In the Viniyoga tradition of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, yoga poses/exercises (asana) are used to prepare the body for meditation. The meditation is a process of exercises while focusing on an object. The object could be gross, such as a mountain, or subtle such as a concept. The teacher chooses the object for the student.
The Mudras are also specific yoga asanas, which are often referred to as poses or exercises in the west. These Mudras are an advanced practice and should be done with the guidance of a qualified teacher.
Agree! Pranayama and other yoga practices are very powerful and effective. It's very important to have an experienced teacher rather than trying to do it yourself. These practices can have very strong effects and can be misused. There is a lot of misinformation floating around. I recommend finding an experienced teacher in the Krishnamacharya/Viniyoga tradition.
There could be many different issues that could arise, it depends on the person. I will note an experience that I had.
I had been doing a Viniyoga practice for 1 or 2 years. I do pranayama in my asana (the physical exercises) and at this time I was not doing a separate pranayama practice. My teacher changed the pranayama in my practice and I became ill as if having a bad flu and I had some nasty boils break out on my legs. In retrospect, I needed to do some detoxing before doing this type of pranayama. My teacher kept me away from doing that pranayama for one or two years. Now I can, and have, been doing advanced pranayama for many years with no issues. I do this mostly in my asana practice but I do have seperate pranayama practices that I can do as well.
I practice on my own. In our tradition, yoga is taught one to one. There are some classes you can find, but the intent of these is to introduce people to the tradition and for people to get to know the teacher a bit before doing private sessions. Yoga is taught this way so that the program that a person follows has been customized for their situation. This can have a great effect.
Back to your question. My teacher is fully booked and not taking new students. He mostly does seminars and teacher trainings. His name is Chase Bossart and he studied with TKV Desikachar over a 20 year period.
I've had almost 12 years of study with Chase and I'm now teaching on a limited basis. There are other students of Chase here in the SF Bay area and there are many people who studied with Desikachar around the world.
Cool. The Desikachar and Krishnmacharya people seem really good and very practical. I have done some trainings with Gray Kraftsow and I would love to have someone with that depth of knowledge guide my practice.
A few years ago I did teacher training (RYT-500 plus a few hundred more hours), taught for a few years. I have studied with a lot of people like Kraftsow, Rod Stryker and others but I haven't found a teacher who is knowledgeable and provides individual training. I am practicing myself but I wonder how much progress I could make with a good teacher.
Thoughts:
1. What tradition did you study?
2. I think a good teacher would make a difference if you studied a different tradition/line of teachers.
3. I'm interested to know what you are practicing.
4. As I mentioned before there are people doing private mentoring, but you have to look for them and find one that you like. We need to get a directory going, but that will take time. If you want, you can ping me here: ab@iw401fi.33mail.com
and I can try to help you find someone.
orhmeh09, there's no link for me to reply to your comment. So I'll post here.
My understanding of things like boils is that the body is not able to release the toxins quickly enough through the digestive system, so it releases them through the skin.
The pranayama I was doing was pushing my body to get rid of toxins. After doing some juice cleansing, I was able to do this type of pranayama.
Pranayama is typically fast breathing, and sometimes continuous in/out breathing. it's very different from the 4x4 breathing mentioned in this thread.
I am healing trauma and my experience with pranayama is that it doesn't help. Pranayama excitest he nervous system, thus causes more upset. Pranayama is something you should do when you are emotionally stable.
You can see that it excites the nervous system because you get tingly sensations coursing in your arms, or legs, or various places.
What I found from personal experience having done meditation and vipassana before, is that it isn't necessary to deliberately work with the nervous system.
If anything, I'd recommend the opposite to anybody. Try to RELAX as much as possible again and again. The extent to which you can not fully relax and sink into your sofa at the end of the day, AND forget about everything and be fully engaged in the present and what you're watching (if you're watching tv)... THAT is the extent to which there are tensions in the body that are in fact TIGHTENING and constricting the flow of energy. And by energy I mean here, science doesn't have words for that yet. Go figure, I think it's mostly blood flow but some of it can be nervous system related as well.
Put it simply: rather than excite the nervous system to supposedly make it stronger, you relax the bodily tensions so that the VITALITY that is already present and always there can move unimpeded. This is admittedly a view closer to that of bioenergetics, and I find it matches VERY closesly to my experience healing trauma.
That is why anxiety is the way it is. If it was a "charge" in the body, then you'd spend it and be done with it. And yet, it seems endless. It's seemingly endless because it's always created right there in the moment. It is the very vitality of the nervous system that is continually impeded by bodily tensions. The mind is what keeps those tensions in place.
Yoga in a sense also excites the nervous system by opening up the tensions, but it's much softer and safer than pranayama.
I know for fact that it excites the nervous system since I am healing trauma I can feel the agitation in me after each yoga class. First, it feels good but by the time I'm home 1h later... I feel agitated... I have to force myself to settle down and then relax with the tv for 30min to an hour. WHich is a very good practice. I suspect a lot of people don't realize that dimension of yoga because as soon as they're out of the class they keep getting busy. If you however try to be still after yoga, then it can be a good practice to try and relax into it.
So TLDR don't do pranayama (fast breathing) with SIGNIFICANT (ie. many years) anxiety and/or depression. While you may have a few pleasant highs, you'll end up adding more tension and cause more agitation.
My advice is to find a good yoga class, and do the slow breathing throughout the whole class. Typically breathing in and out in sync with slowly opening/closing arms/legs/whatever posture it is.
Whatever pranayama does for you, the signs of coming out of a state of vigilance in the body are:
- vision feels like it opens up, more panoramic
- colours sometimes feel more vibrant, blacks look deeper
- you notice smells you didn't notice before
- you feel areas of the body more than you used to
- hands feel very soft
- hands are warmer, more often than before, sometimes REALLY warm which is super nice then you can rest a hand on your chest or diaphragm area
- the mind calms down
- in general due to all of this you feel more "anchored" in present experience for lack of better world
respectfully, no. There are dozens of techniques under the name of Pranayama.. what you are describing (at length) is not the whole picture.. for example, a pattern of "out 8 steps; in 1 long step" is calming and also "pranayama"
Agree! teachers in the system of BKS Iyengar are skilled as well.. For the skeptical or drive-by practitioners.. think for a moment on all the states of activity the human body is capable of .. from the deepest rest, to the most active fight or flight and multitudes of others.. breathing has to connect to each, both following (support that metabolic state) or leading (change state quickly) .. next, think for a moment on the greater numbers of illness in the mind and body.. following, or leading.. short answer, you can invoke the breath of the athletes, or of the dying, in the extremes.. heart-attack in the infirm, panic and confusion in the unstable, etc.. Please be careful with pranayama or breathing practices !
The renowned author Michael Pollan said in his book about psychedelics that breathing exercises can get you part the way there without any drugs at all.
