Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

Endnotes Appendix Bibliog. Downloadable PDF

Literal translation: “After posture set, inhalation-exhalation-pausing = breath regulation”

Meaning: “Once you’ve established your meditative position, then comes the inhaling, exhaling, and pausing called pranayama or breath control.”

A chant in English: “Decide on your posture; then breathe long, slow, and deep.”

Definition: Pranayama or breath control can come at any time, but it works best in combination with a posture in which the spine is relatively straight. As with your choice of position—which may be sitting, lying, standing, or even moving—breath control may be of several kinds if it engages the lungs, diaphragm, and stomach. It should not consist of shallow, short breaths just from the chest (except in the deepest meditative states, when breathing may become automatic). Instead, both the chest and stomach should expand, allowing much more air to enter.

For example, as implied in the words of this sutra, one of the most basic patterns is a deep inhalation, a long exhalation, and a pause. The inhaling and exhaling usually are about (but not exactly) the same number of seconds. The pause happens for a shorter time, very briefly or for a few seconds, and it may come after the in- and out-breaths or between them. Some people (especially those who are chanting or singing) may choose an out-breath that is longer than the in-breath). Flexibility is allowed.

Comment: In many ancient languages, “breath” and “spirit” are the same word. This is true, for example, in the Western heritage of the Greek language, and of the Hebrew of the Jewish Torah and Christian Old Testament. In both languages, if you breath in, you are taking in spirit. Without one, said their ancient speakers, you cannot have the other.

Similarly, the ancient Sanskrit word prana in this sutra means both “breath” and “spirit.” Iyengar says that prana is to yoga “what the heart is to the human body.... [It] acts as sexual energy, spiritual energy, and cosmic energy. All that vibrates in the Universe is prana: heat, light, gravity, magnetism..., electricity, life and spirit.... It is the prime mover of all activity…, the wealth of life.” Other sources in Hinduism refer to prana as shakti or univervsal energy. In one story of the creation, says Iyengar, this is “’the nectar of immortality...’ produced through the churning of the ocean,” much like stories in Greek mythology of early gods and goddesses being born from the sea.

Yogic breathing over thousands of years has evolved in hundreds of methods taught by thousands of yoga schools. These variations sometimes have very different effects. Some, for example, are very practical for outer life, such as helping you sleep or, when you are cold, warming your body. Others have inner meditative benefits like helping you grow more calm or more energetic, quieting or activating imagination or sensations, and even developing stronger feelings of peace, strength, or love.

However, most of them are unnecessary for the inner life of advancing in meditation. Becoming too concerned with breathing, other than the basic rhythms stated by Patanjali, even can become a distraction to meditation. The key to using pranayama is choosing what helps you maintain physical, mental, and spiritual moderation in any given time and place. For more information, see Patanjali’s discussions in Sutras 1.23, 1.28, and 1.34, and “Appendix C: How to Breath.”

Literal translation: “Outside-inside-stopped movements; place-time-repetitions measured long/strong or short/gentle”

Meaning: “Breathing for meditation includes a variety of elements: exhaling, inhaling, and pausing movements; regulate it by the place in your body to which you direct it, number of seconds, and number of repetitions; and choose breaths that are intense (long or strong) or subtle (short or gentle).”

A chant in English: “You may try different ways to breathe in meditation.”

Definition: This sutra is not a recommendation, but rather just a list indicting there are numerous combinations of breath patterns. For example, you may breathe fast, deep, and hard in physical exertion, slow and shallow in deepest meditation, etc.

Comment: Especially important is to remember that just as in the posture/position sutras, breathing is an aid, not the center of, yoga in the Yoga Sutras. As mentioned throughout Chapter One of the Yoga Sutras, there are a number of methods for focusing on higher/deeper Awareness. The eight-limbs of Astanga yoga are assistants to that.

It is desirable to learn simple breathing patterns without excessive, forceful, continuous, dramatic inhales, exhales, and/or pauses (except as needed during strong exercise or labor). In fact, there can be dangers in making breathing patterns the center of meditation practice: some breath-control patterns can awaken dark, subconscious thoughts and feelings or even a deeper energy, kundalini, that can blast your normal life apart and be difficult or impossible to turn off.

The simpler deep breathing methods will contribute to your finding focused Awareness—the Self/Ultimate Presence. Such breathing not only is enough but also can take you, says Patanjali in Chapter 1, to the perfection you most need.

Literal translation: “Breath internal and external: a sphere abandoning them = fourth way”

Meaning: “Breathing, within and without, as in Sutra 50, also has a realm that abandons the normal three movements of inhaling, exhaling, and pausing: it is a fourth way.”

A chant in English: “Look also for the deep fourth way of breathing unaided.”

Definition: This sutra is undefined except to announce a fourth type of breath unlike normal yogic inhaling, exhaling, and pausing. Most contemporary translations say it is a nearly undetectable shallow type of breathing.

This shallowest form of breath likely is the same kind scientists have recorded in the deepest phases of sleep. Yogis with long meditation experience can access these deepest layers of unconsciousness even when they are still conscious. Other deep states of meditation may lead to deeper breathing, also automatic as your body is filled with energy. And as a beginning meditator, you may encounter states of meditation in which your breath automatically falls into either of these patterns. The key is to allow your natural body rhythms to take over and support the meditation you are experiencing.

Comment: A fun fact is that many medieval translations (and a few in more recent centuries) have interpreted this shallow breathing as no breath at all. Magical stories developed over thousands of years in India of yogis who completely stopped their breath for hours, days, or even months at a time. Some practitioners, the stories said, even were buried or weighted to lake or river bottoms for days as proof of no need to breathe. Fakirs—Hindu magicians who claim all sorts of miraculous powers—still find ways to pretend such feats are possible. Such people have existed throughout the world and time.

Meanwhile, in both East and West, science has intervened. It shows no recorded cases of anyone not breathing but staying alive for more than perhaps an hour at most. The longest breath-holding on record is that of a few deep-sea divers who can avoid surfacing for air for up to ten or fifteen minutes at a time, or a little longer. Likely there are yogis who can do this, too—but not significantly more.

In terms of the automated type of breathing, this sutra uses the word aksepi, meaning “abandon” or “transcend.” This suggests that the deep inhaling and exhaling of longer-breath periods is set aside entirely in this “fourth way”—thus assumedly the shallow breathing of both deepest sleep and deep meditation.

When you are in deep sleep, scientists report, you take almost the same number of breaths per minute as in normal resting activity when awake. However, you need much less air, so you breathe very shallowly. In addition, your throat muscles relax, partly collapsing your throat. This is, in fact, why some people snore. As a result, they need to adjust how they place their heads so that air still can pass through their windpipes.

Thus this sutra also acts as a mild warning: expect this more-relaxed type of breathing in deeper meditation. As a result, you may need to adjust your head or body slightly to clear your air passages in preparation for this shallow breathing.

Sometimes people also discuss how deep-breathing techniques can create a need for fewer breaths per minute. In controlled yogic breathing, most people can learn in several months of practice to take just two to four breaths per minute. Such self-training is like how deep-sea divers with no equipment slowly learn to hold their breath for several minutes at a time, or even longer, so they can harvest seafood from the ocean floor.

Literal translation: “That [i.e., your good breathing] decreases the shining-forth coverup”

A chant in English: “Breathe well in meditation for your light to shine forth.”

Definition: Good breathing helps your inner light shine forth more. No matter which kind, breathing that is appropriate to the activity and depth of your meditation moves you away from darkness and toward brightness.

Comment: This inner light develops as thoughts, memories, and emotions subside. It can take many forms, from an idea with a deep sense of intimate, experiential “knowing” or gnosis, to an experience of inner light itself.

Literal translation: “Concentration also (from breathing) yoked to go for the mind”

Meaning: “Your concentration (which is the sixth limb) from these breath practices also will make you ready in your mind.”

Definition: This is the last of the pranayama—or yogic breathing—sutras in this fourth Astanga limb. The sutra is again simple as it offers two ideas, explicit and implicit. First, good meditation breathing will help your next steps in the eight limbs. And second, the learning of such breathing is, itself, a form of focus that will improve your all-important concentration necessary in the sixth or dharana limb.

Comment: Deep, regular breathing improves the oxygen distribution in your body—organs and brain. This, in turn, promotes a more relaxed, calm demeanor that allows clearer, stronger, and longer awareness. As you gain such calm, you are able, increasingly, to bring more awareness and control to your thinking and feeling. Such calm prepares you for the deeper states of meditation, in which shallow and/or more automatic breathing then begins to play a part, as well.

Sanskrit Text: Patanjali, c. 400 BCE-400 CE

Contact: richard.jewell.net/contact.htm. Free Use Policy

URLs: YogaSutras.org or PatanjalisYogaSutras.org

Natural URL: http://www.richard.jewell.net/YogaSutras

See also Meditationary.org, a Meditation Dictionary; and BodyMeditation.org, Introducing Yoga Meditation.

About the Author