The Eight Limbs of Yoga: Part 5: Pranayama Explained | Beyond the Breath: Harnessing Life Force & Inner Stillness

Pranayama represents the fourth limb of yoga according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, functioning as a bridge between body and spirit through conscious regulation of breath. The Sanskrit word combines "prana" (life force/breath) with "ayama" (expansion/regulation), reflecting the practice's purpose of directing vital energy through breath to prepare mind and body for meditation.

• Breath and spirit are linguistically connected across many cultures (Hebrew "ruach," Greek "pneuma," Finnish "henki")
• Modern science confirms pranayama regulates the vagus nerve, balances heart rate, and supports immune function
• Specific techniques like Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) balance energy by working with different sides of the nervous system
• Box breathing (4 counts in, hold 4, out 4, hold 4) provides immediate stress relief in everyday situations
• Resonance breathing at 5-7 breaths per minute helps the body find natural rhythm and balance
• All eight limbs of yoga support each other rather than functioning as sequential steps
• Pranayama serves as a bridge from physical practice to the more subtle practices of meditation

Try practicing just one pranayama technique daily for the next week and notice the difference it makes. If you find this content helpful, please subscribe, like, and share with someone who might benefit. Leave a review on your podcast platform—it helps tremendously! Drop a comment about your favorite pranayama practice or how breathing techniques have impacted your life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Pranayama
• 5:12 Cross-Cultural Views of Breath
• 7:58 Science Behind Breathing Practices
• 9:56 Popular Pranayama Techniques
• 14:26 Connecting Limbs of Yoga
• 18:36 Practical Takeaways and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello everybody and welcome back to the daily practice with me, benita. Today's podcast episode is part 5 in a 9 part series on the 8 limbs of yoga as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Pranayama, breath, spirit and the science of energy as understood in the yogic philosophy or methodology. You can feel free to listen to this episode as a standalone exploration into Pranayama. But if you wish to go back and listen to the first part of the series describing all the eight limbs, a short outline of each of the limbs and then the second part being the yamas, the observances towards others, niyamas in the third part, describing how to relate to oneself, or observances or restraints towards the self, and then last week we went through what it means, what asana means in the yogic practice. So feel free to go back and listen to those for kind of a holistic picture of all the eight limbs, and we'll continue a couple more weeks after this. So, like I mentioned, today's episode is Pranayama, which is also understood as a kind of a bridge between body and spirit, and the idea of breath is seen through the philosophical lens in yoga. But also we're going to look at modern science and cultural meaning of breath in different cultures and different contexts, but, of course, mainly focusing on the sutras. So what is written in Yoga Sutra 249 is English translation, or A translation is when a posture is well established, the regulation of inhalation and exhalation is pranayama. Again, excuse my pronunciation of the Sanskrit, but that is a good approximation. And remember also that, like any ancient spiritual scripture, there are different ways of interpreting or translating each sutra or part of the scripture, so there might be alternative understandings of this, but this is the one we're going to go with. So what exactly is pranayama?

Speaker 1: 3:02

In Sanskrit, which is the ancient language of India, that a lot of yogic practices are kind of based on or founded upon, prana, you might have heard this word is something like life force, also breath. So we'll see more in detail as the episode goes on how common it is that the word for breath and spirit or life force, energy, is very similar in a lot of cultural contexts outside of India as well. And then Ayama, the second part of the word, is expansion or regulation. So the practice of Pranayama is not just simple breath that happens naturally automatically as long as we're alive, but it's actually consciously directing vital energy through breath. And the purpose of pranayama is manifold, but in this context it is truly to prepare the mind and body for meditation by regulating the nervous system. Here it's also useful to notice that there are many different pranayamas described in a variety of yogic texts, so that could probably be a whole episode or a whole series on its own, going through all the different practices, going from Kapalabhati to Narishodhana to Brahmari Pranayama. All these different techniques are practiced in order to get a certain outcome or result in the physical body and in the nervous system and also as a mental, spiritual, energetic state.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So here we can also see cross-cultural and spiritual parallels of prana, breath, spirit, energy. So if we look at our maybe own, for a lot of us, our own Western traditions, which is Christianity, you can look at the Hebrew word once again, excuse my pronunciation which is which can be breath or spirit, or pneuma in Greek, which again it's the same breath or spirit. And also it is said in Genesis 2, 7, how breath is life force and the breath is life force. And the breath God in Genesis, breathes life into Adam and that's how we become to be spiritual beings, humans that are intimately connected to God, created in the image of God. So breath is definitely seen in also the Christian tradition as a key feature of what it means to be a spiritual human being who is connected to the divine. Also in my native tongue, which is Finnish, henki, the word means both spirit and breath and also, for instance, in my native tongue, when we talk about the Holy Spirit, it actually is the same word as Holy Spirit or Holy Breath, pyhähenki. So we can really truly start to understand through these cultural contexts that the breath is truly the thing that makes us spiritual beings, that makes us connected to the divine, and it's our connection to life and life force. Also in Chinese, chi and Polynesian mana are very much kind of synonymous with both breath and energy, life force, energy vitality. So really it really really useful to understand that across cultures and languages, breath equals spirit. It's not just breathing a certain kind of gaseous, you know, a gas, or something like this. It's not just about gaseous exchange. It is truly about connecting to life force, connecting to energy, connecting to spirit.

Speaker 1: 7:48

So let's move on to a short exploration on kind of the science behind pranayama or these kind of breathing practices. One really useful piece of work is written by a Ashtanga teacher, a yogi, called Eddie Stern, and there's his book, published in 2024 it's called healing through breathing, which offers science-based breath techniques for healing health and focus. So as science advances, it's really becoming better and better at explaining what breath actually does in the body, what breath actually is in the context of our physiology, our nervous system and mental and physical states. So regulating, lengthening your breath through pranayama and similar practices regulates the vagus nerve, balances heart rate and blood pressure, supports restful sleep, stress resilience, as well as immune function. So we can see that breath is truly one of the main gateways, main tools, the simplest, most affordable, free and really accessible to everyone. And it's the perfect gateway to regulate our nervous systems.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So there are so many different kinds of pranayama practices, as I mentioned, outlined in a variety of yoga texts. I actually have one of my early videos on YouTube is Nadi Shodhana, which is called alternate nostril breathing English, and that's basically a practice where we inhale through one nostril, exhale through the other, inhale through the same one and then exhale from the one we started with, and that is a really beautiful practice to balance our energy. It's both, both for energizing, focus and relaxation, and it's really curious and beautiful and interesting and fascinating to see that there's more and more science papers that support these understanding and wisdom that has been written hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago in the yogic literature, so, for instance, with the nadi shorana. What's interesting is that, like, the left nostril is seen as connected to the moon or the feminine side of the body, whereas the right one is to the more active solar side of our energy bodies, and this has been I don't have the quote right here, but it has definitely been written about in also scientific papers that actually breathing out through breathing in and out through the left side is actually a more calming effect on the body, whereas the right side is a more invigorating and energizing breath. So just by actively, manually, you know, using our fingers, our hands, just by breathing through one side, we can change our physical states. And then, of course, like in Nadi Shodhana, when we do alternate nostril breathing, it's just a beautiful balancing practice.

Speaker 1: 11:24

And then one pranayama that has become very, very popular and I see it a lot in a lot of magazines, and I see it a lot in a lot of magazines, online blogs, even social media. All kinds of people are talking about the so-called box breathing. So this is a practice where so I was saying sorry for the interruption. I was saying about box breathing. That has become very, very popular in a lot of social media. People are waking up to the benefits of this very, very simple practice and I I do it regularly whenever I need to kind of recenter refocus, and just a few rounds of this practice truly make a huge difference. So box breathing is inhaling for four counts, holding the breath for four counts, exhaling for four counts and then holding the exhalation out, keeping your lungs empty again for the same four counts.

Speaker 1: 12:28

So just taking a few moments to do a few rounds of this so-called box breathing really is useful for stress. So I sometimes use this. Let's say I'm in traffic, I'm getting frustrated, or if I'm in a pinch, or whatever it is. If I'm in a slightly stressful situation, I try to remember box breathing and I just do a couple of rounds of that and it truly changes the entire state of mind and physiological state too. Then there's also something called resonance breathing, which is a slow breath where we take about five to seven breaths per minute, and there we start noticing that the whole body starts to settle in when we lengthen the inhale and the exhale, so that we average out about five to seven breaths per minute. So this would be about five seconds in and five seconds out for each breath and just by slowing our breath to about that state we actually start to find more resonance in our bodies with the natural rhythm and it's a really beautiful practice.

Speaker 1: 13:51

So, like we talked about last week, that asana is the posture practice, tira sukham asana, and that's what we're looking for in our practice on the mat, but also in daily life we can work on that. So, in the same way, it's really beneficial to start integrating this pranayama not just on a formal breathing session or after your yoga practice or during your posture practice, but actually throughout your day, so it can become a part of our toolbox daily. You know, like I said, whether it's you're having a stressful moment with your kids or you're having somebody cut you off in traffic or you're whatever, overwhelmed in any kind of situation, we can take just two, three minutes to focus on the breath, lengthen the breath and really find that it really soothes us, changes our mental and physical state and we just come out better that way. And what is also really important, that, like I've mentioned in the previous episodes, these eight limbs of yoga aren't steps, but they are all interconnected. So when our breathing improves, then our asana becomes more effortless and then, as our asana progresses, we become more pure and steady in our bodies and then the yamas and niyamas kind of naturally also flow from that, and also all the remaining limbs, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and Samadhi that we're going to talk about in the next weeks. They all kind of flow from each other and support each other.

Speaker 1: 15:46

So when our breathing improves, the asana improves. When the asana improves, it becomes easier to focus and then we become better or it becomes more effortless to to come into more deeper meditative states and we come again closer to ourselves, closer to the divine. So it can really be seen as a kind of a bridge. So asana is a physical practice and we always kind of start with the asana practice because it's the easiest thing to work with, because we're used to living in this 3D world where material, physical things are what we see and experience most readily, and then we move on to the breath, which is a more subtle layer of our reality, and then that's kind of the next step and it's kind of the bridge that brings stillness inward and brings us to the next limb, which is pratyahara, which is withdrawal of the senses, and dhyana, meditation. So we can really see that, okay, by practicing our postures and then becoming more aware and better at regulating our breath and our life force through breath, then it becomes more effortless to practice the remaining limbs of yoga.

Speaker 1: 17:17

So, truly, I could go into a lot of detail about the effects of all the different pranayamas, but I think that's best kept for another time, another episode, and also for the practice videos on YouTube that I publish each Friday morning. So, like I said, I've already gone into depth, or not into depth, but outlined and instructed the Nadi Shodhana Pranayama, and there will be more to come. And of course, in each yoga sequence video I also talk about breathing. Course, in each yoga sequence video I also talk about breathing and I always instruct or guide the breath and in the flow or in the sequence of asanas. So stay tuned for more, more of those and perhaps in the future also, I'll go into more of a deep dive on the benefits and effects of each pranayama and also how to perform them.

Speaker 1: 18:13

But so just to summarize that pranayama is a limb of Patanjali's eight limbs, eight-limbed yoga, and it's means pr, breath or life force, ayama, which is expansion, extension or regulation. So it can be seen as breath, awareness, vital energy, and it's a calming and or energizing practice rooted in the yogic tradition. And, like I mentioned, it's really fascinating and beautiful to see how modern Western science is catching up, because we can see there's a bunch of scientific journals and articles that are catching up to how these breathing practices are so powerful and that they are actually proving a lot of the yogic science that has been written long, long time ago. So here's one more quote, just for reflection, from the Yoga Sutras Pranayama clarifies the light of awareness and paves the way for meditation. So, like I mentioned, practicing all the eight limbs of yoga all together, starting from one, but then like understanding that they are all supportive of each other, is a really beautiful way to move forward on your yogic path.

Speaker 1: 19:46

So see if you can take something home today from this episode and maybe pick one of the breath techniques that I described. You can go on my youtube to find the nadi shodhana or alternate nostril breathing practice and just see if you can do just one pranayama once a day for the next week, until next week's episode, and let me know if you notice any difference. So that's all for today. Thank you so much for joining again for the daily practice with me, benita.

Speaker 1: 20:24

If you do find this kind of content useful, helpful, interesting, whatever If you do find this kind of content useful, helpful, interesting, whatever please do subscribe, like and also share with a family member or friend who might find it of benefit. And, of course, if you're listening on a podcast platform that offers an option to leave a review, please do. It helps me a ton and it would be so lovely to hear from you. And, of course, also do drop a comment, maybe on your favorite pranayama or if you've ever noticed that any of these breathing practices are useful or how it's impacted your life. So in the comments on YouTube, you can just let me know. And that's all for today. Thank you so much again and I'll see you, or maybe won't see you, but I will connect with you again next week, monday 10 am, and we're going to dive into Pratyahara, the art of turning inward, or turning the senses inward, as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. So thanks again and remember always that good practice is the one you do.