THE UNION OF BODY and mind or self and soul, or whatever way the modern split is described, is first healed with breath. We are a culture that does not breathe. There is no life without prāṇa, and there is no death without life. The world turns on the cycle of the breath, not just in human form but across the entire living spectrum. Again, prāṇa is not just breathing per se, but the life force that animates existence. What does not breathe or move this vital energy efficiently dies quickly. The breath, in yoga, returns us to the present and always acts as the path itself if there is any internal movement to consider. We turn inward most easily by focusing on the breath.
If we are privileged to be present at either the birth or the death of another human being, we can watch them come into the world inhaling or depart exhaling. From the first autonomous breath, we pass this life energy back and forth between us. The mother passes on physical existence to the child by means of the breath. Breathing is devotion to life.
Prāṇa (breathing, life energy) and citta (consciousness, mind) are two aspects of the same energetic cycle. In The Tree of Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar writes,
The Hatha Yoga Pradīpika says that yoga is prāṇa-vṛtti-niro-dha—stilling the fluctuations of the breath. Patañjali’s Yoga-Sutras say that yoga is chitta-vṛtti-nirdodha—stilling the fluctuations of the mind. The mind can go in many directions in a split second. Its movements are very fast and varied. But the breath cannot go in many directions at once. It has only one path: inhalation and exhalation. It can pause for a moment in a state of retention, but it cannot multiply like the mind. According to the Hatha Yoga Pradīpika, controlling the breath and observing its rhythm brings the consciousness to stillness. Thus, though the Hatha Yoga Pradīpika begins with the control of prāṇa, breath or energy, and Patañjali’s Yoga-Sutras begin with the control of consciousness, yet they meet at a certain point where there is no difference between them. By controlling the breath you are controlling consciousness, and by controlling consciousness you bring rhythm to the breath.1
When we pay attention to the breath, we watch its flow through the prism of the body, and one of the helpful ways of feeling the route of the breath is by understanding the role of the nadis. The nadis route the energy of the breath and can be likened to the bank of a river or the walls of a tunnel. Traditionally, Hatha Yoga was the domain of Tantra Yoga. The language of Hatha Yoga is a language that describes patterns of energy and the means of stilling and sculpting those patterns. Hatha Yoga is the detailed investigation of the breath, mind, and body through feeling, visualization, chanting, and direct observation—all of which are techniques that one refines until the internal body becomes still and centered. Much like stilling the fluctuations of the mind, the Hatha Yoga or Tantric practitioner uses the immediate sensations in the body and breath as a doorway into the nature and functioning of the mind. This is very practical: when we breathe, there is a flow of energy, called prāṇa, which moves through the body and mind. What does prāṇa flow through? All thought and movement float on this current of prāṇa, and prāṇa flows through the nadis. Look into the pathways of the nadis and it’s hard not to marvel at the microcosm of life manifest in the body in the form of fluctuating sensations, pulsations, minuscule worlds inside minuscule worlds.
The nadis are like nerves, vessels, meridians, or ducts through which prāṇa flows in mind and body. The nadis transport prāṇa through the body and mind and interestingly do not end at the perimeter of the body but extend out into the world beyond the body. Through visualization and prāṇāyāma technique, one follows prāṇa through the conduits of the nadis. It is easy to follow the breath through immediate feeling as well as visualization so that we notice and feel where it moves in the body; the route of its movement becomes the starting point for the meditation. Meditating on the energetic flow of the breath and visualizing the nadis brings mind, breath, and body together in a seamless unity of attention. Without identifying with personal thoughts or feelings, when the mind is concentrated in the flow of the breath, especially through the simple act of feeling, we experience a radical departure from our normal mode of perceiving the body, the world, and ourselves. When the mind is focused on one particular thing, in this case the energetic flow and weave of the breath, our focus becomes so microscopic that the mind becomes quite clear and effortlessly radiant. Experience now comes and goes with ease because mind and breath, mediated by a calm and unconditioned nervous system, become very still and receptive; the breath moves quietly, as does the mind, but there is no reactivity or lack, like the quiet blooming of an iris or the silken threads of light.
In the Yoga Vāsiṣṭa, Vāsiṣṭa tells Rama,
“The prāṇa is indistinguishably united with the mind. In fact, the consciousness that tends toward thinking, on account of the movement of prāṇa, is known as the mind. Movement of thought in the mind arises from movement of prāṇa; and movement of prāṇa arises because of movement of thought in consciousness. They form a cycle of mutual dependence, like waves and movements of currents in water.”2
One cannot speak of vinyasa, or movements of the mind-body without also describing the movement of breath, as they are essentially interdependent. Most people associate vinyasa with the movement of linking postures together; however, there are other ways of understanding it. Vinyasa also refers to the movements of thought (citta vṛtti), movements within a breath cycle (prāṇa vāyuu), and cyclical movement within the circulatory, respiratory, and immune systems.
We all know that some steadiness of breathing brings about steadiness in the mind-body. Vāsiṣṭa continues,
. . . the mind is caused by the movements of prāṇa; and hence by the stilling of prāṇa; the mind becomes still. . . . The movement of mind and prāṇa becomes still when desire (in the form of clinging) comes to an end in one’s own heart. . . . [T]he movement of prāṇa is also stilled by the effortless practice of breathing, without strain. This also occurs when you bring the end of an exhale (as retention) to a standstill for longer and longer periods of time.3
Vāsiṣṭa instructs Rama in breathing practice in order to demonstrate how perception of the world is continually influenced by one’s state of mind and body. Stilling the tendency toward clinging, conceptualizing, and reacting to the world comes about through correct breathing. Breathing without effort is the key to stilling the mind. Stilling the mind allows the habits of thought to recede and the world to appear immediately, without the obstacles of concepts getting in the way of direct experience. First we stretch the breath and press it through the nadi tubes, especially where certain knots exist, then once the breath is exercised, we leave it alone and feel its unmodified rhythm.
The knots in the nadis are symptoms of larger holding patterns that we call “the saṁskāras.” The saṁskāras are undone when one creates the conditions for a steady and uninterrupted flow of prāṇa through the nadis. It is most helpful to think of the saṁskāras as structural holding patterns that influence the feeling pathways called “nadis.” Steady flow occurs when prāṇa (breath, energy) and citta (mind, consciousness) come together and move as one. When the breath and mind move together as one, the central channels of the body open to the present moment, which is none other than what is occurring now. Like tracing a sound back to its source or seeing the water that makes up a wave, we keep the mind so intimately connected to the breath that the two become inseparable. In yoga we follow everything to the vanishing edge, where form becomes absence, and what appears as empty is brought forward again into the world of form. This is why we practice yoga postures as a form of prāṇāyāma, which in turn is a practice of meditation.
When we move toward integrating āsana practice and prāṇāyāma, postural alignment serves the respiratory system, and all alignment techniques become rituals of devotion in service of inhaling and exhaling. Because the mind has to focus on a movement without distraction in order to follow the breath, āsana as a form of prāṇāyāma, interiorizes awareness (pratyāhāra) and sets the mind and body in concentration (dhyāna).
Exploring yoga postures psychologically, physically, and energetically allows us to access depths of yoga practice, where many different paths come together. T.K.V. Desikachar describes the tendency to see the various approaches in yoga as leading to separate goals as superficial: “Primarily it is a question of our state of mind. Whatever happens in the mind and causes a change in it affects the whole person, including the body and all experiences on a physical level.”4
Mind and body operate in unity, as do the various limbs and methods of yoga. Desikachar continues:
People often ask me if I teach āsanas, and when I answer “Yes,” they say: “Oh, then you are a hatha yogi!” If I am talking about the Yoga-Sutra they say “Oh, you are a rāja yogi!” If I say that I recite the Vedas the comment is: “Oh, so you are a mantra yogi!” If I simply say that I practice yoga, they do not know what to make of me. Many people want to give everything and everyone a label. Unfortunately, these classifications have become much too important and give the impression that there are fundamental differences between the various forms of yoga. But really they are all dealing with the same thing, and are only looking at them from different perspectives. If we really follow one direction in yoga as far as we can go, then it will lead us along all paths of yoga.5
Unless the limb of āsana practice is not explored to its depth—meaning looking into the actions not just of body but also of mind, breath, and energetic flow—we won’t penetrate fully the yoga of āsana. Don’t be caught in the superficial geometry of yoga postures without tending to and tuning in to the quality of the gaze, the spreading of the breath, the pauses at the end and beginning of every breath cycle, and the diaphragmatic action of the bandhas, as these internal forms of alignment draw the mind into concentration and insight, without which the mind remains at the periphery of yoga āsana.
Flow and Stability
In Tantric terms, we can call the process of prāṇa “energy flow.” Fluctuating patterns of energy in the body, like fluctuations in the mind, become steady through correct breathing and immediate attention, and the interesting thing is that good technique requires the attention that we are trying to cultivate in all the other limbs. All techniques, when not turned into doctrine, become mindfulness practices—they give the mind a specific place to focus so that we can drop into levels of absorption that interrupt distraction and habit. When the mind enters into any action fully, when we are completely present to what is unfolding as it unfolds, the fluctuations of citta settle into nirodha.
When energy can flow through the body uninterrupted by latent physical or psychological tendencies, consciousness settles and the equilibrium of the kośas is reached. This is not esoteric but simply practical psychophysiology based on verifiable experience in the here and now. When mind and breath settle into each other, the nervous system responds and the body unconditions itself. Like a rock that is heavy, water that is wet, a sky that is open and endless, the body too has its equilibrium, its essential way of being as it is. When prāṇa and citta flow together, the saṁskāras in the mind-body begin to dissolve, because the attributes that give rise to the saṁskāras dissolve when there is no clinging or constriction in either mind or body.
There is no posture without energy flow. In fact, any living organism depends on energy flow. However, the process does not stop there. The flow of prāṇa is not sufficient in and of itself; it is energy storage, and capturing that is key. For example, the sun shines on Earth and it also gives light to Mars and Venus, but only Earth has life, as far as we know, because only Earth can successfully capture and store sunlight. The action that enables life to occur is really the way in which an energy circle can be closed. When energy is flowing in a circle, we have a life cycle as it were, which stores and feeds on the energy flow within those specific conditions. Something magical happens within a circle, a maṇḍala. A circle means perpetual return, and perpetual return gives stability. This is what we call “dynamic stability.”
A yoga posture is a perfect model of dynamic stability. When we close an energy circle, through focused attention, correct breathing, and the application of bandhas, the prāṇa in the body and mind begins to flow through new channels and also unclogs previously knotted channels. This unknotting only occurs, however, when prāṇa is coherent, steady, and recirculating. The nadis are like meridians through which prāṇa flows. But sometimes prāṇa cannot flow clearly because the tubes through which the energy of the breath flows are clogged up.
Notice, for instance, how when you inhale and exhale there are parts of that cycle that are smooth and places where the breath ripples or skips or feels constricted. It is usually when the prāṇa flow is interrupted at these sites of physical holding that the mind gets distracted. Prāṇa and citta move together; they are two sides of the same coin. Even if you listen to the sound of the breath, you will notice that sometimes the breath sounds smooth and sometimes it is interrupted by little fluctuations. When the breath fluctuates, so does the mind.
Swami Rama describes the way these winds of the breath effect the functioning of the entire mind-body process:
Breath is an external manifestation of the force of prāṇa. Breath is the fly-wheel that regulates the entire machine of the body. Just as the control of the fly-wheel of an engine controls all the other mechanisms in it, so the control of the external breath leads to control of the gross and subtle, physical and mental aspects of our life machine.6
The Tantric model of prāṇa expresses physiologically what the Yoga-Sutra describes psychologically. It is said that there are 72,000 nadis in the body; together they form an extremely fine network of subtle channels spread throughout the ethereal body (body of prāṇa, pranic sheath, or energetic body). Most disease or inflexibility is the result of congestion, blocks, or restrictions in the nadi system. The nadis are psychological as well, so when you talk of psychological hindrances, anxieties, neurotic tendencies, or obstacles, we also use the language of the nadis. Psychological knots exist within the nadis in the same way that overturned logs or beaver dams interrupt the smooth flow of a river. The breath always wants to flow uninterrupted, and the interruptions in the cycles of the breath, known by means of distraction or agitation in mind and body, becomes the place where we focus our attention and also reveals the next step on the path. All symptoms act this way—as signals for our attention and as road markers on the path.
The importance of the iḍā, piṅgalā, and suṣumnā nadis is well developed in Tantric texts and also forms the basis of Pattabhi Jois’s teachings of āsana and prāṇāyāma. Pattabhi Jois teaches correct breathing, gazing, and bandhas in order to achieve good pranic flow through the nadis. B.K.S. Iyengar uses the same terminology. Kṛṣṇamacharya, when he went to Tibet to study yoga, returned to the practice of Hatha Yoga, subtle attention to the energetic elements of practice. When yoga posture sequences are practiced from the inside out, meaning that the mind is with not just the physical movement but the subtle movements of breath and energy, attention interiorizes and the posture practice becomes a Tantric one.
To preserve energies in the body and prevent their dissipation, āsanas and mudras (seals), prāṇāyāmas and bandhas . . . were prescribed. The heat so generated causes the kuṇḍalinī to uncoil. The serpent lifts its head, enters the suṣumnā and is forced up through the chakras one by one to the sahasrāra.7
This passage by B.K.S. Iyengar describes how attention and breath flow through the meridians of the body until the energy in the pelvic floor, in the form of kuṇḍalinī, begins to move through the channels, especially the central axis of the body (suṣumnā). Later in his description of kuṇḍalinī in Light on Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar describes the serpent as an “allegory” that denotes the movement of vital energy.8 What is important here is the way that kuṇḍalinī represents in image form the clear movement of energy within the meridians of the body. The energy can only move through the body when attention is present. As we press the breath through the nadis, we are also stretching the mind through the nadis. And kuṇḍalinī is representative of a mind that moves with the breath as one as they course through the nervous system and dissolve the distractions and mental toxins that previously obstructed the clear passage of energy through the systems of the body.
Kuṇḍalinī is not the breath itself but rather the energetic aspect of the life force manifested only in part as the breath. It’s helpful to return to the etymological significance of the word kuṇḍalinī, from the verb kuṇda, meaning “to burn.” Kuṇḍalinī is the burning up of knots and holding patterns in mind and body, the most significant of which is the clinging to self-image. This may explain why many people describe “kuṇḍalinī rising” as both full of physical sensation and also mental fear. Abiniveśa, the fear of letting go of self-image, is always at work in any process of letting go.
Hatha Yoga and Tantra Yoga are inseparable when practiced from the inside out, because the essence of Hatha Yoga has always been Tantra. In fact, what took the great teacher Kṛṣṇamacharya out of India and into Tibet was his search for someone to put the Tantra back into the physical postures of Hatha Yoga. He needed someone to help him find the subtle energetics or psychological dimensions of the physical practice of yoga.
Prāṇa flows where citta goes. Thus, we steady the eyes so that attention and the breath, citta and prāṇa, come together. Bandhas are conjunctions of energy that act as valves to recirculate energy within the nadis so that prāṇa does not leak from the body. Practicing breathing, gazing, and bandhas simultaneously creates a closed loop of energetic flow within the nadis. This is called “pratyāhāra,” which refers to the natural uncoupling of sense organs from sense objects when the breath and attention flow as one. When energy increases in the body during posture and breathing practices, it always attempts to reorganize the internal energetic systems of the mind-body. When the pressure is turned up, the system begins to change if the energy can recirculate. If the energy dissipates, the flow increases but conditioning of the system remains unchanged. Unless we can allow this to happen naturally by setting up the condition for good energy flow, the flow will temporarily increase and then become fragmented. In breathing practices, we pay very close attention to the eyes so that as new and more challenging energetic waves move through the body, there is no distraction. Distraction is always common in the eyes, because we are so used to having hungry eyes, always looking externally. This does not mean being stiff trying to be perfectly steady but setting up the intention to face and host whatever occurs in immediate awareness.
The iḍā, on the right side of the body, descending from the bridge of the right nasal passage, is generally associated with the moon, white in color, and with the prāṇa or rising vital breath and Śiva (male energy); the piṅgalā on the left side of the body, descending from the left nasal passage, with the sun, the color red, blood, the descending apānic breath and Śākti (female energy).
The central channel, or suṣumnā, is associated with fire and the union of the iḍā, and piṅgalā. Pattabhi Jois calls the suṣumnā nadi, which runs from the center of the pelvic floor through to the crown of the head, “the empty flute.” The term kuṇḍalinī, which has been fetishized and imbued with literalist interpretations (such as a purely physical feeling of tingling up the spine), reduces the essence of that process. “Kuṇḍalinī” describes in metaphorical language the present moment that is curled up but inaccessible in every movement of experience in which there is even an ounce of self-image. We are not present because of karmic patterns, most notably greed, hatred, and delusion.
The work of correct breathing, attention, gazing, and alignment within any yoga posture is aimed at smoothing out the fluctuating patterns of citta and prāṇa within the nadis and among the different sheaths of the body, by the act of being present even in times of distraction. Even when caught in turbulent thoughts or emotions, we return to the breath and, in doing so, calm the fluctuations in mind and nervous system. Over time, the calmness becomes easier to find, and you can establish the calmness as the basis for further practice. Kuṇḍalinī is a metaphor for present experience free of the scaffolding created by the mind’s preferences. When the nadis open and kuṇḍalinī uncoils and flows through the suṣumnā, we can understand this as the removal of any psychophysical bias that interrupts the opportunity to be present. Like a serpent representing the profundity of now, kuṇḍalinī speaks of nothing beyond itself. Like the present moment, it is present by its absence and thus requires of the practitioner focus and relaxed attention to what is currently and constantly occurring within the body during a single breath cycle. Kuṇḍalinī is aroused as the present movement is appreciated—not through conception but through the simple act of breathing itself. It’s the breath that wakes the serpent, like a rock ledge that sets up the fall of water.
In breathing practices, including yoga postures, we are looking for a clean, uninterrupted flow of energy, which sets up the ideal maṇḍala, or energy cycle. Every maṇḍala, or every cycle of energy, is a home of stored coherent energy. Coherent energy comes together and moves within channels of a cycle so that it can do its work gracefully, as opposed to incoherent energy, which goes in all directions and remains distracted and unstable. Incoherent energy is prāṇa that moves through overly conditioned channels of thought, feeling, perception, sensation, and movement. We are looking for clean, uninterrupted flow.
If there is past injury or strong places of holding, the energy flow is decreased, interrupted, or rerouted. Sometimes holding patterns are reversed and instead of resistance there is a lack of resistance. For example, if there is a place without any resistance, such as a misplaced hip or an overfunctioning nervous system, or even a personality with weak boundaries, the prāṇa flows too much.
The interesting thing here is that the tendency of prāṇa is to flow with a balanced velocity, with an intuited smoothness. A smooth flow of prāṇa creates graceful movement, a calm nervous system, and a steady mind. The energy in the body is always aiming to improve circulation and steadiness of flow, much like the flow of a river. DNA is constantly being altered, cells are always letting go of previous patterns of control, and tissues are always working to rid themselves of the chemicals that we ingest. A major key in persevering our continuity is the ability of body’s systems to right countless small wrongs that bombard the body and mind at every instant. We adapt; we change our molecular responses, we repair ourselves, all in the service of keeping the gyroscope of the mind-body spinning smoothly. It is this constant flux that enables dynamic stability and the motion of stillness. Even what we think of as constant—bones, self, movement—is constantly changing in order to maintain the dynamic equilibrium of cellular life that allows the dynamic equilibrium of our lives in the world. The changing constancy of living beings underlies the homeostasis of our ecological existence and demonstrates firsthand the teaching that everything that is perceivable (prakṛti) is provisional and contingent.
Our minds and bodies are always limited by their origins. Change in mind and body means being stretched out of what is known in order to sow the seeds of openness to what is unknown, and that is why change and transformation is more a matter of loss than it is of growth. The language of growth tends to become personal, entrepreneurial, and ambitious. Taking on the new is always easier than letting go of what is old, because what is historical is what is known and comfortable. Sometimes we are so used to, so caught up in, our ways of moving and being that we don’t see them as stale or outmoded until symptoms appear to tell us so. The first step in working with our conditioned minds and bodies is seeing what is old in the first place. Then we can let it go. We have a home in the present moment whenever we arrive.