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Desikachar teaches
the exact opposite: inhale from the top down to the bottom
and exhale from the bottom up to the top. Yet Iyengar and
Desikachar both had the same teacher, Krishnamurthi. The reader
had most recently been to a teacher who taught yet another
way – the Gitananda way – inhale from the bottom
up to the top and exhale from the bottom up to the top.
So what
is the yoga student who does not exclusively follow one tradition
to do? What is the natural process? And are the others just
wrong?
To me the breath is the most important
part of yoga practice. It is through awareness of the breath
that the oneness, the wholeness, of body, mind and spirit
is realised. Over the last twenty-five years I have been to
teachers who teach all three methods and I have used their
method. I have spent a lot of time watching how the breath
works naturally while still, whilst moving and whilst in asanas,
observing what works best for me and formulating what I wish
to pass on to my students. The conclusion I have come to is
that they are all right.
Try this:-
Get into a comfortable position either lying perhaps in Savasana
or semi-supine or seated perhaps in Siddhasana or just as
you are reading this (with a straight spine of course!) and
just watch your breath and try to see what the natural process
is.
It seems to me that it’s more like
filling and emptying a bath than pouring water into and out
of a jug. When you fill a bath, it certainly fills from the
bottom up to the top (or more likely only half way up) so
Iyengar and Gitananda are right about that. But you could
also view it from the prospective of the tap from which the
water is coming. The water is undoubtedly coming in from the
top and going all the way down to the bottom, just as the
air you breathe comes in from your nose and goes all the way
down to the bottom of your lungs and causes the diaphagm to
move down and the abdomen to gently expand. So Desikachar
is also right.
When you empty the bath, you pull the
plug out so the water goes out through the plug hole. When
you breath out there is a similar feeling in the solar plexus
to a plug hole as the diaphragm goes back up and the abdomen
goes back in where it came from and the ribs and upper chest
go back in. So Desikachar and Gitananda are right about that.
But it cannot be denied that the water level falls from the
top down to the bottom, so Iyengar is also right.
So what is the natural process? It just
depends on your perspective. But it may be worth noting that
two out of the three authorities view the inhaling breath
as from bottom to top, and two out of the three authorities
view the exhaling breath as from bottom to top. What is more
important is that the natural process of breathing should
be just that – natural, effortless and comfortable.
It should not be forced, artificial or uncomfortable. Perhaps
this is where the reader ran into difficulties.
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