Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 4)

A few weeks ago when I was at my mom's house, tooling around on http://www.yogajournal.com, I happened to stumble across a pair of rather interesting community polls. The first poll was meant to get stastical numbers for magazine research, concerning how many people commonly take part in springtime rituals, not including the habitual rituals of "spring cleaning", or even the annual ritual of gardening in the springtime. It somewhat grieves me to report that I don't actually participate in any springtime rituals myself, though it probably goes without saying that I'd absolutely love to be a part of a springtime ritual, provided that it was a serious affair, and not just some silly New-Age thing involing crystals and monkish mumbling that other people are doing simply because they think they should, without thinking about why they should. (As you can tell, I question everything and put my full trust nothing and no one, at least not right away. I wonder sometimes if we should all be kind of like that. As living beings with free will, I believe that our questions should be good ones, and that trust should always be earned.) The second of these polls was asking intrigued yogins to please identify the particular time of day when they find that they most enjoy practicing series of yoga exercises. The options the poll gave for our votes were "Morning", "Midday", and "Evening". I really wish that the term "Afternoon" had been an option, back there. While I do yoga for at least twenty minutes every day, and quite often in the morning, especially on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings when my classes occur, I discovered a long time ago that my absolute favorite time to do yoga is during the afternoon hours. And I'll tell you why, now, using nice-sounding words in an effort to describe my afternoon yoga practice to the best of my ability.

To begin with, it's all about the light! There's almost nothing more purely beautiful, I think, than the warm, dark golden light that pours in wide shafts through the rafters in the ceiling near the attic, and brightens up the delicate, dusty screens of indellible cobweb, which fall in shallow folds across the ancient wood and cause the deep natural whorls in the pine to be only half-visible. The amber light of the afternoon sun seems to be teeming with life and action as tiny motes of loose colorless dust run their course in a network of fine lines. Living air, full of the weird kinetic energy of invisible atoms and dust, makes my dad cough and sneeze constantly. But on golden afternoons in the springtime, I feel as though I could go on breathing and living forever. That might be quite a good example of yoga. The warm golden sunlight, pressing reassuringly against my face as I sit cross-legged in quiet meditation on my blue mat, allows me a very real sense of my place and purpose in the world, which in turn does wonders to calm me down at the end of each day. I keep my eyes closed and breathe. I like to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, softly but deeply. I keep my shoulders rolled back and my back straight, though not to the point where the asana is in the least but uncomfortable, because this is something I usually do for several minutes, at least.

During meditation, with the practice of pranayama, I am able to find myself again, to locate my very own mindset, when an especially difficult day at work or school, or else an unusually trying experience, knocks it slightly off-kilter. Silent meditation, better than outspoken prayer, assists me in discerning my own important truths when faced with the contradicting opinions of my friends, neighbors, acquaintances, parents and teachers. In yoga, pranayama is absolutely everything; even the various asanas that follow my meditation come only second to pranayama. I mean, I seriously think of it like this: When you inhale, you take strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world. Or, you could even say it in a slightly different sense if you want, on the subject of pranayama, Krishnamacharya-style: Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and you surrender to God. I read that quote not too long ago, loved it entirely, and made myself memorize it to use in the yoga classes I sometimes teach from my house. I whispered it late last night during a yoga lesson I taught involving moon salutations at the bonfire on Arthur's property, when the sky was completely clear and the moon seemed to be shining everywhere at once.

Pranayama is an ancient Sanskrit word comprising of the root words prana, ayama and yama. The practice and power of pranayama is surprisingly similar to the Chinese concept of "chi" and the Hawaiian practice of "mana". Pranayama is a word describing the plethora of yogic breathing exercises that assist the practitioner with the control and direction of life energy, or prana. Many aspects and techniques of pranayama were codified by Patanjali in the volumes of texts of yoga philosophy and practice known as the Yoga Sutras. The term prana commonly refers to the unique pattern of breath that stems from the vital energy, or life force, of the entire universe. Yama can possibly be best defined in Sanskrit, according to Wikipedia, as "that which circumscribes", contracts and controls. Ayama, in an exact translation, is the Sanskrit word for "expansion", or "extension". Thus, the general concept of the word pranayama can be understood as being the technique for the extension and expansion of breath, as well as the control of breath in relation to the life force of the universe. It might be relatively helpful to say that Pranayama is connected through prana, which is alltogether quite different from the normal pattern of breathing you have in your physical body. The essensial science of yoga works primarily through the energy of the body through the energy-controlling science of pranayama. According to the awesome writings and biography of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, "Yoga teaches how, through breath-control, to still the mind and attain higher states of awareness. The higher teachings of yoga take one beyond techniques, and instruct the yogi on how to direct his concentration in such a way as not only to harmonize human with divine consciousness, but to merge his consciousness in the Infinite." A wise man called Swami Krishnanada also said this of yoga, involving the concept of pranayama: "The essence of the prana is activity. It is the prana that makes the heart beat, the lungs function and the stomach secrete juices. Hence, neither breathing nor lung-function ceases till death. The prana never goes to sleep, just as the heart never stops beating. The prana is regarded as the watchman of the body."

In your journey through the practice of yoga, it's possible that you might find quite a few yoga instructors who honestly recommend that all pranayama techniques be practiced with care. Unlike some complicated yogic asanas, which can be used on occassion as cool party tricks, some of the more advanced pranayama techniques should probably always be practiced under the guide of an actual certified yoga instructor, which...isn't me, so that's why I don't go very far into teaching my house or field students about pranayama, other than just the basic definition of it, if only because there have been more than a few past occassions, in which I've sat meditation and tried to hold my breath for up to three minutes, or something like that, and even though I can proudly say that I suceeded in this seven times out of ten, it's definitely not something that everyone can do, or teach. People have seriously gotten themselves killed practicing pranayama, and I know someone at AB-Tech who was telling me about a time when he passed out trying to do something to noticeably warp the natural pattern of his breath. So, that's my warning. Such strong cautions are also given in traditional Hindu literature, including a similar passage in every single one of Pantanjali's Yoga Sutras.

Coming Soon: An essay having to do with the concept of pratyahara. These papers on yoga philosophy are extremely important to me, and so I really hope that I can make it a good one!