On the possibility of pranayama.
When I do physical practice I often find that ideas or insights arise, and I want to jot them down. I usually do so on a notepad, but today I thought I’d just transcribe one right here. I’ve been neglecting the practice of writing on here regularly, so this is also a way to soothe that internal tension for me. I’m going to go ahead and publish this as an unedited note, so just wanting to acknowledge it as a scattered gesture, even though it’s also a bit intricate.
11:23am:
Pranayama practice is not possible — the power of it is not available — unless a worldview of animacy and interdependence is grounded within the mind. In this view, the body’s prana is not isolated to the container of the physical body — it is what is currently swirling through the body on its way in and out of the space and beings around us. It is also emergent from within us. We are in the current, and we are also a spring.
I’m thinking about this in relationship to the mental posture I use when I engage a subtle technique like bandha. Let’s take mulabandha, for example. This is the “root lock” and it is usually taught as a subtle drawing upward of the muscles of the pelvic floor. It was probably Richard Freeman who first shocked me into understanding the more subtle level of the practice, which is not about muscles and physical engagement at all. Mulabandha can be literally translated as “binding to the root” and Richard said that this is not primarily about physically gripping the base of the spine, but about tethering the mind to the earth herself (this memory of his words is fragmented, and I don’t have confidence in calling this a direct quote).
In my native epistemology — in the field of the viable within which I was raised — such a thing is not possible, or possible only in the realm of fanciful imagination. This has been part of my unlearning in yoga study: that the mind can take internal forms that are substantive, and that have legitimate effects and consequences; of course, what better teacher of this truth than depression and mania.
So, when I practice bandha, the physical technique is essentially a reminder to practice the mental posture: to reach down into the earth beneath me and call out to the essence of this place, which is also the prima materia of this body. I have heard teachers describe this holding to the earth in different ways. Often, the metaphor involves roots. My teacher Yoli likes to describe tendrils. I happen to enjoy visualizing the molten core of the planet itself, and my subtle body reaching into it, energized and stabilized by the connection.
For me, the idea is creating a felt sense of this connection, which reinforces the reality of the connection itself, even as the visualization is not a literal physical experience.
When Richard gestured at this deeper notion, I was studying with him in 2013. I heard it, but I did not understand it. It would take me about six years before the reality of the practice began to ground within me.
What is the reason for this duration? Why does it take so long to shift my frame? In contemplating this, I reflect on what education looks like for infants and very young children. There is an insistence and emphases on the precision of the object-oriented frame: our foundational lessons are identification and categorization. Perception as a marathon of long division. One of the words used to describe thought in Sanskrit is “vikalpa” which literally translates as “divided construction” which speaks beautifully to the paradox: to conceive something, we must create a separation.
To really work with prana we have to soften this fundamental conceptual threshold of self and non-self, because prana is not bound by it. Energy is within and all around. We give and receive it, constantly. And the conscious mind has the ability to conduct it, but in order to do so, it must have confidence in this innate ability. And for me, the development of confidence in an aspect of my human toolkit that I’ve been taught to deny is often a very, very slow process. In this dimension, my practice is simply the practice of remembering to study, remembering to name the thing that I, someday, would like to get to know. It’s a kind of erosion, I imagine. The practice is a fluid experience that over time changes the contour of my mind.