Yoga and Breathing
aka
Yoga Breathing or Pranayama

"The beauty of yoga as it has developed in the west, is that each person has the opportunity of finding a fuller awareness of the nature of existence in their own way. It has grown into a blending of the spiritual and psychological teachings of many cultures, without exclusion. Although sects and groups have arisen, it has yet remained beyond sects. Still in its youth as a spiritual force in the West, its very beginnings have been blessed with women playing as large or greater a part in its practice and teachings than men."

-- Tony Crisp

BREATHING IS GENERIC

This article will not address any spiritual aspects and only wishes to point out that breathing to me is quite generic and many are in need of a deeper understanding how to teach it from that generic perspective. That is why I have devoted so much of my life to the study and teaching of the breath and breathing.

Yoga - the stretching aspect of it - is generally quite good for the human body. It is just not breathing specific. The most impressive 74 year old female body I ever worked on was a yoga practitioner for some 30 years. Her breathing needed a lot of work and her spine had severe scoliosis but the rest of her was closer to a well toned 40 year old body than of a 74 year old.

Pranayama is breathing-specific but not appropriate for most people because it does not allow them first to learn about healthy natural breathing. I have included relevant "yoga" stretches within my system as they seem necessary.

Many forms of yoga such as Hatha, Iyengar, Kria and Kundalini yogas are often powerful self directed healing tools. Like the movement of Tai Chi, or modern dance, or the balanced integration of Pilates, the stretching of yoga has very specific benefits to our moving and breathing bodies. Like anything else, there are extremes that most had best avoid or approach with extreme caution.

Pranayama today is largely for altered states of consciousness though there are clinical studies in process that are quantifying many health attributes. Widespread benefits exist just as in any reasonably formed and breathing oriented paradigm. They may not be optimal but they are often beneficial such as with alternate nostril breathing and some forms of breath counting..

I recommend that if you are going to experiment in pranayama that you first develop a strong balanced, healthy, natural breath so your nervous system knows where to revert to after the altered state experience; that you know where “home base” is. Pranayama necessitates an experienced teacher with adequate credentials to teach it.

Many do not differentiate between the many forms of yogic breathing exercises called pranayama. With the exception of alternate nostril breathing -which for some is not advisable- and a few highly evolved teachers such as Walt Baptiste or son Baron or daughter Sherri, Parhamansa Yogananda, and Frank Zane, none of these yoga forms have shown me a deep enough understanding of the breath to allow me to recommend their "pranayama". Without proper internal breathing coordination, breathing exercises may help initially, but in the long run may take way too long to benefit and/or can bring great harm by training people in non optimal breathing patterns. Breathing exercises, especially some of so called the advanced Yogic ones, including but not limited to Bhastrika and Kapabhati (pranayama) is most often too extreme and outright dangerous to the health and equilibrium of the practitioner. Practice makes permanent, not necessarily perfect.

This relationship of breathing to many forms of illness caused by bad breathing is further evidenced in the world of self taught Qigong. Qigong breathing exercises have a solid reputation for being quite a good thing for the health of the body when done properly with the guidance of a qualified teacher.

MANY YOGA TEACHERS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TEACH BREATHING

Both Donna Farhi, author of The Breathing Book and R, a co-founder of Yoga Journal (and my former minister's wife) have stated that they taught Yoga for over 20 years - Donna - and 40 years -R- and "did not know how to breathe". So there may well be many thousands of yoga instructors and students uncertain about healthy breathing. The greatest tragedy of this is that many are first to defend their breathing development proficiency but alas, last to prove it. See Deeper Breathing.

From my experience, Hatha yoga styles such as Sivananda or Iyengar utilize stretching in a breathing supportive manner. But they are not breathing specific and many of the teachers are first to admit that. In my opinion the best yoga teachers advise their students NOT to do ANYTHING with the breathing. They know that they do not know. Repeated in French (Optimal Breathing : http://www.breathing.com/ Tout sur le souffle et la respiration. Excellent relevé d'études cliniques rigoureuses sur l'importance de la respiration et ses liens avec la santé.) Few people/students/teachers know what deepest easiest and coordinated breathing feels, looks, acts and sounds like and how to develop it rapidly and safely. Far fewer can teach proper technique and exercises to direct others.

BREATHING IS SPIRITUAL

There are significant spiritual aspects of most yogas that can be quite valuable depending on the focus of the teacher and the needs of the student. Durckheim addresses important aspects of this in his Hara as mentioned below.

* Karlfried Durckheim -- Respected German psychotherapist, and well versed in the integration of body, mind, and spirit, lived in Japan for 10 years. - In his book Hara (as in Hari Kari or Sapuku/suicide by plunging a knife in one's own belly/hara) The Vital Centre of Man, he discusses some of the dangers of yoga style breathing exercises. He articulates well that most of these exercises, which "imply tension," were designed for Indians, who seem to have a condition of "an inert letting-go." Westerners, on the other hand, suffer from "too much upward pull...too much will."

An acupuncturist might say that their energy travels upward too much.

Durckheim observed that even though many yoga teachers try to help their students relax before giving them breathing exercises, they do not realize that the "letting-go" required for deep relaxation can be achieved "only after long practice." From an article by Dennis Lewis.

"Long practice"? or having an Optimal Breathing Development Specialist work on and train them in Rapidly Improving Your Breathing Video Letting go can also be facilitated by #120 Better Breathing Exercise #1 and/or the Optimal Breath Releases (OBRs) in the manual or Strapping Techniques in the #176 Rapidly Improving Your Breathing Video Video

CHANTING

I often think of the breath as the link between the body, mind and spirit. Chanting can be very beneficial but as well must be under the direction of a master teacher. For me, chanting in a foreign tongue, albeit extremely healing, spiritually based, and sometimes incredible to experience in its most highly developed forms, is a somewhat limited form of sound production to the person not brought up in the native language of the chant.

Plus, chanting is often limited to a few chants. Even if you list 50 or 100 chants, singing in one's native language includes tens of thousands of optional songs spanning the complete range of emotions, thoughts and perhaps as important, consonants.. Learning all those in a foreign language would take decades. That to me makes it very impractical.

Is chanting spiritual? Definitely. That is I believe where it has its strongest benefit. It can transform and expand one's consciousness to way beyond one's present state of mind and limitations. But so can singing. That is why I belong to my churches choir.

Is chanting practical? Often in the sense that many chants are easy to learn but not always. But that in no way means I believe chanting or toning is not extremely valuable. One needs to understand the relevant strengths and limitations and then choose for themselves. Chanting may be perfect for you, right now. Maybe not. Try it and see how you feel. You should feel GREAT. If so, then why not? But do not discount singing as an equal or even sometimes faster road to bliss.

To have to learn a foreign language takes longer for most so as to integrate thoughts and new ways of being with the speed, depth and range that singing or speaking in one's mother tongue can.

For instance, one can say that the phonetics of Sanskrit are cross cultural. But I have to wonder how much longer it takes for a person to change languages in an enough of a meaningful way from their mother language to that with a Sanskrit origin before the person gets lasting benefits that are clearly integrated with their culture.

Are chanting's advocates saying that any culture might be better off with the insights of chanting? If so then I probably agree. But I STILL maintain that singing (most people believe they cannot sing or at least sing well, but this is just not true if one knows how to develop the breathing rapidly and accurately so that leaves a bias against the idea of singing in the first place) in one's mother tongue is more conducive to deeper real life insight, meaningful and faster then dealing with a foreign tongue whose meanings must be interpolated into whatever culture it is trying to present itself. Of course, the chanting can sometimes bypass this prejudice but that does not make it superior to the ease of what could have been with the mother tongued the approach to singing been fast and accurate.

The main point I want to make is that if I were to work on those with Sanskrit based language or any other language, they would learn to chant better in less time and would enjoy it much that more as well.

OTHER ISSUES

Also, lung problems manifest in varied ways. Pranayama, toning and chanting can actually constrict the lung volume and hinder breathing coordination and throat conditioning.

Many of the Yoga developed bodies I have worked with are better integrated and very responsive to my work. Much the same as a finely made piano is more responsive to a master piano tuner. Most of them however have learned to breathe incorrectly and their breathing is a little or a lot out of balance. Limiting internal coordination sets in with restricted and inappropriate muscular development resulting in various forms of energy/emotional/volitional blocks. See The Breath Wave and the Speed Bump of Life.

BENEFITS OF YOGA

Yoga will help greatly by:

• Stretching tension out
• Learning to be still
• Relaxing
• Focusing
• Balancing

Clarification

STRETCHING IN GENERAL

Some form of stretching should be encouraged for those that have the time and interest. And this is time extremely well spent.

Do I practice "Yoga"?

From Mike:
Not in the strict sense many think of it.

Do I stretch using a few stretches that are borrowed from Yoga?

From Mike:
Absolutely.

Do I incorporate other movements, foods and sounds that are not from Yoga?

From Mike:
Yes.

Even taking Chi Kung into account, I believe the most powerful breathing development techniques must be administered directly to the person by a trained breathing development professional. One with insights spanning several disciplines, including those of yoga, Chi Kung, bodywork, breathwork, nutrition, personal growth, voice and singing development.

Though I must caution you to seek medical counsel if you believe you are ill, the Self Help Breathing Tests page can help uncover breathing problems without medical testing. Do not think of them as replacements, merely adjuncts, clarifications and alerts of potential health challenges.

At the very least, Your Free Breathing Tests scores may well help to uncover numerous opportunities for personal development.

COMMENTARY

Dear Mike,

Thanks a lot for the prompt and encouraging reply. I would give some of my personal background.

I am 35 years. For the past 18 years I am in the business of ............................ I have got a ................................ Reaping monetary benefit is not on the top of my agenda. I will certainly as you have rightly advised join a yoga class.

I fully agree to your view that breathing is often steeped in esoteric agendas here in India. That was exactly the reason that I decided to look out for other sources from where I could gather information, learn and inculcate good breathing habits.

When I read some Indian books on Pranayama they appeared to me to be not touching the immediate subject, that of the psyche and the physique. When I asked about Pranayama to some elderly persons, I was warned not to practice or to think about it as it was considered to be dangerous when what I only wanted was knowing good breathing habits.

I have no direct control on my heart. Hence I cannot directly control the pace of my heart and whatever other functions it may be doing. There are innumerable such organs, systems and processes which are beyond my voluntary control and hence I cannot meddle with them. Which entails I cannot directly influence them and do them incorrectly or wrongly.

However since breathing has a voluntary part in it, it can be done incorrectly. More the reason I felt that I must know what is correct breathing. What is correct breathing when I am eating, relaxing, doing physical work, reading, having a work out, traveling, sleeping, etc. That is all what I wanted to know.

After having visited your website and that of Dennis Lewis, Ilse Middendorf, Carl Stough I recognized that the physical and psychic aspects of correct breathing are very important. Without any foreign body intervention in our body this magical gift of breathing has the potential to do wonders to us.

Importantly for me it is absolutely and truly the natural way of living.

Having come to this conclusion I feel I could live correct breathing as well as make a livelihood from teaching it when I become proficient enough.

Thanks a lot for your invitation. I will remain in touch via the e-mail and the net.

Namaste,

-- CD

"I just wanted to express my appreciation for your web-site and, what I suspect is your passion. My experience with pranayama and other eastern breath practices for going on 25 years has been, shall we say, a "learning" experience. The path I took would have been better served having had someone like yourself around to correct the unintended mistakes (learning from experience is not always the best way). My current understanding certainly supports and agrees with your well-written perceptions. Thank you."

-- Gary A

From Mike in an e-mail to C.

From Mike:
What I am saying essentially is that too many yoga teachers begin with techniques that are better off left to advanced work. That developing the mechanics of breathing should be a first priority and that most teachers that I have been around and seen the results of do not have an accurate enough idea about that to start the person off in the right direction.

Stretching is great and extremely valuable. So can yoga be great (like anything else, with a bad teacher, harmful sometimes as well), but only when done properly. Pranayama is fraught with misdirection and potential problems due to its bent for altered states of consciousness. I hear about and see its poor results all the time.

Essentially, I tell people to let the person, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, know first what it feels like to breathe deeper effortlessly, to develop a SOLID HOME BASE inside themselves. THEN do whatever you want in the way of altered states of consciousness and spiritual exploration. Not necessarily in a spiritual context because that may be getting them into dogmatic spiritual ideas rather then feelings of balance and wholeness which I believe are worldwide generic and senior to most well meaning spiritual ideas. Spiritual principles are very important but as you know from teachings within the ideas "total acceptance" of the Unity Center paradigm, the more "selecting" approaches are too often containing dogma that limits personal experiences. I add that they are quite often contained within a specific nervous system structure that is out of balance due to poor breathing and that poor breathing effects the nervous system and the entire human experience. Given that, many solid and constructive spiritual principles will be poorly integrated anyway.

Stretching is good. Kinesthetic referencing as well. How do you feel? What do you do differently when you feel like that? How is your life different? Leave it at that in the beginning. Work on developing the breath and stretching in ways that does not hinder an inner ease, balance and sense of wholeness/integrity. To bypass this is like painting a wall before you prepare the surface for paint or building a building on top of a week or non existent foundation.

You ARE I recall a psychotherapist. Do you suggest that because someone says they can teach pranayama to the Western mindset that they are qualified to assist in another's deepest process? I think not.

I believe that pranayama falls within the category of Breathwork as defined in Breathing Differences. I always recommend that this work be done with a licensed accountable professional such as yourself.

In any event you might want to consider being VERY careful of the effects that pranayama is having on your clients/students and the way they breathe. Healthy optimal breathing is too often overlooked. See Optimal Breathing School. I suggest you try our free breathing tests and take it from there.

Comments from another yoga teacher are in black. Mike's comments are in green.

From Mike:
Learning all those Sanskrit aspects in a foreign language would take decades. That to me makes it very impractical.

From a female yoga teacher:
The American Sanskrit Institute can teach an average person to chant/read the Sanskrit alphabet with proper pronunciation in one weekend, making it very practical. The youngest participants in their programs are 7 and 8 years old -

I was in both training weekends with these kids. It is actually a very practical program that uses the Yogic model to present the basics of Sanskrit. You don't need to be a scholar, Yoga student, linguist - just an average person with a desire to learn. But do not discount singing as an equal or even sometimes faster road to bliss.

There is a distinction between chanting and singing, and they are not quite the same thing. Chanting is an aspect of Bhakti Yoga, and is to be founded in devotion. It does not matter what the quality of voice, or ability of the chanter, only that they chant from the heart.

From Mike:
From a purely somatic perspective, many have no idea what that is. They cannot feel it or embody it. So it is too often an overused, trite idea with no embodied reality. What I learned form my many visits to the Sydha (sp)ashram in Oakland was that if the person does it often enough it is going to sink in; Wonderful people by and large. I really like that aspect but I have met too many chanters that do not "walk their talk". To me, the teacher is the key, not the chanting. The primary need to me is for the proper integration/marriage of ideas and chanting energy. That is also why I counsel people to choose songs that have clean, clear positive foundations to them lest the embodiment be negative, confusing or harmful. Sing the blues and you can become the blues etc.

To have to learn a foreign language takes longer for most so as to integrate thoughts and new ways of being with the speed, depth and range that singing or speaking in one's mother tongue can. For instance, one can say that the phonetics of Sanskrit are cross cultural. But I have to wonder how much longer it takes for a person to change languages in an enough of a meaningful way from their mother language to that with a Sanskrit origin before the person gets lasting benefits that are clearly integrated with their culture.

From a female yoga teacher:
The phonetics of Sanskrit are the foundation for ALL sound. The beauty of this language is that it was not originally intended to be translated, therefore there is no real need to 'learn' another language. Sanskrit was constructed in a manner that focuses more on the vibrations produced by combining different sound forms.

In fact the language was spoken (actually chanted) for a couple of thousand years before a written script was constructed. This is why the Vedas have been perfectly preserved - they were passed from teacher to student, mouth to ear with correct pronunciation and meter.

From Mike:
Sounds nice but has little meaning in the real world to me. Too abstract, esoteric. Requires much more the masses have to muster. They need a gateway to this. Optimal Breathing may be such a gateway for some. That is one of its functions.

I STILL maintain that singing (most people believe they cannot sing or at least sing well, but this is just not true if one knows how to develop the breathing rapidly and accurately so that leaves a bias against the idea of singing in the first place) in one's mother tongue is more conducive to deeper real life insight, meaningful and faster then dealing with a foreign tongue whose meanings must be interpolated into whatever culture it is trying to present itself.

From a female yoga teacher:
Again, in working with Sanskrit, it is not about translation, rather vibration Too often, we have connections to certain thoughts and experiences with words in the mother tongue, that may invoke certain psychological reactions or stimulate past mental conditioning, whereas when we work with a 'new' language, we have no preconceived connections to the words, and can begin with a clean slate.

From Mike:
I like that a lot.

From a female yoga teacher:
Of course, the chanting can sometimes bypass this prejudice but that does not make it superior to the ease of what could have been with the mother tongued the approach to singing been fast and accurate.

Here again I make a distinction between chanting and singing. With chanting, the key is in repetition, which allows regular breathing patterns to emerge easily and quickly, whereas with singing phrasing often changes, also changing the breathing patterns.

From Mike:
Yes, as does real living. So in the beginning there is stability or continuity. Very important. But after a while, anything you do with the breath repeatedly will eventually restrict its ability to respond in an other-than fashion. Restriction and locked-in patterns develop restricted thoughts, attitudes, emotions and states of being. That is one example were" blind obedience to the Guru" isms begin. One is no longer breathing free. May be good or bad. To me it is mostly bad because breathing "patterns" will eventually drive the nervous system and distort thoughts without the knowledge of the breather. This is a too often unconsciousness and rote reaction. The key to me is variety and continuity. That is why spiritual communities can be so great. That is also why they do not grow to cities and countries because they too often eventually limit one's natural sense of freedom. This is a basis of many dogmatic psychosocial paradigms.

From a female yoga teacher:
I also have to (personally) disagree with you in that chanting in Sanskrit is superior to anything we have in any other language. In the mid 80's NASA research center made the startling discovery that Sanskrit is the only unambiguous language known on the planet - even more astounding is the fact that it is the only natural language suited for use in artificial intelligence. (AI Magazine Spring '85) There is a small, but growing movement in India and the US for Sanskritam to become a universal language because it crosses all boundaries culturally and intellectually. But it must be taught as a living language with the emphasis on pronunciation, which unfortunately is the aspect left out in most university and college Sanskrit programs.

From Mike:
Again an impractical and esoteric approach that may have deep superiority (would love to see artificial intelligence in state of the art levels) given several unattainable circumstances and remains unreachable to the masses.

As I said before, "Learning all those Sanskrit aspects .......................... would take decades. That to me makes it very impractical. Not impossible, not improbable, just impractical."

I really like the way you present this material. You are to me a dedicated and great teacher.

I would like to meet you some day.
-- Mike

For those wishing to delve deeper into Sanskrit click on http://www.americansanskrit.com. She tells me the fundamentals can be learned in just a few days. Perhaps I will see you at a weekend class. mgw ;-)

Qigong-induced mental disorders: a review by Beng Yeong Ng Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 1999;33;197-206. Roughly 5% of the people that practice Qigong in China develop "deviations" from health as a result of that practice. 76% of those do not have an instructor.

Kundalini yoga, more specifically vigorous pranayama with retention, seems to induce chemical changes in the body leading to heat, increased nervous excitability and tetany. A violent rise in Kundalini energy can bring on swings of mood that often ultimately result in chronic depression. Many dedicated students of TM often suffer from this. Surely there must be a vitamin demand created by all of the chemical activity induced by Kundalini. Question: Which vitamins become deficient as a result of this demand? I know B vitamin deficiency in general can lead to depression, but do you know which ones are specifically thrown out of balance by Kundalini? How about any other vitamins like C and electrolytes like magnesium and potassium? A display of anger is said to consume large quantities of vitamin C, and anger is very similar to a Kundalini rise. Knowledgeable compensation for nutritional variances induced by Kundalini can be a very valuable tool to successful spiritual practice.

If any one has any credible insights on this please e-mail Mike.

"Sorry I can't shed any more light than has already been outlined in what you sent. The effects of Kundalini on depression is not something I have ever looked at, so I am drawing a blank. However, the effects of vitamins B1, B2, B6, and magnesium are well known factors in the etiology of depression and it is possible that the metabolism of these or other nutrients are being disrupted."

-- Raymond Francis
www.beyondhealth.com

"Breath is the unifying principal of the three systems of mechanics, metabolism, and mentality. It is the psychopharmacological link between conscious and unconscious states. Each of the three mechanical aspects of the breath have specific neurotransmissional function. Any technique that emphasizes one aspect of the mechanism exclusively will shift neurometabolism accordingly. Since neurometabolism is a volatile equilibrium, this is not trivial. Yoga practices are designed for this purpose, stimulating a specific aspect or relationship of aspects. I realize that contemporary yogis don't always explain it this way, and I think that also leads to misuse and abuse. Right knowledge is yoga or union. That union is from bringing together all aspects, and applying discernment."

-- Jim N., Breathing Times subscriber
Jim Nettles, Incorporated
Scientific Holistic Consulting
iam@wellyes.com

"All the yoga ways of breathing come from the male way. The Eastern way of thinking is to find God in one direction, in a male way. 'The way is directed. I go there and I have to go; I must go'. This way needs will; that is also the reason why, in this case, breathing is connected. It has something to do with will. This male way of being needs will. When this is the basis, the breathing is under the law of the will."

-- Ilse Middendorf

From Mike:
This transforms conscious breathing into "self-conscious" breathing. It gets out of balance.