Tripping through prana

I lie down in savasana, arrange my arms and legs. I adjust the position of my shoulderblades. Readjust my head to reduce the bend of my neck. Open my eyes once more, then close them, drawing the gaze inward to the space between my eyes.

Darren Main begins calling the breath instructions. Heidi, assisting him, moves through the room.

Five breaths in, I’m curious.

Five more, no change.

Five more, I feel a tendril of difference, of opening. I register the briefest sensation of aversion and fear. I choose to allow it.

Five more, and a sense of elation arises, lightness.

The breathing continues, but the opening moves to the foreground.

A slight tingling at the tip of my nose.

Nadis in the thumbs and forearms energize and brighten.

A sense of the separation of being high.

Darren calls for five deeper breaths, then, on the exhale, hold until the need for new breath.

At the fifth, breath enters deeply, then out. Then I move into the upward lift of navasana.

Everything ignites. Blazes upward.

St. Theresa.

* * *

Breath brings me back to earth.

Then draws the heart higher.

An image of matsyasana, fish pose, arises in my mind.

My heart lifts, spine arches.

Root bandha engages. Navel bandha locks.

The throat widens and prana moves out with each exhale. I draw the chin toward the chest.

* * *

Heidi presses her thumb into the center of my forehead.

The trembling in my arms and heart cohere into rapid pulsing.

The light coming through my eyelids flashes bright/dark, then pulses.

The sounds of Heidi’s breath penetrate my sensory rock concert.

Then I realize she’s reaching out to me with the sound of her breath. Suggesting.

My mind slowly thinks to match her breath, but there’s no purchase for the mind on the self-driving breath.

Heidi’s thumb slides up the forehead, toward the hairline.

All mind connects to her thumb, focus narrows to it, tendrils of mind, of wanting, wrap around the connection, wanting more. Wanting.

Trembling and pulsing grow to all.

Heidi releases and the mind hears her moving to a nearby person.

* * *

The connection gone, the grasping remains.

Darkness, disappointment, rejection, suffering, anguish all arise. Grasping at loss is all.

The body twists and contorts, spams.

Sobbing.

* * *

Heidi returns, now in first aid mode. Her touch channels the prana.

A dark phase of matsyasana emerges. Hands clenched. Resistance increases.

Heidi’s breathing re-enters my awareness.

Opposition.

She unpeels my fingers from my fist.

The mind sees her calm.

The body arches toward the ceiling.

Then entirely quiet.

Mind quiet.

Body moves into stillness.

* * *

New cycles of breath.

New openness.

Badda konasana. Mula bandha, Uddiyana bandha, Jalandhara bandha all lock.

Then release.

More savasana.

Quiet mind.

Gentle witnessing awareness emerges.

* * *
The first time I participated in a pranayama workshop with Darren Main, I felt like the experience was more than mildly dangerous.

From a flatlander’s perspective, it seemed to me to be simply hyperventilation and the disorientation and high associated with it, resulting in some laughter, some sobbing. And though I categorized it and labeled it so, how could that really be as dangerous as I felt it was? With time, I became more interested in the connection between breath and emotion and joy and sorrow that was apparent from the experience.

So by the time Darren came back a year later, I decided to try it again.

Second go-around, less dramatic, less worrisome. Similarly interesting. I was more curious.

Sometimes, three’s the charm.

* * *
Like the first two experiences with pranayama, in my third just last week, I again experienced the loosening of the grip of the conscious mind that results from hyperventilation. But rather than shifting into seemingly random emotional or mental states, this time there was enough mindfulness beneath the conscious mind to hold the order and openness.

The explosion of ignition that came first was elemental.

But what I find most interesting now is how clearly I felt then and remember even now the grasping for more of the fireworks, the reaching out, wanting, clinging to Heidi’s touch, and then the huge wave of darkness that followed the separation, the clinging with nothing to hold onto, the completeness of misery and unhappiness. Complete and utter dukkha.

So now – back to pranayama. I think I understand its potential a bit better than I did before. Yes, it involves changing the body’s chemistry. Yes, its effects can be rightly characterized as unstable. But at a finer level of granularity, for me this time, it reduced the energy usually drawn by the thinking mind, increased the energy channeled through the body, and increased the brightness of my feelings to Klieg lamp levels.

At that level of brightness – where feelings/sensations were all in all – I saw more clearly and sharply both the grasping of wanting more that impeded my experience of what was happening, as well as the inundating darkness and suffering that came from the grasping once the wave of experience subsided.

Not only is it clear that that Buddha guy knew what he was talking about when it came to that Second Noble Truth, it’s also clear that in the trippy altered mind state of that pranayama practice, what is see-able is not always as random as I’d guessed.

Who's breathing?

For much of my life, breathing has come in two modes. The first is natural, guided by my autonomic nervous system, fluctuating with the oxygen requirements of my body, with my emotional state. The other is an act of pure, conscious will, structured, managed, controlled, like the long, slow breaths I would use to calm my mind even before I discovered the pranayama breath control practices of yoga -- or the formally structured six-count inhale to maximum capacity followed by six-count exhale evacuating all but the tidal capacities of my lungs.

Yesterday in meditation, I added a third mode – one that I don’t recall hearing about before. Usually in meditation, as my mind quiets, my breath becomes quieter and slower, just as it did yesterday.

But toward the end of my sitting time, the breath began to increase in depth and speed until it crested and held at a strong pranic pace and depth, drawing up along the back spine, circling down the front chakra sequence, up the back, down the front.

The breath itself wasn’t unusual – it was quite similar to a pranayama practice that I use periodically. What was unusual was that “I” didn’t breathe that particular breath.
It breathed me.

It arose at a time when my body manifested no obvious need for oxygen, no emotional state that linked to breath. It manifested a rather ornate structure, pace, and sequence.

And the will-powered self that thinks it’s in control of just about everything didn’t have anything to do with it. At that point in my meditation practice, as usual, that self was busy watching thoughts arise, sustain, and subside. When the breath arose, the self turned to watch it arise, watched it sustain, and watched it subside.

I’ve been breathed by a breath.

Kind of turns the entire notion of pranayama as a form of intentional breath control on its head.

Fascinating.

Off the mat -- Pranayama

Pranayama, aside from sounding cool when you pronounce it, holds a rather central place in the practice of Yoga, both on the mat and off.

If you look closely at the word, you’ll recognize the second half of it already: yama. We’ve just recently finished talking about the yamas as a group. While we used the term yama to mean ethical practices, the word means, variously, “discipline,” or “bridle,” or “control.” In the context of pranayama, it means control of prana – or energy.

In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali promises pretty remarkable things to those who master the control of such energies, from spaciousness and subtle perceptions to lifting the “veil from the mind’s luminosity.” I can’t tell you a lot about the more esoteric parts of pranayama, but I have experienced enough to help you discover at least some of its magic. In fact, you’ve likely already experienced some of it for yourself. One of the things that first-time practitioners of yoga discover is that they feel different during and after a yoga practice than they do in normal life. That perception is one experience of prana. But there are lots of others.

I’m more than willing to discuss whatever aspects of your experience with prana and pranayama that you’d like, so feel free to respond with ideas, questions, comments and the like. It seems to me that even in advance of hearing your topics, in the next few Off the Mat notes, I’d like to explore at least the following discussions with you:

1. The various way we encounter prana practicing yoga, from the simplest breathing to the strongest exertion

2. The relationship of breath to yoga and breath to life in lots of its forms, from steady and still to crying to laughing

3. Basic starting breath practices to improve life off the mat, calming, energizing, focusing (think Lamaze for living)

4. Ways that we can refine our perceptions and experience and control of prana

Please let me know what you'd like to explore.

S

OM Circle, week 3

(from a couple of weeks ago, just finished the write up)

OM Circle, week 3

Three regulars, two new participants and me. Six of us, sitting on the floor of a yoga studio’s office/storageroom/teacher-drop-your-stuff-off room. A makeshift altar with a couple of Buddhas, a flower and several pictures of gurus. Someone has placed a food offering before the images.

With brief instructions, we begin chanting OM. Harmonics fluctuate, thirds, minor and major, parallel fourths, but more seconds, the disharmony harmonizing. As I chamber my mouth and throat, sound is created in me. I vibrate. At first, just at my larynx. With a slight shift of my soft palate, the vibration shifts into my chest cavity. A mouth shape change, and the vibration shifts into my mask and skull. As each of my OMs fades into its own silence, it also fades into someone else’s OM – a cycle of death into life that ties us all into one. A person across from me intones a base note, just as I find my voice moving from a groan into a major third. His tone meshes and reshapes my own, inside my throat, and instead of singing one note, both blend at their source, and I cannot distinguish my own sound from his, from ours. After some period of time (I lose track during these exercises), someone taps me on the knee – the signal for me to move to the center of the circle for a time. I sit on a block in virasana. I’m bathed in sounds from others. Briefly, emotional response arises, then, though when I notice it, I half-intend to sustain it, it subsides. The interruption to my chant declines, and I resume. I find for several minutes that the vibration of the chant has moved into my arms and hands. I position them above my thighs, allowing them to vibrate in space. Another tap on the knee, and my time in the center is done. I shift back to the circle, another enters. I shape my sound to bathe her in tone. As different intonations run hoarse, I find another level to work. Then the leader says, softly, “last,” and I exhale the final OM across my larynx, up into my sinues, against the facial skeleton, into the chambers of my throat and mouth, and into the room, into silence.

From the inside, my hands are energy, their fields of perception extending beyond my skin. Unbounded. I rest them on my thighs. My mind strongly shifts to manifest a Ponderosa pine. “A Ponderosa?” I wonder. “Strange familiar.” The wordplay is opaque to me at the time. I think of inhaling the butterscotch scent of a Ponderosa’s bark in the heat of the sun.

Though we call it an OM circle, and though it is structured as an exercise of puja, we are largely engaged in the third, fourth and sixth limbs of the eight-limbed path of yoga: asana or posture, pranayama or breath control, and dharana or concentration. Each practice has its own characteristics that distinguish it from the others. The first night, it was the marked lightness I associated with a high. The second, it was the bright and clear dreams and the carried-through of concentration. Today it is the energy fields around my hands and, evidenced by this write-up, an unexpected energy that seems to have dispelled sleep, for now at any rate.

OM Circle

This evening, something I've wanted began to form itself.

I don't know whether it will survive to maturity or not, but there is more to it than there was before this evening.

Though I have yoga teachers and studios and students and co-practitioners in various settings, I have realized in recent months a lack of a community linked by yoga within which to grow and share and support and provide contrast.

Several weeks ago, one of my teacher/friends and I met for tea. We talked about our respective interests in forming a community that could explore more of Yoga than asana practices alone. Her resolve and my willingness to join the effort resulted in the first meeting this evening of an OM circle. Whatever it may become, this evening, it was small and simple: five people sitting on the floor of a small office above a bustling yoga studio. Heather -- the organizer, Jean -- Heather's mother, and three yogis Heather seemed to have collected from various interactions, myself included. Heather instructed us in the simple process -- we would sit in a comfortable meditation position in a circle, one person in the center, close our eyes, and chant OM, each person ending to take new breath as needed, then resuming. Each of us would take turns sitting in the center for a few minutes at a time.

Heather advised that her guru, whose name I forget, encouraged her to implement this. I tried to suspend my skepticism about all things guru-ic, remembering that I, too, have found important relationships with teachers and mentors at different stages of my life, and that I yet would welcome a teacher to guide my efforts. I managed to keep the mental gymnastics quiet -- I could honor her guru as manifested in the creative and energetic and kind person that she is. She then described various effects that could be anticipated from this exercise, ranging from audible experiences of additional or enhanced sounds, to perceptions of energy movements.

Even without that discussion, I was interested and mildly expectant. We began.

It was, in essence, singing a single syllable. I have sung in many situations and in many combinations of voices throughout my life. So this felt rather natural to me. My attention, as it always does when singing, went first to the breath, then to the intonation, the blend, the harmonies. After a few minutes, I modulated my tones, shifting from a bass register to a more natural baritone. At that level, I was chanting in thirds and fourths to the base tone. Once the harmonies developed, they would constantly change, as each other voice entered or dropped out, and as I chanted to the extent of the breath, and then stopped to inhale.

Dimensionally, the OM-ing crescendoed and softened, intonations droned and sharpened, I could feel the sounds being shaped by my vocal cords, by the lifting of my soft palate. I could feel the vibration of the tones in my belly, my chest, my throat, my facial mask. My mind shifted and drifted, always readily coming back to the present-sense experience of the chant. I was aware when the others' breath shifted, as one person moved out of the center, and another moved in. I noticed when others were running out of breath and sustained my OM until they resumed. At points, I felt that the sound was both a tool I could use, and a thing itself. Singer -- song. Dancer -- dance. It seemed a kind of energy. At other points, I felt slight energy effects in my arms and hands. Once, I felt a shakti kind of surge. The experience at the center of the circle, when my turn came, was not different in kind from the experience at the edge of the circle, though the sense of immersion in sound was more complete. Finally, at Heather's verbal instruction, we concluded the OM-ing.

At the end, we chanted a brief mantra in honor of Shiva and the lineage of instruction to which Heather pertains.

It felt devotional, but I was mildly disappointed that it had seemed quite so familiar -- singing with others always, in my experience, entails connection to and with them, always entails harmonies and, when done well, overtones, always entails intonation and timbre and involvement of the mind and body with the sound and the perception.

Then we opened our eyes. And I realized that we'd been chanting OM for about forty minutes -- I'd lost attention to time after the first few minutes. Eyes open, I also realized that my perceptions were different. It's hard to put a label on exactly how different, but I felt mildly high -- not really hyperventilating high, but mildly euphoric. As we shared our respective experiences, the euphoria gradually subsided. I wondered whether it was a result of the vibration of the chant, the concentration of the mind (once ended, I had realized how strongly focused my mind had been on the chant), the pranayama elements to the practice, or something else.

After a few more minutes, we ended the meeting and departed, agreeing to meet again on Monday evenings in the future for more.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a community.

Jnana Mudra and Nadis

Yoga teaches that our bodies are filled with (composed of?) energy pathways that yogis call "nadis."

I mentioned in the prior post on pranayama that during parts of the session with Darren Main, I could feel energy moving through my arms and hands. Since that experience, I've used part of my meditation periods to focus more intently on the breath. This morning, at the peak of several inhalations, I again perceive a branching nadi in my right wrist, hand, and fingers. As I continued the practice, I had a lesser, but still perceptible, experience of the same in my left wrist, hand, and fingers. Interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I began teaching yoga in my home to a group of women from my congregation who have banded together to form a "Healthy Habits" group. They asked me to teach, and I agreed. Most of them are true beginners, without any prior practice. At the end of the session, I took a few minutes to show them a basic sitting pose, and then walked them through a basic breath cycle. Once they settled in, I joined them in meditation for a few minutes. My meditation posture usually includes the jnana mudra, and I moved into it that evening, as well. After the class, one of the participants asked me what the mudra was for. I gave the "standard" answer: it's a way of bringing mindfulness to my hands, giving them something to do, and that some people believe that the mudra connects energy pathways in the thumb and index finger.

I suppose I can answer the question a little more definitely in the future.

Pranayama

Ok, so this isn’t a well-developed thought, but more of a journal entry.

Saturday afternoon, I attended a pranayama workshop led by Darren Main. What that is and why it matters requires a couple of backtracks.

First, pranayama is one of the eight limbs of the practice of yoga. It means “control of energy.” In most yoga classes in the US, it gets translated as “breath,” and it becomes teachers’ way to keep track of the students’ mindfulness: if the student has lost track of the ujjayi breath pattern (make a Darth Vader-type breath sound, in and out, and you’ll have the basic idea), then the student has also likely lost the mindfulness element of the practice, and the teacher needs to dial back the intensity and re-establish the breath pattern.

But pranayama is more than simply mindful breathing – it’s the practice of using the breath to explore the subtle energy pathways of the body, and it’s learning to harness that energy as desired in life. Second, I recently found a couple of books by Richard Rosen on pranayama, and I was been curious enough to want to explore the practice a bit more deeply. As I read through his first book, I came to realize that developing and exploring a pranayama practice was as demanding and time-consuming as developing and exploring a meditation practice had proven. I was skeptical that I had enough time to devote to it. But I kept reading, anyway, to see what I might glean, whether information or inspiration. I found bits and pieces of what he wrote to be interesting elaborations of my own experiences. Rosen’s writings provided a structure and framework to help make sense of my own experience.

I’d gone so far as to begin to amass the props (sandbag weights, long narrow cushion to support the spine, that sort of thing) that Rosen recommends for beginning the practice, the first box of ordered props arriving, as fate would have it, Saturday. The box arrived while I was at Darren Main’s workshop.

Before the workshop, I’d read a number of yoga and Buddhist authors who write of various meditation practices, and the unusual mind/body experiences that can result. The authors frequently insist that the experiences, as peculiar as they may be, just are, and those who experience them should avoid becoming attached to them. Saturday, I got a glimpse of what they were talking about.

The workshop was presented a studio where I practice periodically – a large heatable room, maybe 50 or so class members. A comfortable number for the room – not jammed mat-to-mat, but close enough to create a sense of togetherness. Darren spent about a half hour talking to us about what to expect of the experience. He described the process (that I’ll describe below), described some of the more unusual aspects of the experience, cautioned us about some of the ways that we might respond to the experiences, and then sent us to our mats and guided us.

He started us in Savasana – Corpse pose. He instructed us on the particular in-and-out breathing pattern he wanted us to follow, and then he coached us through it for five to ten minutes. As he’d previously predicted, the first few minutes, the practice seemed as pointless and foolish as it probably sounds to anyone reading this, compounded, perhaps, by the regret that I’d actually paid for the workshop. Consistent with his forewarning and instruction, I noticed that thought and continued the practice.

After about 15 minutes, I began to experience the increase of tension and energies in my hands and forearms. The best analogy I can provide is that they felt like capacitors charging up. I began to feel energies in them twitching and flexing the muscles. And as I continued to breathe, the energies in them grew. I had a feeling of deep wellness, while at the same time, I felt quite high. Following Darren's instructions, I worked the breath and postures he suggested. Coming out of a pose was accompanied by a sensational release of energy. My spine arched me into Matsyasana -- Fish pose, and I considered momentarily moving into several other poses.

As we resumed the same breath technique, I again felt the generation and localization of energy in my forearms, this time to a greater degree. Again, Darren coached the room on breathing and posture. Again, I moved into the pose he called for, holding the exhalation, this time holding the pose even longer, feeling the energy coursing through my body. When I couldn’t hold the pose any longer, I lowered to the floor, but my back then re-arched, drawing me in to an unsupported Fish pose.

Again, we resumed the technique. As I inhaled the story of Hiranyaksha occurred to me, as I was washed over by waves of joy of physical being. At the top of the inhale, I began laughing, which continued for a time, then subsided. Others in the room were also laughing, and our laughter tended to feed back to one another, and I felt a connection to the others, most of whom were laughing, one or two who were crying.

Again, Darren coached us through breathing, and called for another pose. But as I performed this one, I experienced what felt from the inside like an explosion of unimaginable energy – back arching, limbs trembling violently, and an incredible and otherwise indescribable coursing of energy through my limbs, torso and head. It was not pleasant, but wild and uncontrolled. At that point, my mind was in a mode or condition that was not rational, nor strongly in control of my body. I arched into an unsupported Fish pose, arms extended, the backs of my hands pressed into the floor, like feet are pressed into the floor in Upward Facing Dog pose. Darren must have seen my response, and he came over and placed a hand on my heart, a second on my forehead. Usually, the touch of a teacher has an immediate and profound calming effect on me, energy expressions relax, draining into the teacher’s touch like electricity into a grounded cable. But this time, Darren’s touch, though welcome, felt distant. It took several breath cycles for me to ground myself in his touch and relax the deep, body-contorting spasms.

Again, returning to the breath technique, I lapsed into laughter of a joy that is hard to express. Darren repeated the cycle one more, this time my experience being calmer, but still highly, highly energized, with abundant laughter.

I left the workshop lingering on the question of what it was, exactly, that I’d experienced? Just a result of high levels of oxygenation of the bloodstream? Exploitation or exploration of feedback loops in the wiring of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems? A cheap and lawful acid-style trip based on oxygen? Maybe a bit of each.

As I’ve pondered that question, several realizations have come to me in the last three days.

First was a confirmation of the teaching that I’d discovered in less dramatic ways previously: that it is useful and accurate to talk of energy channels that run through the body and that affect the ways that we live, move, and breathe, that those energy pathways are not perfectly open, but rather can be obstructed – hence the capacitor-style accumulation of energy before the release; and that opening those energy channels affects the mind/body.

Second, the experience validates the reality of more subtle experiences with the breath – such as the general sense of well-being associated with a yoga asana practice that is not fully present with other exercise regimes.

Third, it was a validation of the statements in a number of works that advanced pranayama techniques should not be practiced without the presence, facilitation, and protection of a teacher who can serve as ground and guide. The power and extremity of my experience was safe and, despite its wildness, unthreatening, as I knew that Darren was there to aid me in controlling what I could not control myself. I suspect that without that level of protection, the experience could be mentally or emotionally harmful to some.

Fourth, community – practicing in the presence of others – makes a significant difference. At various stages of the practice, I felt strongly the presence of others, and their experiences fed into mine.

Fifth, the energy release I experienced during the third kundalini lock was akin to orgasm in its intensity, but many, many times more powerful and much more wild and unformed.

Sixth, the practice if repeated will, I think, help clear the energy pathways, like flushing water from the bottom of a dam can clear out sandbars that build up in tailwaters. I found myself on several occasions in the days following the experience more aware of clearer, brighter sense perceptions than I’d experienced prior to the workshop. It would be interesting to experiment with that.

Seventh, and finally, as various authors have noted, in the end, interesting energy experiences tend not to be life-transforming, but rather only interesting. The effort to develop and refine ourselves remains after the experience subsides. They can provide inspiration and sometimes can act as useful tools for specific purposes, but they are just experiences.