Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Practice Report: There may be something to that long-breath-short-breath thing, after all

I found this out the hard (?) way this morning. As I started my practice this morning, I couldn't help thinking about Grimmly's recent posts about the length of the inhalation and exhalation, and paid more attention to my breathing. It turns out that I start out with fairly long breaths in Suryas A and B. And then, for some inexplicable reason, once I get into Trikonasana, my breaths suddenly start getting shorter. Not sure why I do this; it's not as if the standing postures are particularly physically challenging. Anyway, I noticed this tendency, and tried to compensate by deliberately making my breaths longer. Boy, did that make Virabhadrasanas A and B harder; my thighs were positively burning. Turns out I have been slacking in the standing postures without even being aware of it.

The interesting thing is, once I got into primary (starting from Paschimottanasana), my breath automatically regained the length it had in the Suryas without any effort on my own. Curious, don't you think?

In any case, I have Grimmly to thank for bringing my attention to these fluctuations of my breath during practice. Moral of the story? I don't know... do not be dismissive of other blogger's musings about practice?

7 comments:

  1. Can I take it that your wet towel is merely a moist flannel now Nobel? : )
    I noticed something curious in the Marchi twists. I hadn't noticed that my breath had become shorter although it's to be expected but i did notice that I'd subconsciously cut my mantra in half to compensate for the length of the breath, curious.
    One of the senior teachers possibly on the kripula gig mentioned i think that Pattabhi Jois used to take Standing and finishing slower than the main series, many teachers seem to take the first couple of Sury's slow and then crank it up to full speed Ashtanga practice.
    I do think this is an important issue, how do you go from a ten second inhalation as an ideal ( according to Jois and Krishnamacharya) to two or three seconds, hell Yoga is supposed to slow down our breathing and yet if you watch most of the videos on my post everyone is breathing faster than if they were just sitting down having a cup of tea. The breath is faster, the heart rate is faster. I take David G's point about balancing energy which is why I quoted it and kept it hovering in the background but more to suggest that perhaps we've got the balance wrong somewhat, and lost sight of perhaps THE key element of yoga practice in Krishnamacharya's tradition, long, deep, slow, full breathing ( like pouring oil). Sorry bit of a rant.

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    1. "Can I take it that your wet towel is merely a moist flannel now Nobel? : )"

      Yes, and it's getting less and less moist by the minute :-)

      Do you chant mantra while doing asanas? Very interesting. Do this have any noticeable effects on the length of your breath?

      I'm all for taking one's time in the Suryas as well. I think doing this helps you to get in touch with all the muscular actions needed to engage the bandhas. Actually, i think that floating in the Suryas also helps to engage the bandhas; so floating is not just showing off :-)

      I like the image of pouring oil. I've found that doing Sharath's led primary CD once a week is actually good for me, even though his count only allows for a two-inhalation, as you noted. I think doing it to his brisk count helps to build rajas in a sequence that is more or less inherently tamasic in nature (due to the number of forward bends). But then again, I don't suppose it would be a good idea to do it at this brisk pace everyday. Too much rajas.



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  2. yes Noble, I mentally chant a mantra/prayer, good way of regulating the breath. I've written about it here
    http://grimmly2007.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/dharana-mantra-is-new-black.html

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    1. Interesting, I'll read your post soon. It's getting a bit difficult to keep up with all these blogs that I am following ;-)

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  3. i'd like to offer this explanation for increased breath rate: it's simply a matter of your diaphragm (a muscle like any other) getting warmed up. the warmer a muscle is, the easier and more fluid its movement. if you clocked yourself throwing a baseball once when stone cold and again after being warmed up, the second time would be faster, would it not? seems to me that what's essential is not necessarily keeping to a set length of time for inhalation and exhalation (within limits, of course, you don't want to devolve into panting), but rather maintaining a calm mental state all the way through. that's why mentally doing mantram is a good idea, i think.

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    1. Very interesting, Patrick. I like the baseball analogy. I thin you are right about maintaining a calm mental state being what's most important. But as of right now, I actually feel quite sore in certain places in my thighs and hips that I have not felt in a while. I think this is due to my practice yesterday (as described in this post); so I guess I must be doing something right in paying more attention to my breath in standing.

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