Review of the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga - Pranayama
Over the years of practicing yoga asana (the physical yoga poses in a yoga class we work on), I realized that doing the yoga poses was only a small part of understanding what yoga is and teaching us. Yoga in Sanskrit means union. Gurus, monks, and spiritual aspirants throughout the centuries developed and passed down their knowledge and instructions with one goal: Through stilling the mind, we can find union with the divine source.
“Yoga is the cessation of thought waves in the mind” Sage Patañjali, Yoga Sutras.
The thought progression of the discipline of yoga is this: The practices of yoga (sadhana) purify the mind and body to develop concentration > Perfect concentration leads to a thoughtless mind and superconsciousness (samadhi) > Higher consciousness brings knowledge of reality and peace.
Sage Patañjali prescribed a process to achieve inner peace in a collection of writings called the Yoga Sutras. He described this process as having eight parts or “limbs”; thus, the system is called Ashtanga (ashta = eight, anga = limb) Yoga.
The eight limbs are:
Yama (restraints)
Niyama (observances)
Asana (posture, seat)
Pranayama (control of prana, breath)
Pratyahara (withdrawing the mind from sense perception)
Dharana (concentration)
Dhyana (meditation)
Samadhi (superconsciousness)
Pranayama
Translation: “prana” means life energy and “ayama” means suspension of breath.
Pranayama is the practice of controlling and manipulating your breath. Yogis explain that by controlling your breath, you are able to control and shift how prana moves through your body. This is considered an important process to prepare your mind and body for meditation. By practicing pranayama regularly, we have the ability to expand our usually small reservoir of prana in our bodies and direct the pranic energy throughout our bodies.
Moving energy around your body is part of that subtle bodywork that I mentioned last week in my post about Asana. According to yogis, the body has five vayus (“winds”) that normally move in certain directions. With the practice of pranayama, we can temporarily reverse or restrain these movements to gather the stores of prana in our bodies.
The Vayus:
Prana vayu - “forward wind” Seated at our heart, this energy rises and reaches out of our bodies to take in air-breathing! The inhalations and exhalations we take move our prana vayu.
Samana vayu - “middle wind” Working like a cyclone in our abdomen, this horizontal energy is seated around our navels and works to heats our digestive fire to stimulate the absorption of the energy we need from the food we eat.
Apana vayu - “downward wind” Seated in our lower pelvis, the falling energy of this vayu encourages the elimination and exhalation of what our bodies don’t need.
Vyana vayu - “circulating wind” This wind circulates prana to our limbs and throughout the body. It is the network that distributes energy to every cell in our body and fuels our desire to connect with the world.
Udana vayu - “upward wind” Seated at the throat, this is the wind that moves like a wheel circling up and over our heads. Rema Guenor described this vayu as “the vehicle of the mind, word, and speech, and enlarged individuality”. Yoga philosophy describes subtle nectar that is formed and falls from the Sahasrara chakra ("thousand-petalled" or crown chakra) to the Manipura chakra (“lustrous gem” or solar plexus chakra) which is consumed by our digestive fire.
Pranayama supports a better understanding of ourselves. First, by looking at how we breathe, we can begin self-inquiry to begin to understand who we are. Through our breath and breathing consciously, we eventually can develop some self-transformation as we harness the ability to control our breath and shift our energies. Finally, pranayama can lead us to self-realization by revealing that our breath can become identical to the breath “the Great Self” - The intelligence, creativity, breath, and energy that flows through the universe.