Svātmārāma is similarly explicit three centuries or more later. Athāsane dṛḍhe, the posture now being firm. Then he adds three further conditions before a single breath is drawn.
The posture now being firm, the yogī self-restrained and eating beneficial and moderate food, should practise the prāṇāyāmas by the path taught by the guru.
Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā 2.1
Yogic breathwork increases energy, and that means your energetic biases are exaggerated. If you have a solar or lunar imbalance, for example, you may become much more so, see the stories of Gregor and Gopi Krishna below. So without proper preparation and gradual increase, there is a risk of your impediments, such as impatience, flightiness or lethargy, increasing in a manner that can cause harm or inconvenience.
We were instructed to lie down and breathe very deeply up into the chest, a process that was to be continued for over an hour. Soon after I began, some very powerful sensations took over and I began screaming, convulsing, beating and kicking. On that afternoon I entered a depression that was to last for 18 months.
Gregor Maehle, Pranayama
Gregor went into an 18 month depression, while another notable figure, Gopi Krishna, had the opposite experience. He experienced hardcore kunḍalinī awakening, but his disposition being more solar, he endured heat and illness for a couple of years. He tells stories of his wife being full time occupied with trying to cool him down with wet towels. This is the same premature inflation of energy illustrated in opposite temperaments. So traditionally, this practice is only offered to well-prepared students under the guidance of an experienced teacher.
Traditional prānāyāma is such a beautiful practice, so velvety and deep, it can do such wonderful things, such a nurturing practice. This other thing I see on social media, people writhing on the floor. I don’t know, it seems like tough love.
A Senior Member of Yoga Australia
As birds are caught with nets, so by holding the breath, the mind is restrained and absorbed. This (breath-regulation) is a device for effecting absorption. For mind and life-breath (prāna), expressed in thought and action, diverge and branch out, but they spring from a single root.
Ramana Maharshi, Upadeśa Sāram 11 and 12
CPD resources
New CPD short course
From Breath to Samādhi
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Just Breathe Summit
This landmark event brings together leading voices in breathing practices, from traditional prānāyāma to clinical breath education and research. We aim to explore the therapeutic wisdom of classical prānāyāma while addressing the benefits and challenges of modern breathwork trends.
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Blowing the Lid off Breathwork
In this article Josh explores yoga, prānāyāma, and the modern trend of breathwork, and the way the rise of hyperventilation-based breathwork raises questions of safety, scope, and informed consent.
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Wringing out the system, wringing out the nervous system, wringing out the bones and the joints, wringing out the lungs. The methods of classical yoga are well proven, gradual and steady yet ever evolving and experimenting.
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Come to the expanded energy before the behavioural and physical groundwork is in, and the energy simply amplifies whatever you already carry. Yoga at its best is avant garde, it is the irrepressible experimental science.
