“All that exists in the three heavens rests in the control of Prana. As a mother her children, oh Prana, protect us and give us splendour and wisdom.”
—Prashna Upanishad
My baby is asleep. I nursed him and listened. His breathing was frantic at first, he was so wound up about getting to drink. Gradually his breath slowed, lengthened and evened out. I waited a few moments and then knew I could leave him to his nap.
“When the breath is calmed, the mind too will be still,” says the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. “Mind and prana act in unison. The one is dependent on the other.” My baby is six months old and one of the discoveries of motherhood is noticing how honestly the breath reflects our selves.
The gentle power of pranayama was impressed upon me last spring at the ascent intensive taught by Geeta Iyengar. I was pregnant at the time and the child in utero seemed as affected as I was by the peaceful breathing practices. I looked forward each afternoon to Geetaji’s low, gentle voice as she directed our group of eighty yogis deeper inside the wonders of basic pranayama. There is a particular kind of silence—wide and very awake—that is produced when a group of people tunes into their breath. My baby was included in this group quiet; his movements became slower and I could imagine him with hands intertwined and head slightly tilted, listening to the pregnant silence.
Now breath provides a main means of communication from my baby to me. I can tell from his quickening breath that he is going to get upset before he actually does. I know if the source of his discomfort is his tummy, which it often is, by a particular guttural grunt.
Breath is also the basis of the only yoga practice I manage to get in during busy days caring for this gorgeous growing boy. Every day, if I can, I set myself up beside him while he sleeps. I lie down as I learned in the course with Geetaji, folded blankets elevating my upper back and head. Then I enter what I think of as the first level of pranayama: watching and feeling what my breath is up to, and gradually letting it take up more space inside the body.
“I notice when students begin learning pranayama, they strain,” says Shirley Daventry French, who has taught Iyengar Yoga for nearly forty years in Victoria, BC. We met in Geetaji’s course and I contacted her to learn more about breathing practices. “Pranayama isn’t so much about ‘doing.’ There is a lot going on in the body, but we often feel we should be doing something more—more than letting the breath be the focus and letting the breath find its own channels.”
When I practise observing the breath, at first it is as if doors get nudged open. Physical space opens inside the body as my breathing travels farther and wider. It is also as if closed compartments containing different emotions, feelings and anxieties are aired out. I knew I was concerned about my baby’s digestion, which pains him and wakes him many times each night, but I hadn’t realized how nagging this worry was, sapping my energy even as I do my best to solve the problem. Following the expansion and contraction of my breath, I can see these daily emotions more plainly without getting caught up in them. Their power is eased when they are less cut off from the rest of me.
“I feel such clarity after a pranayama practice,” Shirley concurs. “When I open my eyes afterward, the air almost looks clearer. The seeing is different.”
Focusing on the breath seems to make us more at one with ourselves, and I am curious about how this happens. Shirley responds that there are many levels on which pranayama helps bring about experiences of inner unification: “First of all, if you think about the physical aspect, the diaphragm is in the middle of the body. It is the connection of the upper and lower body. Then if we look at the eight limbs of yoga described in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, pranayama is the stepping stone to the limbs that are more spiritually based, concentration and meditation. Pranayama is a step on the way to union.”
Ancient yogic texts such as the Yoga Sutra and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika talk about the intimate link between the mind and the breath. Observing my son so closely over the past six months, it has become plain to see that when the mind is agitated or calm, the breath will be too, and vice versa.
“Yes, babies are the most wonderful teachers about breathing!” exclaims Shirley, a mother and grandmother. “Babies simply are what they are in the moment, so their breath says it all.”
The next stage of pranayama after observing the breath is to invite it to flow in specific ways. I usually do the simple practices I learned from Geeta Iyengar, making the in-breath longer to lift and fill the chest, or taking a series of gentle inhalations before breathing out peacefully. Something curious happens when I influence the course of my breath, as long as tension does not interrupt the flow: I begin to feel masterful. I sense for a few invaluable moments that I have everything I need, to do whatever is needed. My energy is renewed to work with my son’s colic and sleep challenges, to be happy despite sleeplessness and the limitations of life as a stay-at-home parent.
“Pranayama is much more than good breathing,” Shirley reflects when I ask her about the transformative potential of the practice. “Prana is that which creates the breath. When this energy is more able to flow within us, it leads to a sense of who we really are beyond the outer manifestations.” How does this happen? “Well, physicists, like yogis, are now finding out that we are all made up of energy currents, so perhaps when the currents are changed through pranayama, we are changed.”
If pranayama can affect the very stuff we are made of, then it is clear why many yogis recommend caution and the guidance of an experienced teacher. Shirley explains that in Iyengar Yoga, before learning pranayama, it is important to have a firm foundation in yogic postures to develop “the ability to focus the mind on the body, to be very aware of what is happening in the chest, in the neck, in the senses.” She tells me about the outdated electrical wiring in her old house that has been shorting out because of the demands made by computers and appliances. “I think that is similar to pranayama and why we have to do asana first, so that the wiring in the body can withstand the more powerful flow of energy that comes with pranayama practice.”
Breathing is one of the few functions in the body that is essential to life but can be willfully affected, and I believe this accounts for much of the power of pranayama. Respiration is usually involuntary—I think of my son’s first startled breath—but it can also be lengthened or held if we want to. I am fascinated by this interface between self-will and the will of life. As Shirley points out, it is a challenge to influence the breath without strain. This poses the paradox of pranayama: maintaining ease in the body and mind while also guiding the breath.
Paradoxes, yoga has taught me, are often where we find the gems of learning and growth, and this has been so with both my pranayama practice and my mothering. After consciously following my breathing for a while, I usually begin to sense a fluid, gentle, constant force on the other side of that breath. What am I interacting with? What is the presence behind my breath that gives me life?
“It is as difficult to explain prana as it is to explain God,” writes B.K.S. Iyengar in Light on Pranayama. “Prana is usually translated as breath, yet this is only one of its many manifestations in the human body. Prana is the energy permeating the universe at all levels. All beings in the universe … are born through and live by it, and when they die their individual breath dissolves into the cosmic breath.”
As a mother of a small baby, I am attentive to his needs nearly twenty-four hours a day. This is necessary for now, but all that minute attention can lead me to feel wholly responsible for my son, and nervously exhausted as a result. The lesson of my breath at this time in my life is that, while I gave birth to this child and put so much energy into caring for him, we are not alone. The “breath of life” is universal, living itself through me and my baby; I can rely on it for sustenance as an infant relies on its mother.
Joah suddenly takes a deep breath and releases it with a little murmur, telling me he is about to wake up. He moves a little, then rests, easing back into consciousness like I come out of a yoga practice. His head turns and when his bright eyes open, mine are there to meet him. Here we are! Another breath, another day, another lifetime.
