Vyana has its headquarters at your heart, where your anahata chakra governs your ability to reach out to touch others and to be touched by the joys of life (see page 25). When you breathe, this sharing, outward-expanding form of your five subtle energies radiates out from this energetic centre to all parts of your being, governing the circulation of your blood to bring nourishment to and carry waste away from every cell, and also distributing your emotions and thoughts.
Being your “all-pervasive prana”, vyana also connects everything in your body with everything in the world – for example, the sense of joy you experience when walking in woods is an expression of vyana, as are any shared experiences with groups of people. To help your vyana flow more freely so that you can express yourself in a meaningful way and live a more spiritually fulfilled life, use the breath-visualization exercise opposite. This exercise also helps to strengthen your vyana should it become weak or deficient – signs of this might be that you feel alienated, alone or “stuck” in ways of behaviour, or a lack of energy or physical coordination. Vyana Breathing aims to open up your heart and lung region, projecting your energy out not only to the rest of your body, but to the world around you and the future that lies ahead of you. In this way, your vyana energy promotes growth at all levels – physical, energetic and spiritual – and also provides an energetic back-up system that can make up for imbalances in your four other forms of prana.
If the muscles in your legs or feet often cramp up, you may have a blockage of vyana. The Vyana Breathing exercise opposite will help to unblock your vyana energy, as will the yoga Sun Salutation sequence demonstrated on pages 58–61.
This exercise tunes you into the outward-expanding, joyful nature of vyana energy. Start by sitting with your legs crossed (see pages 35–7).
1 Sit with your back straight and gently seal your lips. Place your hands on your sternum (breastbone), one on top of the other. Close your eyes.
2 Inhaling deeply through your nose, stretch your arms out as wide as possible at shoulder level. Imagine you are embracing the whole world and visualize positive energy saturating your heart and lungs.
3 At the end of your inhalation, hold your breath, keeping your arms wide open, for as long as you feel comfortable. Visualize your vyana energy as an orange spiral that expands out from your heart to encompass every part of your being, then extends to the horizon and on to infinity.
4 Exhale through your nose, bending your elbows and bringing your hands back onto your sternum. Repeat 5–10 times before relaxing your arms and opening your eyes.