Day 44, Practice 35

I explored the quality of the breath during today's mysore practice.

Ah, the breath... Sometimes, you get carried away with it, turning you oblivious to your surroundings. At times, you get carried away by it, into the messy realm of your subconscious. Other times, you are afraid how that may exhaust you more than you need to be in postural yoga, as you try to find a balance (ujjayi or "breathing with sound", it generates a lot of internal heat!). For me, breathing is something I usually refrain from emphasizing too much as I am, by nature, an easy and heavy sweat-er.

The journey of the breath begins from the Sun Salutations, vinyasa by vinyasa, to the standing postures, to the first jump through to seated postures, to the deep twisting poses (yes, Marichyasana C and D, Pasasana), to the home stretch of the finishing sequence, and finally, relinquishing total control and ownership of it, come dead man's pose.

The quality of the breath varies with the landscape of the yoga sequence. Moderate, regulated breathing. Shallow, upbeat, 1/4 breaths. Unexpected grunts and high-pitched gasps. Suspensions in between. Slow, long, to-the-edge-of-your-bursting-lungs breaths. Free, unrestrained, rising and falling of the chest.

Yoga asanas are the path, your breath, its traveler. By observing breathing alone, it becomes fascinating to watch, requires skill to understand, and experience to master. There is a story unfolding; of a traveler in his or her journey. After all, it is the doorway to the mind (and the self) and everything held in that universe that ascetics, yogis and ancient rishis had worked a lifetime to unravel.

Breath control starts with breath counting and it happens in stages, one to the next. The shift from gross to subtle, travels in that spectrum, that order. You cannot skip or miss a step. This is the beauty of yoga. It is logical. The system of vinyasa and it's parameters of counting breath poses great depth and intelligence for the curious to uncover, and here we are, only scratching the surface of what yoga is and can be about.

For narcissistic highs of today's practice: I managed to catch some airtime lifting my ass up from Supta K to a questionable-looking tittibhasana.

Till tomorrow.