Pause Your Breath: Kumbhaka

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to practice Natural Breathing as I wrote about in a previous post.  That breath practice sets the foundation for some really beautiful and interesting techniques that can help to deepen your relationship to your body and your mind.  

It’s so healthy and invigorating to deepen our breathing- it’s good for our nervous system, it reduces stress, it is good for our blood circulation and the health of our hearts, and it even helps our detox pathways that clean out whatever might be slowing us down.  Yes- that means deep breathing is even good for our skin!

Once you feel comfortable taking natural deep breaths- expanding your ribcage in all directions on your inhalation and drawing your low belly lightly back and up (“combing” up the spine) on your exhalation, you are ready to add a few long pauses to your breath practice.  

This is a classic yoga technique called “kumbhaka,” which roughly translates as a “clay pot.”  Like the glass-full analogy in the west, the clay pot represents a container that can be full or empty.

Just like your natural breathing, you may choose to explore this practice on your back at first.  Make sure when you lie back to practice breathing techniques that you always support the backs of your knees- you can roll up a blanket behind your knees, place a pillow there, bend your knees and set your feet on the ground, or even elevate your feet onto a surface like a bed, couch, or the wall.  You always want to be comfortable when you breathe.  

This brings up an important point: unlike our physical exercises, when we practice breathing we never want to push ourselves to our limits.  It’s good to stay well within your comfort zone when you are teaching your body to take deep breaths because your breath is so connected to your nervous system that we want to honor the natural intelligence of the body and the delicate beauty of the nervous system.  This takes time, space, and generosity toward yourself.  Be easy, be kind, hold yourself in your breathing practice the way you might hold someone that you love dearly.

Pausing in your breath can bring up deep emotions: when we hold our breath full we are brushing up against the energy of a full, chaotic, and busy life.  If you tend to get overwhelmed easily you might find that the practice of holding your breath full is not healthy or wise at the moment.  It can trigger that feeling of having too much on your plate, of being too full, of taking on too much.

When we hold our breath empty it can brush up against an entirely different set of emotions: emptiness represents the deep quiet- the death principle so to speak.  If you hold a lot of fear, depression, sadness, or pain you might skip holding your breath empty for a time until you become more comfortable exploring that feeling in your body.

Typically, when you practice pausing your breath you do so on the inhalation first: you take a natural breath in to the top and you pause… for one, two, four, eight, however many counts feels right.  I have found that counting to four can be a sweet spot for many people.  Try this a few times and then let that pause go and notice the response in your body.

If you feel good, then practice exhaling completely and again pausing briefly- counting to four or whatever works well for you.

Eventually you can practice a beautiful balancing breath called square breathing, or same/equal breath (sama-vrtti pranayama) where you inhale for a count of four, hold your breath full for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, and hold your breath empty for a count of four.  Again, find that gentle place where you are not pushing any one of those breath movements- if holding empty feels better at a shorter count then match every other part of the square to that easiest count.

Square breathing is a beautiful meditation practice.  You get to expand your heart and your breath, feel into the fullness of your life, exhale out whatever you don’t need, and explore the deep peace of inner silence when you hold empty.  It’s a great technique to use when you have two minutes of pause in your day, before going into a busy meeting or picking up your kids, before making dinner for your family, in those first moments when you wake up and before you’ve committed to opening your eyes to the day.

Connecting to your breath in the small moments is a way to honor yourself deeply.  To welcome in all parts of yourself, even the parts that don’t particularly feel welcome.