Excerpts from 'Refining the Breath':

Pranayama in the Anusara Style of Yoga

Prana is a powerful force. 'Prana' is a Sanskrit term for the life force that holds all things together; it's in our food, water and sunlight, makes all things move and grow, and vitalizes our mind. When the prana is disturbed or deficient, we can't even think straight; when the prana departs, what was once a living, animated being becomes an empty shell that falls apart.

Our connection to prana is through the breath. The yogic practice of pranayama is most commonly understood to be a discipline of controlling and directing the prana through controlling the breath. But while accepting this interpretation, it's important to consider what we're dealing with here. Prana, as we just said, is the universal life force that animates all things; our individual life and will; our thoughts, intentions, desires and aspirations hang by the thin and delicate strand of prana. Is it wise to think that by our own small will we can control the creative life force of the universe?

To think in terms of controlling the prana can be as misguided as sitting in a rowboat and thinking that you are moving the ocean beneath you with your paddle. It's better and more accurate to think that you are borne aloft upon the sea of prana, and recognize that your freedom is to navigate its currents with the tool of your own breath, rather than control them.

Anusara Yoga recognizes that the sea of prana is the sea of consciousness from which we are no more separate than waves are separate from the ocean; and her currents are currents of benevolent intention and divine will. We suffer when we oppose them according to our own shortsighted desires; it's wiser to recognize, trust and love the divine currents that run through our life, set sail and be carried by them. Hence Anusara Yoga is the yoga of uniting with divine consciousness, our innermost Self, by being 'in the flow' with its ways.

Prana is the key to every form of health and well-being. A smooth, free and undisturbed flow of prana produces health and ease in body and mind, for prana is the power behind the functioning of your body and the movements of your mind. Concentration, focus and all the functions of intelligence come when our awareness is centered and flowing in a single direction. It is, in other words, through an investment of our prana according to our intention.

While the breath is our vital connection to prana, prana is not the same as breath. Prana can't be directly manipulated; but we can work with it indirectly through the breath, because the two are closely related.

In the Sanskrit word 'pranayama,' '-ayama' means to lengthen, stretch, or extend. By this interpretation, pranayama means the conscious expansion of our natural capacity for breath -- and hence the expansion of our capacity as vessels for holding, experiencing and expressing the power of prana. The aim of pranayama is to foster a free and undisturbed flow of prana, which quiets the agitations of the mind by nurturing a smooth and clear flow of consciousness that we know by the name of 'concentration' or focus, or in the Sanskrit term of yoga, dharana. This leads to meditation (dhyana) and ultimately the quieting of all thought, or samadhi, in which the Self shines forth like a full moon reflected in the mirror of a perfectly still pond.

As a practice, pranayama is a specific, intentionally induced pattern of breathing in which you engage for a time to produce a particular effect on your body and mind. Pranayama is an indispensable technique for sharpening your concentration and bringing inner balance, pulling your attention from your mind and senses inward into meditation.

Pranayama is a necessary means to meditation, and yet it is distinct from meditation. Once you enter a state of meditation through pranayama, you can let go of the pranayama technique, even while continuing to witness your breath. Meditation is a state of steady focus, quiet and calm, a Self-conscious state of knowing or witnessing. Practice pranayama to enter that state, much as you take a road to get home. Once you arrive at home, you have to leave the road behind to go inside.

One very important text of yoga, the Yoga Vasistha, describes pranayama and its relation to the mind and meditation in this way:

"The consciousness that tends toward thinking, on account of the movement of prana, is known as the mind.

Movement of thought in the mind arises from the movement of prana; and movement of prana arises because of the movement of thought. These two -- the movement of mind and of prana -- form a cycle of mutual dependence, like waves and undercurrents in the sea.

The movement of prana is quieted by the effortless practice of breathing, without strain. The practice of exhalation, when the prana roams in space without touching the limbs of the body, or inhalation, leading to the peaceful movement of prana, and of retention, bringing it to a standstill, all lead to the quieting of prana.

Likewise the practice of meditation, the holding of consciousness steadily at a single point, the fixing of attention at the eyebrow center, or meditation on the space in the heart-center, all of these quiet the movement of prana."

The Yoga Vasistha