One of great gifts from across Southeast Asia was attention to the breath. This attention goes back more than twenty centuries. The root meaning of the Chinese kanji 合 that accessed the Chi, ki, or prana--the life force that permeated everything--was breath. Of course as directly life-giving, breath is apparent. A few minutes of suppressing breath can cause death. And yet, for all its value, filling each moment with perhaps 20,000 breaths per day, our breath goes largely unnoticed.
It is unusual that attention to breath in various ways, either by following or by manipulating breath, became a gateway to transformation of consciousness, identity and inseparability. One of the strong names for this attention was ‘yoga.’
While yoga became a term that outspread to many actions both kind and brutal, its practice, even as a binding activity in militant discipline, was--for most of its existence--was largely seated stillness and breath. Not one of many poses, the pose or
**********
A Restorative-Yin Breath Sequence
In restorative yoga, poses are deeply relaxing. In restorative-yin yoga, poses are sequenced to add longer-held poses that are gentle and supported to primarily exercise lower back and shoulders.
Restorative-yin yoga begins by either sitting in stillness or supine, covered by blanket (with options for eye cover, hand cover/weights, fragrance, music). This sequence can be practiced in the restorative-yin poses that follow this in-tial breath sequence.
Following silent seated or supine pose, attention is directed to a breath sequence of
noticing breath as-it-is,
following the inflow and outflow (prana & apana) and allowing it to come to balance,
noticing and following the out-breath and allowing it to completely release, and
noticing the appearance of the ‘perfectly peaceful pause’ that develops at the end of the out-breath.
The emphasis is upon following the breath (as a preparation to follow the body in restorative-yin poses to follow, rather than forcing the poses or manipulating the breath). This breath sequence becomes a model to apply to the restorative-yin poses. The poses are to approached “islands of grace” that will utilize next to no intentional effort to allow each suggested pose to come to you.
In this breath sequence, a normal rate of 10 -15 breaths per minute is easily reduced to 6 or 4 breaths per minute with no discomfort and a normal oxygen percentage likely maintaining at a 98% level. The body-mind connection begins to change almost immediately (as if measured in EEG brainwaves) with the appearance of higher amplitude alpha waves, followed by a deeper alpha, and occasionally by deeper amplitude theta trains (although the breath sequence is not
exceedingly long enough to regularly anticipate their presence).
When reclining (the major choice of participants to date), this breath sequence resembles savasana that may be done at the end of the restorative-yin sequence (or a more popular choice by participants--viparita karani [legs up wall]. Savasana is akin to a Western body relaxation process that begins with tensing muscles in a various body regions such as a leg and then relaxing those muscles. Modern yoga has a tensing savasna ‘pose’ that I have offered to participants, but have never seen done in modern yoga classes--seegra savasana [stiff corpse].
During this breath sequence in restorative-yin yoga, three ‘Excellences of Yoga’ are opened: (1) Centering/grounding, coming to the mat, being supported by the Earth, (2) Allowing an intention for this practice to emerge from within vs. setting a goal, and (3) opening the niyama of santosha to allow this practice to value comfort with where we are at throughout the practice session.
With just this sequence of breath, you could stop right there, and you would have the very multitude of centuries’ enduring heart and promise of yoga. It is about this breath and the road that it opens far, far more than it is about becoming a Gumby figure. Ultimately, it is not about a ‘you’ at all.
