Is Meditation an Essential Part of Practicing Yoga

by Timothy

Patterns in the Sand by Brad Gibson

Do you need to meditate? Can you achieve all or most of the same benefits from just practicing asana, restorative yoga, Savasana, and/or pranayama? Is it worth even trying if you feel like you're no good at it? We get questions like these at the blog from time to time, so I figured I'd tackle them today.

I can't help but notice that people often talk about yoga and meditation as two separate practices. But according to Patanjali, the great codifier of yoga, meditation was an integral part of the practice. By yoga, of course, most people in the U.S. mean asana, which is why people say yoga and meditation. And since most asana classes don't include any meditation, many yoga practitioners have looked outside of yoga, often to Buddhism, if they're interested in learning more. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think people forget that the Buddha was a yogi before he became the Buddha!

Meditation gets a lot of press as an effective tool to de-stress, to calm the mind and the nervous system. That's certainly true, but if that were all meditation had to offer, you could hardly view the practice as vital, since we've got so many tools in yoga that can foster relaxation: asana, breathing practices, chanting and restoratives to name a few.

To many dedicated yogis, however, meditation is the crown jewel of the practice. They recommend asana mostly because it prepares the body for meditation, to sit up straight comfortably for long periods of time. All the high levels of samadhi—absorption as it is sometimes translated—the eighth of the eight limbs of yoga that Patanjali describes in the Yoga Sutras, are said to happen only in meditation. And, more specifically, from its long-term practice over the course of years, even decades.

I have been meditating for a long time, and it has become in many ways the most delicious part of my practice. It didn't start out that way. My mind was very busy when I began, and it was extremely difficult for me to keep my attention from flitting from idea to idea. And it was hard to find comfort sitting in one place, without frequent position adjustments and fidgeting. Many people who try to meditate get discouraged at this point and give up. That, I believe, is a mistake. As with a lot of other areas of yoga, hanging in when things are challenging, even discouraging, can bring rewards. Yoga teaches that it is by strengthening our weaknesses that we become more balanced.

Meditation can be a fabulous tool to study your mind and slowly gain more control over it. (I'm not just talking about the conscious mind, which is mostly what gets dealt with, often quite helpfully, in psychotherapy, but the unconscious mind, which hugely impacts our behavior and happiness.) The first lesson for most of us on the meditation cushion is just how unruly our minds are, and how hard it is to maintain our focus for more than a few seconds. Seeing that reality may be uncomfortable, but it's the first step toward eventually changing it.

And there is real benefit in feeling your mind running all over the place, wanting to get up and move, and continuing to stay seated anyway, trying to bring your attention back to whatever you're focusing on, whether that's your breath, an image, or a mantra. Studies of the Relaxation Response, which were performed on people practicing a demystified form of yogic mantra meditation, have shown that even when practitioners don't feel they are doing it well, they gain the physiological benefits of lower blood pressure, heart rates, etc.

Even after years of practice, some days my mind is still all over the place. But usually, if I stay at it, things eventually settle down. One reason why some experts recommend 20 minutes of meditation daily is that it often takes about that long to settle down. But the more you practice the easier it gets.

You might wonder where you will find the extra time to add a 20-minute practice to your already busy schedule. Well, first off, you don't need to do it for that long. Even a few minutes in the beginning starts to build up the habit. Over time you can slowly increase the time you sit. Interestingly, about a decade ago when I upped my practice to an hour a day, I discovered that I began to need about an hour less sleep each night, as if the meditation were giving me some of sleep's restorative effects. It felt like I was getting to meditate for free, without carving any time out of my day!

In my yoga therapy work, I often recommend meditation, but not always. Sometimes when someone is very anxious or seriously depressed, if they attempt to close their eyes and go inward, they may go into an unpleasant—and potentially counterproductive—state of mind. But if we can use other tools, like breath and asana, to improve the acute situation (along with whatever medication, therapy or other tools they are employing), I will often try to add meditation later. I have come to believe that for the long-term care of anxiety and depression, meditation may be the most powerful tool we have. It gets to places that asana simply can't, as powerful as asana can be.  But unlike a lot of meditators, I don't think you should give up your asana practice once you get into meditating. Because asana also gets to some places that meditation can't, like your hip flexors, for example!

The bottom line is that the different yogic tools appear to work together in a synergistic fashion. Meditating can make you a better asana practitioner, and doing asana can help deepen your meditation. And regular pranayama can help both of them!

In my next post, I'll give more specifics on how to begin a meditation practice. If there are particular themes you'd like to me address, please let us know.

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Yoga and Parkinsons Disease Part 1

by Richard Rosen, guest contributor

A Road Through the Woods by Brad Gibson

When we received a question last week about yoga and Parkinson’s Disease, we turned to our friend Richard Rosen. Richard Rosen is a senior yoga teacher, who has been practicing yoga for 31 years and who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease about 9 years ago. Richard had so many interesting things to say in the response to the question that we decided to make it a separate post. —Nina

Q: Interested in suggestions for yoga for students with Parkinson's.

A: Parkinson’s Disease (I prefer Condition) is a progressive degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Common symptoms include loss of muscular flexibility, balance, and strength. You may notice that these are the very physical qualities promoted by the physical practice of yoga postures and related exercises. To a certain undetermined extent then, yoga exercises help to not exactly counteract PD symptoms, but go a long way toward at least a temporary amelioration. These exercises (depending on the frequency and intensity of practice) also help cultivate and refine greater body awareness, which in turn (again to an undetermined extent) allows the individual to self-correct certain of the symptoms. I’m hedging everything I say here because, as in all of life, there are no guarantees. Some conditions progress very rapidly, others only gradually. But in any case the sooner a credible practice is established the better it will serve the individual. I can’t stress this enough: once the diagnosis of PD is confirmed, if you’re not already practicing some form of yoga exercise, get started immediately with a competent teacher.

This is a very difficult question to answer in 25 words or fewer as it’s stated here. I would ask first about the students’ condition: are they pretty much at the same level of development, or are some farther along? If the former, are they all still fairly mobile, is their balance still decent, their strength and flexibility? If the latter, how serious is the situation? Do some need canes or walkers? Is the shaking debilitating at times? Different strokes for different folks is the operative approach.

And then I’d need to know something about the teacher, if there is one. Training? Experience? Are there props like chairs and bolsters? What size is the class, if there is one? Are there assistants if there are more than, say, 6 to 8 students? Don’t mean to be evasive here but a PD class is definitely not like an average public class, these are students that need extra attention.

Or are you asking in general about individual students you might be working with in a private setting? Again it’s important to tailor the work to the student’s level of development. Without more detailed information I can only give general suggestions. 

Certainly one of the most useful exercises would be a passive backbend over a bolster or rolled blanket (see here for a photo). We PD people tend to slump after awhile and the backbend helps encourage a long (not "straight") front spine. The thickness of the support would depend on the student, both his/her level of development and previous experience with yoga-influenced exercises (I assume when you say “yoga” you’re talking about asana-like postures; please remember “yoga” is an umbrella term for a wide variety of schools and practices, and shouldn’t be equated solely with asana). Obviously the stiffer the student, the smaller the roll’s diameter should be, and stiffer students will likely need a blanket support under the back of their head to prevent jamming the neck, and should also keep knees bent and feet on the floor to avoid back strain. The roll should be positioned under the lower tips of the shoulder blades so that the arms can lay comfortably off to the sides, not higher than parallel to the line of the shoulders. Initially the student might stay for a couple of minutes, then slowly over time, depending on the student and the seriousness of his/her practice, increase the stay to 5-6 minutes. I should emphasize here that if the student isn’t ready or willing to practice regularly—every day would be ideal—then the exercises will have minimal impact if only practiced once weekly or less.

While in the pose it’s essential that some attention be paid to the breath. Have the student pretend he/she can channel the inhalations slowly and directly into the space behind the sternum (yes, I know that’s where the heart is, I said “pretend”), so that each intake creates more and more space in the upper chest. On the exhalations have the student imagine sinking down over the blanket, so that with each successive exhale, he/she seems to be releasing more and more over the roll.

I’m not, at this point, particularly comfortable going any farther until I learn something more about the teacher-student relationship, the former’s chops and the latter’s needs. Please write to this blog again with more information about yourself and the students, and of what you intend to do with this instruction. 

Richard Rosen is currently the director of Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA. He is a contributing editor for Yoga Journal magazine, and is the author of three books, The Yoga of Breath (Shambhala 2002), Yoga for 50+ (Ulysses 2004), and Pranayama Beyond the Basics (Shambhala 2006). He’s also created a set of seven CDs titled The Practice of Pranayama, issued by Shambhala, and Shambhala will publish his Original Yoga, a book about traditional Hatha Yoga, in 2011. (To find out more about Richard and Piedmont Yoga Studio, see here.)

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We Didn’t Mean to Scare You Part 2 We Really Want to Inspire You!

by Baxter

Another View from 1/2 Mile Marker by Brad Gibson

Nina asked me to share my own thoughts on her post from last week, We Didn't Mean to Scare You, and I wanted to begin by saying how much I appreciated her common sense response to this writer’s dilemma. As many of you know by now, our purpose here at YFHA is to provide you with information and tools to assist you in practicing and teaching yoga as you age in healthy and beneficial ways.

Now I'd like to address one particular issue that our questioner raised:

"My own thought about practice is, if I'm not feeling something, why bother? I know most of my students feel the same way."

Indeed, much of what we experience internally as we practice yoga is some sort of increase in sensation, whether it is a feeling of stretch or compression in muscles or near joints, or strong muscle contraction when we are using a muscle group to keep us in our pose. On the level of physical-mental connection, we get this feedback from the body and we know that something is happening. The vast majority of the time, if taught or practiced skillfully, this is probably a beneficial thing that leads to some very positive, “delicious” changes, as our writer points out.

One of the skills that we develop as we practice more consistently is the discrimination to know when the level of feeling is better or worse for us. It is true in yoga and in everyday life. We learn at a young age how hot is too hot, and such.  If we acknowledge this experimental way that we all learn, then even when we go a bit too far in practice and have a brief “injury” or setback, it really shouldn’t be discouraging, because in some way this happens for us to find our limits and edges and provides us with wisdom for our future practice. We actually have learned something valuable about the yoga practice and ourselves. And, just to play devil’s advocate, don’t forget styles of yoga asana and meditation where there is not much going on, very little feedback or “feeling” happening, yet much benefit for the your entire being. This could be the case for restorative yoga or Yoga Nidra. These practices are equally an experience of yoga and the ultimate aim of yoga as a physically demanding style of practice.  

And as a teacher of yoga concerned about the general safety of the classes you teach, periodically re-assess the population you are teaching to, their average age and the fitness level of your students.  As your community ages, you may decide to learn new styles of practice and teaching that will better serve the needs of your student base that might be considered “gentle,” “restorative” or even “therapeutic.”  Nothing wrong with that, and you will become a more skilled teacher, able to work with many different kinds of students.  Our education as teachers should really never stop. And instead of letting the expanding knowledge about yoga scare us, let’s get inspired to learn and integrate this new information into our work in such a way to build our confidence, both as practitioners of the art and teachers of the path.

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Drawing Inside and Quieting Roger Cole on Savasana Part 2

Drawing Inside by Melina Meza

Here is the second excerpt from the interview that Leslie Howard did in 2008 with yoga teacher Roger Cole. In this excerpt he talks about his own practice of Savasana, compares seated meditation with Savasana, and gives his recommendations for setting up and practicing the pose.

And speaking of Savasana, this will be our only post this week, as we're  on vacation. Even bloggers need to take a rest. —Nina 

 Leslie: Have you had any special experiences with the pose, either in your own practice or with students?  

Roger: Not really. There isn’t one that stands out for me. Restorative asana experiences—Ssavasana being one of them—many times I have had resting poses or Savasana in which I just really feel like this is exactly what I need and what everyone needs—everyone needs to do this sometime. Take the time when you would not ordinarily be sleeping, and lie down and just stop. It is different from seated meditation. Seated mediastion is wonderful in its own way. In Savasana and the other more reclining poses, the brain just shuts off. In the seated pose you are very, very alert. Seated meditation is really good for this deep realization in which you you see the connection between things. In Savasana it is more like you are drawing inside and quieting, and you are observing the quietness. There is a lot less activity in Savasana.  

Leslie: Do you always practice Savasana in your own practice?

Roger: Ideally, yes but in reality no.  

Leslie: When you take the time to do it, what is your preferred method?

Roger: First of all, I am very big on restorative poses and sometimes I will substitute a restorative pose for Savasana. Now ideally Savasana is the last pose because it is the most neutral; no part of the body is elevated over the other, nothing is particularly stretching, especially if you support the arms and stuff. So if I had the ideal Savasana, I would be almost completely neutral, with maybe a little elbow flexion so I could stay longer, maybe padding under the head not to lift the head but to make it not hurt. I personally don’t need padding under the knees but padding under the heels so that the heels don’t hurt. So I make it comfortable. 

The other thing that a lot of people don’t realize about Savasana and other restorative poses is that temperature is extremely important. You get cold. And if you get cold it is just not a relaxing experience. So I am very conscious of the room temperature, and if you need to be covered with a blanket in Savasana and other restorative poses, you need to cover the hands and feet. Don’t just cover the trunk and have the hands and feet sticking out. So in my practice of Savasana ideally it would be the last pose even if I do a lot of other restorative poses. But in reality there is a time limit so if I end up staying in another pose longer well than Savasana gets shortened. Same thing when I am teaching; ideally I would like to put it at the end of every class but sometimes I just run out of time.  

Leslie: Are there any special circumstances or conditions for which you think Savasana is particularly valuable? 

Roger: One of things is that Savasana is the quickest, most generic pose. When it comes time to relax, just lie down. You can do it on a bed, which is actually very important. Bedrooms are set up with a bed so you can lie on them. Of course they have blankets and such, but the availability of having a space to do it is extremely important. If you just lie down on a dirty floor you might not relax, or if its cold or too light or in a traffic area, the bed takes care of all that. Of course, it is a little soft but its there and its available. 

In a yoga class situation, with students that have never done yoga you don’t what to do some strange thing with them in Savasana, maybe with support under the knees because that is very non threatening and it’s very intuitive. So, it’s got a lot of benefit. It doesn’t have a lot of the problems of being uncomfortable or they can’t hold it or their knees hurt or whatever. But if you are going to put people in it a long time, you are going to have to prop them up. So I think it would be particularly valuable for quick relaxation. Also, some kind of relaxation is valuable, but it doesn’t always have to be specifically Savasana. 

You asked me if there were times Savasana should be avoided. So with some kinds of back pain, such as when people have a facet joint injury, it’s too much back bend, but you can modify the pose. Generally it is a pretty easy pose to do. Also if the nose is congested, prop them up and it can be used to drain the nose. 

What about emotionally? Emotionally if someone has had a trauma, like after an earthquake or something like that or a terrorist attack, people are often afraid to close their eyes, to lie there with their eyes closed is very frightening. Also I have had a couple of deaf students and they don’t like to close their eyes because once they close their eyes in Savasana, they don’t know what is going on in the world, although they will do it. They can hear enough through their hearing aid to know when there is shuffling around, but it’s a little tricky. 

So in those instances Savasana with eyes open is a good pose and if their eyes close, apparently they have gotten over it. 

Leslie Howard is an Oakland-based yoga teacher, specializing in all things pelvic. She leads workshops and trainings nationally and internationally, and is the director of the 200 hour Deep Yoga program at Piedmont Yoga. With a state certification in massage, she also practices cranial sacral therapy. To learn more about Leslie, visit: www.lesliehowardyoga.com.  

Roger Cole, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized, certified Iyengar yoga teacher trained at the Iyengar Yoga Institutes in San Francisco and Pune, India. He is also an accomplished scientist educated at Stanford University and the University of California, with specialties in the science of relaxation, sleep, and circadian rhythms. Roger has taught yoga since 1975. He has authored dozens of articles on yoga teaching, practice, biology and therapeutics, including Yoga Journal's Anatomy Column, Master Class Column and Ask Our Expert Column, Yoga International's Asana Solutions Column, and special feature articles on the prevention of yoga injuries, the physiology of stress, relief from back pain, and the science of keeping your balance. He has trained thousands of yoga teachers and taught yoga as a healing art to physicians, physical therapists, medical students and patients. He offers weekly classes in Del Mar, California, and conducts workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad. His specialties include yoga teacher training, yoga anatomy, yoga physiology, restorative yoga, and promotion of better sleep. See rogercoleyoga.com for more information.

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Friday Q A Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Part 2

Road by Melina Meza

Q: I find that there are not many yoga teachers with an awareness of yoga practice specifically for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). I was diagnosed with CFS 6 months ago and am doing graded exercise therapy, which includes walking. I would love to practice yoga every day, but am lost as to where to begin. Any help would be much appreciated!

A: We received this follow-up inquiry recently from one our readers following an earlier post I did on CFS. Just so everyone out there reading this is on the same page, start by checking out my Nov 5th blog post Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Yoga.

Now I’ll recap by giving you the Mayo Clinic’s list of CFS symptoms:

“Chronic fatigue syndrome has eight official symptoms, plus the central symptom that gives the condition its name:

•    Fatigue
•    Loss of memory or concentration
•    Sore throat
•    Enlarged lymph nodes in your neck or armpits
•    Unexplained muscle pain
•    Pain that moves from one joint to another without swelling or redness
•    Headache of a new type, pattern or severity
•    Unrefreshing sleep
•    Extreme exhaustion lasting more than 24 hours after physical or mental exercise

And to meet the diagnostic criteria of chronic fatigue syndrome, you must have unexplained, persistent fatigue for six months or more, along with at least four of the above signs and symptoms”

Next, I’ll recap what the folks at the Mayo Clinic have to say about CFS, and explain how I think yoga fits in (in italics):

1. CFS is a condition that does not improve with rest, so gentle yoga movements could help. 
2. Even though the cause is not known, it is theorized that stress may play a role, and yoga is great at reducing the effects of stress.
3. Because the fatigue may worsen with physical or mental activity, a yoga practice for CFS should have several types of practices to take into account the variability of symptoms from day to day.  More on this in a moment!

In addition, I recommend that you read the posts we have done here at YFHA on yoga for pain, yoga for insomnia, and yoga for headaches to get some additional ideas on how to address those symptoms of CFS.

Because our reader mentioned that she has been prescribed “graded exercise therapy,” meaning that the type and intensity of her exercise is slowly and gradually increased, usually in response to how she would be doing from day to day, I would add that such an approach would also have practices that could step things back and down if flares occur. This day-by-day approach to things like walking could be extended to yoga practices as well. And although I mentioned some of these ideas back on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Yoga, I am presenting them in a slightly different way today.

On a day when mental fatigue is an issue, longer supported restorative poses would be a good choice, with the easiest of mental focuses, such as simply following your inhales and exhales. A supported Savasana with a recorded yoga nidra might also be appropriate on these days. Remember, conscious relaxation for 10 minutes or for longer times, as in yoga nidra, can provide a different kind of “rest” than typical sleep or napping, which could be beneficial for both physical and mental fatigue.

When increased pain is occurring, gentle yoga practices or restorative practices that don’t aggravate or increase the pain levels while they are being done could keep the body moving and active. The more intense the pain, the more likely restorative poses with a meditation on breath or mantra—so as to remove the “thinking about pain” from the actual experience of pain—should be employed.

As fatigue lessens, you would then start to gradually modify your daily asana practice to slowly and deliberately challenge your endurance, strength and flexibility. If the next day results in more fatigue, you would downgrade your practice to meet the symptoms that are there that day. If all is well, I’d do a few days at a given level of increase in intensity before the next advance of challenge.

Even though the Mayo Clinic only recommends yoga for addressing pain in CFS, as I mentioned above, I think a regular “graded” yoga practice can address many of the symptoms of CFS. And although the research to date is almost non-existent, I hope that the trend towards more research on Yoga and Health will produce more studies to bear out Yoga’s benefit for CFS.

Research Resource: Dr. Timothy McCall lists this study A controlled study of the effect of a mindfulness-based stress reduction technique in women with multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue syndrome, and fibromyalgia in his 75 Conditions that yoga helps. 

—Baxter

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Preventing Migraines and Other Headaches Part 2

by Nina

Yesterday I wrote about preventing migraines and other headaches through stress reduction (see Preventing Migraines (and Other Headaches), Part 1). Another way you may be able to prevent and/or reduce your headaches, is to practice yoga poses that release muscle tension in your back, shoulders, neck, and head. As Timothy says in the headache chapter of Yoga As Medicine:

“Yoga teaches that releasing the tight muscles improves blood flow to them, and can help relax the mind a well.”

But as Timothy also reminds us in all his writings about yoga therapy, everyone is different and yoga therapy, whether for migraines or any other condition, needs to be individualized. So with that in mind, I’m just going to toss out a lot of ideas for poses you can try to work with your back, shoulders, neck and head; you’ll have to figure out which works best for your body and your yoga experience level. In fact, I have so much to say on this topic, I’m going to—gasp!—use subtitles on this post.

Working with Your Neck

There are two basic ways to release tension in your neck: stretching your neck and relaxing your neck. To stretch your neck, you can do gentle neck stretches, either while standing or sitting. Baxter recommends not doing full head rolls. Instead, he recommends Owl Turns, which involves looking to the right or left as far as you can go with a bit of stretch, and Curious Dog Tips, which involves tipping your head ear to the shoulder to the right or left, as far as you can go with a bit of stretch, ear to shoulder on that side. Another way to stretch your neck (along with your back and chest) is to do seated twisting poses, such as Bharadvajasana, Marichyasana, and Arda Matseyendrasana. As you move into the twist, make sure to turn from your spine first, and then, moving mindfully, let your head follow your spine (so you don’t over-twist your neck).

To relax your neck, try seated forward bends with your head resting on a support. Before bending forward, place a bolster or folded blankets on your straight leg (or a chair over your straight leg if your hamstrings are tight), and rest your head on the support as you come into the pose. Prop yourself high enough so you can stay in the pose for three minutes or so. You can even do the pose seated in a chair, in front of your desk. 

You can also use gravity to release your neck in a Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) or Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottansana). Instead of having your hands on the floor in this pose, try clasping your elbows so you can just hang. To make the pose more relaxing, try practicing with your buttocks against a wall and your feet about six inches from the wall.

Working with Your Shoulders

To release your shoulders, which helps release tension at the base of your neck, you can try any number of targeted shoulder stretches. See Standing Shoulder Stretches for a good, short sequence that stretches your shoulders within their full range of motion. In general, most of the standing poses also help release tension from your shoulders, because your arms are either overhead, out to sides, or behind your back. So all varied standing pose practices will help both strengthen and relax your shoulders.

Working with Your Back

To release tension from your back, you can practice the seated twisting poses I mentioned above for releasing your neck, or any reclined twist that you prefer. You can also try passive backbends or restorative backbends, such as lying over a bolster with your arms either out to the side or overhead. Just make sure to keep your head supported so that your neck and head is in line with your spine or only in a mild backbend (and not fully extended, that is, in a full backbend position). And, finally, you can try an easy forward bend, such as a Child's pose (Balasana) with your knees together or a Supported Restorative Child's pose, or a Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) with your knees bent to release back tension from the extensor muscles of spine.

Working with Your Head

Timothy mentions that poor posture, especially head forward syndrome, is a possible trigger for headaches. So working in Mountain pose, learn to keep your neck aligned with your spine and your spine aligned with your neck. You can also do passive backbends, holding for at least three minutes, to open your chest and active backbends to strengthen your back. These and the shoulder stretches mentioned above will compensate for all the forward bending of your upper body that you do at your desk, car, gardening, etc., and help improve the position of your neck and head relative to your spine.

As far as relaxing your head goes, wow, I have to say, I’ve never thought about how to relax my head before! The main thing that comes to my mind—which is actually very relaxing—is to lie in Savasana with enough support under your head so your neck is in a neutral position and your chin is pointing toward your chest. Then, using the power of your mind, consciously move from one part of your head to another (including, one by one, your sense organs) and intentionally relaxing that area. Be sure to include your forehead—lots of tension there—your scalp and the crown of your head.

About Backbends and Headaches

And, finally, a little warning about backbends: Extreme extension of the neck (the bending you do when you take your head back behind your shoulders) can actually trigger headaches! So if you are doing a backbend where you can control the back-bending in your neck, such as Cobra, Upward Facing Dog, Bow pose, try to work with your head in a more neutral position instead of automatically thrusting it back. If the backbend is one where you can’t really keep your head in a more neutral position (such as Urdva Dhanurasana, called Wheel or Upward Bow), try eliminating the pose from your practice to see if that helps your headaches.

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Friday Q A The Three Part Breath

Ladder by Melina Meza

Q: I was taught the way to breathe is through the belly to the chest and ending in the sternum area.  I saw a video from Leslie Kaminoff where he stated he does it the opposite way meaning sternum to belly. So, what does yoga teach us? Does it matter?

A: I’ll start right off with the assertion that from my perspective there is no one right way of breathing. And from my exposure to different styles of yoga and different modern lineages of yoga, I have often encountered conflicting recommendations on how to imagine the breath is moving in the body or how it is filling the lungs. But, as our reader points out, one of the more commonly taught ways of imagining, experiencing or encouraging the breath to come in on the inhalation is often called the three-part breath. In this variation, you imagine that you are filling your belly area with breath first (reflected in the belly gently expanding before any other part of the body or chest changes shape), followed by your lower chest, and lastly your upper chest. As an example, if you decided to do this over the course of a three-second inhalation, you could divide the filling or shape change of each area of your belly and chest into one-second increments. Remember you are not actually breathing into your belly, as your breath only goes into your lungs, which are located inside your ribcage! We suggest to our students that the breath is going into the belly during a full, relaxed breath because of the change in shape that takes place in that area of the body, when the breathing muscle—the respiratory diaphragm that separates the chest and abdomen—contracts and pushes down on the abdominal contents, leading to the outward bulge of the belly.

The exhalation is then sometimes said to exit in the opposite direction, from your upper chest first, your lower chest next, and your belly last. When performed in a relaxed, deep way, this breath is said to shift your nervous system to the Relaxation Response (Rest and Digest), slow your heart rate and lower your blood pressure, to name three typical benefits. But everyone experiences the breath differently, so not everyone will have those results, especially when first learning to breath differently. When I travelled to India in 2005, I was taught the style of breathing that our reader describes in his question, just the opposite of the more common three-part breath I just described. It is the same one Leslie Kaminoff describes in video that our reader mentioned. In this version of the three-part breath, you first invite your inhale into your upper chest, then your lower chest, and finally your belly. You then move your exhalation out of your belly first—with the assistance of the abdominal muscles contracting—then your lower chest and finally your upper chest. 

When I was first guided into this breath, I immediately recognized that it was the opposite of what I had been taught back home. But I was curious to try it and see what it felt like. My instructors at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram claimed this breath reflected the spinal movements that more naturally occur with inhaling (slight backbend of the spine) and exhaling (slight forward rounding of the spine), and stated that it would lead to a deeper, longer, fuller lung capacity. I have worked with both styles of breath over the ensuing years, and I can say for certain that one is not necessarily “better” than the other. 

Sometimes teachers of one method or the other will claim that the breath style reflects the movement of prana or internal energy in the body. Some sources state that prana moves upwards towards the head on inhalation, and moves downward on the exhalation, so therefore the first style of three-part breath reflects and supports that. Other teachers have suggested that there are energetic benefits to drawing the prana downward on the inhalation and releasing it upwards on the exhalation; and that inhaling downward towards the belly flips the digestive flame downward toward the lowest part of the belly, where the ancient Hatha yogis felt we stored all kinds of waste and toxins we needed to burn up. 

As I shared this potential difference of opinion with my friend and very experienced yoga teacher Susi Amendola, she promptly suggested the following:

“There is no one right way to breathe. There is just the ability to observe our habits and adapt if you discover that you are limited in your breathing capacity. Why are you reluctant to do a particular method of breathing: does it hurt, is it just weird and unfamiliar, or are you wed to a particular technique because you feel it is the “right way” to breath? These first two aspects are more interesting ways of assessing your breath than deciding which is the right way to do it.” 

I was reminded of the response of some of my fellow students back in India after we were first introduced to the second version of the three-part breath. Several said they would refuse to try the second version again because it was not the way they learned in their tradition, and it was therefore not something they were interested in learning.

So, when you are learning new pranayama techniques, consider giving it a try and notice how it makes your feel and how that jives with the purported benefits of the technique. If you are really struggling with either form of three-part breath, ask your teacher for guidance. Lastly, pick your teacher’s brain to see what other tidbits of wisdom about the breath you can learn.  Also, keep in mind that there can be an accumulated benefit of doing the breathing techniques regularly for a while, just as there is when doing your yoga asana home practice each day.  So add in a regular pranayama practice to your home yoga practice if you have not done so already!

—Baxter

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