What is Pranayama?

And why we practice it.

What is Pranayama? And Why Do We Practice it?

We often think of “yoga” as the crazy shapes we create on the four corners of a sticky mat, but that is actually only 1/8th of what is traditionally considered to be “yoga” (that eighth is called “asana”). You have maybe heard the word pranayama in class and you have definitely practiced it at 3 Bridges Yoga, but…what in the heck is it and why do we practice it?

Pranayama, in its most basic form, is often considered your breathwork practice.  But it is really so much more than that! Let’s break it down into two parts:
prana and yama. Prana isn’t just your breath….it  is your energy, your life force.  And yama translates to control (we will do a future blog on the Yamas and the Niyamas and dive into that!). 

So, when you put the two parts together what we are really attempting to do is to control our energy, our life force.

Yoga is such a dichotomy. It is a balance of continual opposites which is so wonderful and yet so confusing. Every time we think we have it all figured out, a thread gets pulled and it all unravels from the other side. We are taught to let go of control and attachment through yoga but then pranayama is telling us that it is a path to control our life?!

I think of it like this: what we are training our minds to do through our pranayama is to not get swept away by what life throws at us, but rather, to teach ourselves to ride the waves of life.

It is teaching us to regulate our nervous system rather than regulate everything outside of us. It is teaching us to use the tools that we have rather than rely on things outside our control.

There is a laundry list of supposed benefits that you can find on the internet, and I say supposed because I am not a doctor. I don’t know if practicing breathing exercises can reduce ulcers, or cure psoriasis, reduce the incidence of heart attack, improve cognitive function, or help you quit smoking. But what I can tell you is the experience I have had as well as what I have seen in my students. I can tell you firsthand that learning to control your breath will help with anxiety, it will help with regulating your stress, and your emotions as well as it will help with mindfulness to keep you present.  

There are so many different pranayama practices that can be used for a variety of effects.  You can control your breath to calm you down as well as to create more fire or energy within. 

Once again, we learn that we really do have all the tools we need in this life within us, we just have to learn how to use them.