Breathing Lessons

By making it a conscious, controlled action, pranayama begins to transform breathing into a spiritual practice.

By Judith Lasater

While such a powerful awakening sounds wonderful, I find that my personal pranayama practice helps me more with the mundane matters of slowing down and remembering that I am more than just the tasks I accomplish, the classes I teach, and the articles I write. Of course, I wish my kundalini well on its upward journey, but day by day I simply hope that I can open my heart and allow for the possibility of joy in my contact with each person I meet.

Pranayama as Meditation

One of my students once asked me why one would want to manipulate breathing, since it is a completely natural part of the life process. I thought about this for a while and realized that although breathing is natural, for most of us it remains unconscious and uncontrolled.

During pranayama one learns to vary the length of inhalation and exhalation as well as to suspend both, either to retain the inhaled breath or to keep the lungs completely empty. These practices make breathing a conscious and controlled action. By bringing this previously unconscious activity into consciousness, and by focusing our awareness totally on the present moment, pranayama begins to transform breathing into a spiritual practice.

Even though full control of the breath can take years to perfect, to me the perfection of this physical control is not the highest form of pranayama. The highest form is to remain completely aware of the breath, allowing it to come and go, without injecting control into the process.

To see just how difficult it is to be aware of the breath without controlling it, try this experiment. Find a quiet time and place, and sit or lie comfortably with the spine long and the chest open. Close your eyes and begin to pay attention to your breath. If you are like most people, as soon as you begin to pay attention to your breath, you will begin to change it. This is the ego in action. The urge to control the breath once we are aware of it is the ego trying to control everything it perceives. Eventually, our goal should be to remain completely aware of and at one with the breath without engaging the ego. Try this practice. It is an eye-opening and humbling experience.

This ability to remain aware of the breath and yet not control it is at the heart of meditation. Virtually all systems of meditation begin with simple breathing exercises or with a technique to make one aware of the breath. The breath makes a perfect focus for meditation: It is immediate and always there, whether we're waking or sleeping, running or sitting. An exquisitely sensitive barometer that registers our reactions to internal and external events, the breath is a constant background mantra reminding us of our connection to the energy of the universe.

Judith Lasater, Ph.D., P.T., author of Relax and Renew (Rodmell, 1995) and Living Your Yoga (Rodmell, 2000) has taught yoga internationally since 1971.

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