Do you know that just one yoga posture can change your whole day? Believe it or not, it can!

There are times when you only have five minutes to spare to do yoga.  That is enough time to find one pose that will refresh you to move through your day with more energy.

The freedom that comes with the study and practice of Hatha Yoga is the ultimate freedom of choice. This is why I prefer a practice that teaches postures rather then systems. Hatha yoga is a gift that belongs to no one system or school of thought. It is valuable information that when one knows the postures intimately, one can pick and choose depending on the match with the state of mind, moods, or needs.

If your practice is to follow a system that allows only a series of postures in a certain order, not diverting from that order and routine, there is little freedom of choice. If you hurt yourself and cannot do that particular practice, then you are missing out on the one gift that may very likely help you find relief and healing.

While you are studying and learning new postures and discovering the magic that is unique to that asana, move through the posture with your breath and you will fire up awareness and insight so you will remember that pose and it could serve you in the future. Notice the change in consciousness that any pose brings to your mind. That quality is unique to each group of postures being forward bends, backbends, twists, standing, balance or restorative.

If you had a stressful day at work, or you have been hit with something that is causing sadness, then yoga offers a way for you to change the extreme response to bring balance and calm back into your day.  If you have been on your feet all day and you are completely overwhelmed with too much to do, there is a forward bend that will take your mind to a different place of calm, or a backbend to energize or a twist to relieve the tension.

Never underestimate the power of one posture.  The choices of postures that are part of your practice are  tools for you to utilize, as you need. If it is a backbend that will pull you out of a deep sadness and open up your chest, helping to relieve your heavy heart, or a twist that will change your perspective on a situation; the power of that pose could be enough to change your day.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A smile in any language is still a smile.

Years ago, I took a course in Taoist abdominal massage. The teachings from the master included the practice of smiling to each of your organs. Smile to the liver, the spleen, the kidneys, etc.

When I passed unassumingly by a mirror in my house and caught a glimpse of myself without a smile I was hit by the shocking revelation that I better smile! A smile can absolutely change the vibration, beauty, and energy of how you appear to others and how you feel within yourself. From my reflection I looked older, unhappy, and way too serious.

I decided to smile even when I wasn’t feeling like it. While I sat for meditation, I smiled. When I did an asana I could feel the tension in my face until I changed my expression with a smile. I brought my simple awareness to my class and asked my students to smile while in their posture. It immediately brought a playful easy and fun change to the classroom.

A smile will gain ten more years of life.

Chinese Proverb

How do women deal with aging? Facelifts, botox injections, skin peels, new injections of this and that. This will improve a face with less wrinkles but cannot hide the inner quality that is missing, no matter how much is paid for a great facelift, ultimately as you age your face will reflect outwardly what is going on with you from the inside.

As I am growing on my journey through life; Always with yoga by my side, I know that the true beauty that shows up in the later years of life will radiate from the light of happiness and peace that I have cultivated knowing that this is everlasting beauty. When Yoga and meditation started to show me how I could be thrown around like the wind, I realized that instead of focusing on the outside, I better start on the inside. Meditation offers me a key to see when my emotions are coloring my state of mind and hatha yoga allows me to shed tension from what might be causing unwanted stress that is always reflected in facial tensions.

While practicing Inverted postures such as Headstand, Shoulderstand, and Halasana you will notice how your facial muscles have to relax.  I can never tense my face while doing inversions and I love the image of increased blood flow, and turning all my facial muscles upward.

Yoga is a serious practice as is meditation, but it is a serious practice of fun, joy, lightness, and play. Like all aspects of your yoga practice, remember to smile. It’s free, it’s contagious, and if you do it long enough you will feel those weak facial muscles starting to tone.

After a 5-day stay in the amazing Sequoia’s I had a chance to rediscover, on another level, the essence of Yoga practice. Yoga means Harmony, union, and balance.  Doing Yoga in the vast expansion of Nature is the expression of absolute Union with a powerful force active in Life itself.

We can do yoga to keep the body looking strong and flexible, but what about yoga to rediscover the natural balance of life within our own body. How about remembering our relationship to nature and finding that natural potential movement and freedom we have within ourselves.

As I sat, watched and listened to the roaring creek by my campsite, I began to do yoga. I began breathing in a rhythm that is so easy to forget. Inhaling, exhaling. Inhale up the back and exhale down the front. This is our natural rhythm. Everything in nature moves in a rhythm of harmony. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The North Star stays in the northern sky.

We have our own rhythm of breathing, walking, sleeping, waking, and when the movement of breath is stuck, we shift from harmony to disharmony (disease).

Yoga brings us to harmony. Doing yoga out in nature connects us to the environment surrounding us. Doing the Tree pose in the midst of Giant Sequoias with their big feet reaching out and down into more earth-space, I remember to balance with my feet acutely alert to the earth below and body above. My arms reaching as high as the tallest branch and my breath inspiring the intelligence that is guiding me to more and more awaking movement and stillness.

I move to the large flat stones perfect for watching, listening and feeling the force that runs through me as it runs through the creek water. Twisting in the wind, untwisting the accumulation from stress of worry, concern, and just life when my breath becomes shallow and lost. The Twist opens my chest, lungs, heart and my breath can spiral up my spine. The potential to relive and release the burdens resting on my shoulders is as present as my breath is complete.

I choose a rock to lean back over to do backbends, feeling the buildup of tension in my shoulders. Realizing my shoulders were carrying the unnecessary load that backbends freed me from. My hands are rooting into the rock and my breath guiding me to open my chest and heart. The roots of my feet reaching deeper into the ground, so my upper spine and chest can open and expand, recovering more and more freedom.

So many of my students come into the yoga room and find the same spot where they feel they can do yoga. I like to shake it up and have them to move to a different spot. How can you feel free to practice anywhere if you consider one spot to be your one and only yoga space? Be free! Find anywhere to do yoga so that you will be able to feel free to find that true harmony with your surroundings anywhere. Yoga is part of Nature’s rhythm.  The Yoking together of our self to a higher self, manifested majestically within Nature.

Two months ago the rains in Los Angeles broke up my favorite daily pastime of late; my 90 minute hike up in the mountains very close to where I live. I thought that it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to stay home and do some yoga. I thought I would do a head and shoulderstand series. I decided to take on the session from my time in Australia with Martin Jackson. The session is a total of ONE HOUR. Now, let me begin by saying that this is not my usual Modus operandi. I have taken classes where I have had to hold head and shoulder stand for really long times, but other then an occasional 10 min headstand, my home practice of inversions has been very thin.    

To date it has now been day 59. I can honestly claim that this has been almost every day. But now I have decided to write about it. I think someone might be interested in it. At least it might stop me from talking about it with people who are definitely not interested. The bottom line is, I have become a yoga nerd. Truly I say this after much contemplation on it, hence the nerdiness of it all.

Now I am still hiking for 90 minutes almost every day, but I have now added an hour inversion with relaxation, which is now part of the project. But this is the only thing I talk about! I must do this just to see what happens. I am the lab experiment. Will my neck break? Will I use one blanket or two, or three? This is my introduction to allow myself a space to discuss the profound (in my opinion) changes, although subtle, that I have been experiencing daily from this practice.

Day 59 and the changes are constant, day to day. Although the changes are surprising on the physical level but a profound change, which, I can say, has extended beyond my headstand practice into my meditation practice. To be able to sustain the intensity from subtle movements that I have never had in these poses before as well as the mental tenacity to stay in the position with these adjustments demand total focus. Yoga. Excess thoughts are burdens. Baggage.

This intense practice has given me new insight into where I want to be when I meditate.  Isn’t that what yoga is about, to lead us to a calm state of mind? After more then thirty years of practice, another layer of the onion skin is pealing away.

Occasionally I will have a student tell me that they are moving and may not be able to come to class any more. Now,  I do understand that when you live in Los Angeles and with the idea of driving anywhere extra, It feels like an extra burden so you just say NO.  

Regardless, when it comes to Yoga classes that you love, I still don’t have much empathy. Usually the student isn’t moving across the country, state, or city. Usually it is simply to the next town 20 minutes away.

When I first started yoga, I wasn’t teaching, I wouldn’t say that I was yet a dedicated student with any great ambition, I just knew That I loved yoga, I loved the studio and the gifted teachers with whom I was graced to meet and study.  I knew instinctively, with a primal familiarity that I had met something in my life that was introducing me to me.

When I first started yoga I lived far away from the studio where I wanted to study yoga.  I didn’t have a car at the time so I would take a bus 2 hours into Los Angeles  to take the yoga classes that I wanted. Years later, When I lived in Ireland, I knew that I wanted to experience another course with my teacher who lived in Australia, so I flew from Dublin to Sydney Australia. I also traveled to Italy twice to study with a teacher I highly respected. Once when I lived in Dublin, and again when I lived in NYC.

My journey through yoga has guided me in directions that I simply followed without reservation and I was ruthless with my desire to live out my fantasy and satisfy my yoga curiosity no matter where I had to travel to meet it.

These days there are yoga schools on every block. If a student of yoga finds a teacher that makes most sense to their experience both physical and mental/emotional, I would suggest to respect that awareness. That relationship as long as there is growth can take one student very far in their practice.

The dedication as a student that you give to your practice of yoga and the respect you give to your teacher is something that is overlooked in our society today.  Teachers of all kinds are a dime a dozen , but if you find a teacher that you feel is really great, stick with them.  Experience, insight, sensitivity, and generosity are rare and high qualities to find in a yoga teacher.

If it is only a neighborhood move, don’t be quick to discard your class for the sake of convenience.  The drive home after a great, inspiring Yoga class with a great teacher will be transformed to a stressless, timeless part of your day with little concern for those few extra miles of driving time.

There are eight installments from my interview.  I have portioned them in segments.  I sincerely hope that students, teachers and those who are simply curious and inspired will appreciate the sincerity and candid vision from what Martyn says, sees and reveals about himself and his experience with his teacher, his students, and his life.

Shelley Piser

Shelley Piser: How do you feel about the way the The Iyengar associations are moving?

Martyn Jackson: I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. They are putting themselves up as superiors. You can boost Mr. Iyengar because if you felt that you got something from him and you want to return your love and your affection, but I believe that the majority of Iyengar teachers have ruined his reputation. I don’t think, well I know Iyengar is not like what you read about him. I mean I spent hours and hours a day and I’ve spent months at a time with him. I know he’s changed as a person. God, everybody changes, but the changes are more from the pupils.

It was like Rajneesh. Rajneesh was a wonderful guy, but it was his pupils that went pseudo and that’s one thing that you’ve got to watch. That’s why Mr. Iyengar basically is a loner. He’s an individual but it was his pupils who tried to twist him into different paths and then they misrepresent what he says.

SP: More about the controversy that you have in relationship to the other associations. Would it be because of your teaching method?

MJ: I think so. Yes. Because I am fairly brash and very outspoken. Where I refuse to become a pseudo teacher, I refuse to buy my pupils. If I don’t have a pupil I thank God then I’ve got time to work on my own. If I’ve got a pupil, I’ll teach that person like I’ve got a class. I will treat that person and give him or her everything; where other teachers will, if they get one or two pupils, they’ll say, “I don’t think it’s enough, you know it’s not worth having a class.” I don’t do that and I get very angry, I am very strong. If somebody is devoted enough to come to class, you should be, again, ready there to take them. And there are so many teachers that talk about yoga but they don’t practice.

I know, I have been with a lot of yogis; I’ve been with a tremendous amount of Yogis over 30 years. And I don’t like their philosophies at all because they don’t practice what they preach. They are not really honest with their pupils at all. They will sometimes mislead them. I think when Mr. Iyengar left his small abode in Saba shier and built the huge complex that he’s got now, I think that was the beginning of the deterioration of Mr. Iyengar. Because I felt that he was the personality that should have dealt with one or two people at a time but he would have spread Yoga as I see yoga, as I experience what Yoga is about. Like he says, there are three types of yoga. There is Yoga Yoga, which is he feels, or, I feel is the right yoga where you have to work hard; you have to penetrate to understand the truth. But the others will work superficially. They are frightened to work their pupils hard; because they are frightened they are going to lose them.

SP: In the Iyengar circles, you have a reputation of being very controversial. Why is that, do you feel?

MJ: Because I want to be different. I refuse to be a pea in the pod like the others. I want to set out to be something different, I want to be ME. I don’t want to be Mr. Iyengar. I don’t want to be Rajneesh, I don’t want to be anyone. I want to be Martyn Jackson. I’m not going to write any books saying this is the Martyn Jackson method like there are so many people writing books on yoga saying, ‘It’s this method, it’s my method because I think it’s the best.’

All we are doing is participating in something that is already there and we’ve reached that level of understanding that we feel we can participate. But it’s not MINE.  It’s only because I’ve reached a level of understanding that, “Wow, this is good!” for me but not necessarily for other people.

©shelley piser 2009

Shelley Piser: How do you imagine the next decade, the next 10 years for yourself?

Martyn Jackson: The next 10 years, when I finish this teacher’s course, I’m going to have about a months rest. I’ll spend with my son and daughter and I’ll start by practice gradually, intelligently. I’m not going to start going into it with brute force, I’m not going to go into it saying, “right Martyn, you’re going to be the best again.” That doesn’t suit me anymore. Once upon a time I wanted to be the best and that doesn’t pay. Being the best is just another phase in your life, you know. Because there is always somebody that are going to be better. But,a all you’ve got to do is to work to the best of your ability. You’ve got to pursue, you’ve got to open up areas in your body that you haven’t visited before and you must observe them and you must be thankful for what you can do at this moment and just be honest with it. There must be integrity in everything you do.

I picture the body as the dwelling house of the Lord. And that He’s there all of the time. This energy, what people call G- O -D? It’s there all the time. You must always be cleansing that temple, the body. You must pursue it; you must be honest with it. You must penetrate it so that you can really understand the truth. Because when you understand the truth you understand yourself. And this is what I feel. This is what I feel that I don’t want to be a pseudo person, I don’t want to be a person that shines like a knight in armor, and I want to be a person that is a Godly person; an honest person. I want to have the utmost integrity.

SP: Do you feel that you are still striving for that?

MJ: Yes, definitely. At the moment I’m like fighting off a lot of my old pupils because they seemingly feel a lot for me, which I believe that they do too. I sense that they are protected towards me and that’s why they protect me in such a way that they won’t allow me to do this they won’t allow me to do that. They encourage me to take more time off. I feel that tremendously, but that’s got to break away to go away. I will be leaving the school eventually and just starting something quietly on my own again. Just very quietly. I am going to be more selective with pupils now. Like if you were around, I would ask you to work six months with me, or if you wanted to stay, I would encourage you to stay. Because I think, I have observed you for a long time and you’ve got the potential of really going out there and having people. You can cut yourself off. You can become an individual. If you’ve got somebody really serious, you could work well. Physically you’re ok, you can do the asanas, but, I’ve like to get a better understanding with you that I want to bring your soul consciousness. It’s there, I mean, it shows, It’s there, but there is something a little forlorn about you and there is something a little… Like there is loneliness there that you don’t really understand and this is holding you back. But I feel that it is a learning stage that you are learning but it’s slow, you are not, I don’t know, I sense a lot of fear in you sometimes. But you’ve got a lot of potential if it’s guided properly. That is the sort of teachers that I want. I want teachers, not because I teach them; not because I’ve trained them. But, because I’ve been allowed to participate in their growing, that’s what I like and I’d like to be more selective now because there are a lot of young teachers out there now. You know if they work well and devotionally they’ll make quite good guides

©shelley piser 2009

Keep in mind that this interview was done in 1988.  Yoga today has become quite a business in many of the ways that Martyn talked about over 20 years ago.

Shelley Piser: What direction do you think Yoga is going in the West?

Martyn Jackson: I feel a little nervous about it because I can see I feel that I had very good training at the beginning and I’ve tried all of the years from then on to get yoga, to introduce Yoga as I was taught and not to sell it to people as something pseudo. Not yoga is going to do this for you or yoga is going to do that for you. Yoga will do nothing for you unless you’ve got that self-motivation, unless you’ve got that spiritual ability to be able to go within and not just to do exercises and just get a beautiful body out of it. I mean some people, ok they will do that and probably that’s the depth of what they understand yoga. Yoga to me is something; yoga is very precious, very precious. I feel through the practice of yoga, and understanding life better that it has pulled me through this sickness that I’ve experienced in the last six months.

SP: And it would change the direction of where you are headed now?

MJ:  Yes, I am sure it will. Yeah definitely. If I am invited to other countries, then again I am not going to say, “teach my method” just “teach my feelings” Because yoga is nobodies, yoga is universal. Yoga is there to lift yourself to another understanding. Because, life is on different levels of understanding and each and every one of us are on different levels. So I am very fearful of the way yoga is going at the moment.Although the association is good, the association is there to bring everybody together and get that understanding but, everyone is fighting each other. You know, putting themselves up, as ‘I am the better teacher,’ ‘I’m the better teacher.’ “You shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that”

You have got to work according to your pupils. You’ve got to work according to your feelings as long as you are devotional to your practice, and then you are closer to the truth. If you penetrate with each asana, with everything that you do like In pranayama, if you penetrate deeply then you will get more clarity of what life it’s about and that becomes more truthful and that will give a better understanding. And what you experience from a soul, that is truth. You can talk to other people and they will say “oh no it’s not that way,” but that’s the way you experienced it. If you feel good about it, if you feel, you know if you are doing something that is incorrect, if you are practicing something that you know is damaging then you shouldn’t practice that. Penetrate it to the limit, and then you say, ‘No, this is not right.’ So you try another way and you feel, “ahh, this is it!” And if that penetrates you, then you’ve got to bring it together that if there are pupils in your class and you talk to them and then they talk and the way they answer your question, you can see at what level they’re at the moment. That’s the important thing, knowing what level your pupils are at the moment.

SP: Do you feel that the direction of Yoga is sincere in the way that the association [Iyengar] is driving it?

MJ: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that they really understand what is happening yet. I think there are a few intelligent people like that out there who have the wrong concept of yoga. I think they look at yoga as just a few exercises, standing on your head, shoulders and so on but I don’t really feel that they understand the philosophy of yoga. This is what I feel myself, personally. And I feel a little nervous about the way it’s going. There are so many people being drawn to this wonderful art but they don’t look at it. They are not feeling, they are not sensing what yoga is really about and I am a bit worried about it.

SP: What about for yourself. How does your own method of teaching the asanas which other Iyengar teachers would disagree with or have conflict with?

MJ: OK, that again comes into the medical side. When I was younger, I always wanted to be a doctor. I was always wanted to be dealing with bodies and sometimes with the book system by Mr. Iyengar. I am not saying he’s wrong, he’s not wrong at all because he is working very systematically but myself, I am not frightened to change them around. As long as I work in a systematic way: arms, shoulders, trunk, leg, lateral abdominal, and dorsal. I am still being effective with the whole body. I won’t follow a shoulderstand after headstand, not right away. Or I’ll probably do a headstand at the beginning of class so that they are more stable at the beginning. But occasionally I’ll put a headstand at the end of the class to test their stability.

If I’m a teacher, I’ve got to be creative myself, I can’t rely on my teacher to be always around with me. I love my teacher so much that his presence is there, and if I don’t, if I am not satisfied with my teacher, I will talk with him about that. So he can give me suggestions. But the day comes when you’ve been, if a good teacher has taught you and you go back to him occasionally so that you are revitalized and you become creative yourself. And then you’ve got to begin to take over and your teacher goes his way and you go yours. You’ve got to develop your method also. As long as the basics are there.

It’s like dancing. You do your classical dance and that’s a foundation and that’s a bank of knowledge as you’re going along you can be creative, you can create another movement that you’ve never did within the classical movement. So you can bring that new movement that you have brought. It’s not a new movement at all. It is only because of your practice that you’ve raised to another level and then you’ve put your creation, otherwise you’ll never improve. You’ll be at your teachers level. I mean you’ll probably be better then your teacher.

SP: So this, in a sense, is a confinement that  the Iyengar associations are creating?

MJ: I’ll give you an example now. I did everything religiously that Mr. Iyengar taught me. I wouldn’t mention a word that hasn’t been mentioned by Mr. Iyengar. I did that for about twelve years, especially with my Pranayama. Religiously I would sit at a quarter to four in the morning, I had all of my things laid out all of the time. No one else would ever enter that room; no one else would go into that room and touch. Twice a day I would do that. I would sit for two hours solidly and practice my pranayama as I was asked to do and shown how to do in India with him. Then, one day, I said, “Martyn you are not progressing, you are getting your breath under control alright, but you seem to be stuck in the mud. So, why not listen to your body and do what it wants to do instead of listen to Mr. Iyengar all of the time, because you are an individual, he is an individual. His book is a guide, a textbook, just to give you guidance.”

This is what gets people mixed up. They get the book and think that they must stick religiously to the book. But that’s wrong, that means that you are going to stalemate, you are not going to improve at all. OK?Although you are teaching, You’ve got a level of teaching for a certain level of pupils. But you’re not growing yourself. Your pupils are going to get to yourself and they are going to leave and feel that they can’t get any more from you. Understand? So you’ve got to be creative yourself and your teacher should respect that. That’s what I want. I want pupils that will come to my level and then say, right, and pursue something more. And still end up friends and able to communicate. God forbid for anybody to stay at one level. I want to see somebody that I’ve trained or assisted in training that’s reached that sky-high, reached, limit if possible. That’s if we can get that

SP: There needs to be a new generation coming up.

MJ: Yes, this is right. But you must watch this Americanism and I am not saying that against you and it is the English as well. But it starts in America. It starts in California unfortunately, you know? And there are people that misrepresent their teacher. They don’t really understand. I don’t care how much I am talked about because people talk about me and I always get one more follower, you know, because people will come to me just to see who this person is. And then I teach in a certain way and they either hate me or love me. Like Mr. Iyengar, they either hate or love him immediately, but that shouldn’t be our concern. Our concern is working the person; each person that comes to us as we feel that they need.

This is why I don’t like to take General classes, because you can’t give each individual what they need.  All you can give is just a general guidance and that doesn’t suit everyone. Just one person in that class might be getting something out of it. You’ve got to have that individual practice.

You’ve got to have that individual eye-to-eye contact you know. Even if it is for just ten minutes at a time, that is worth two hours. Five minutes in a class with eye-to-eye contact and just that little assistance is worth two or three hours every day. That’s what I feel bad about in taking big classes. You’ve got to have the big numbers to pay for the rent unfortunately. If society was to say “OK this is your life and you are doing a lot of good,” if they were to say, ‘now look, we’ll get a center for you, just a small center for you, and we’ll look after you. You’ll have no worries of finance.’ And I wouldn’t ask for anything. That’s how I would love to teach. I would love to teach where I didn’t have any responsibilities financially, emotionally and all I want to do is to be there to serve. And that’s what I’d like.

©shelley piser 2009

In 1981 I was introduced to Pranayama practice in Martyn Jackson’s teachers course. We practiced pranayama for one hour every morning before asana practice. This practice created the greatest shift in my own asana practice.

Shelley Piser: You say often that Pranayama, is the most important part of your practice.

Martyn Jackson:  I feel so. If I can get you practicing pranayama, you’re taking sufficient oxygen throughout the body so that’s giving you much more clarity in the brain so you can become much more truthful so that when you look at a person, you don’t look at the outside of the person, but you are penetrating inside. You are looking at the inside. The inside is where the truth is. Not the outside. The outside is the unknown, the outside is just where you just put a little bit of powder, put on a nice dress and that’s the outside. And that’s the unknown, but the inside is the truth. If the inside is beautiful then you know that that is the person that you want. So this is important to, that’s what I feel, to be a leader.

SP: Talk about pranayama a bit

MJ: Pranayama is something again that we in the west really don’t understand it. Pranayama is a Sanskrit term. I don’t like using Sanskrit terms. If you are in the country where it is used, that’s wonderful, but here, again it is like an ego trip, it’s like showing people that you are more knowledgeable then they are. So I like to work as my friends, you know have an open collar neck and just like a slave, and when I say slave, I don’t mean somebody who is beaten, but I mean an ordinary person, an ordinary worker. I like to be like that. To start talking in Sanskrit terms is lifting yourself up and putting yourself as something more special then what they are. You talk to them at their level. Talk to them about pranayama is how you breathe. But they’ll say, ‘but I breathe ok,’ but then you can talk to them and show them that they are not breathing at all. All they are doing is just taking in sufficient to keep them at the level they are at the moment. You start encouraging this breath, which is the life force. You can go without food indefinitely, you can go without water or drink for three or four days, but with the breath you breathe about three minutes for the average person before you do any brain damage. So that’s the totality of breath.

We have a brain, which we use like 2 1/2 percent and if you oxygenate it, you can then build up that strength to stimulate more of that brain. If you stimulate more of that brain you have better insight of things we do for better understanding so that’s when you lift to different levels of life. So that’s the reason you do pranayama.

There are many, many methods of pranayama. You shouldn’t delve into too many. So I teach the Nadi Sodhana pranayama, which is again balancing the polarity of breathing through individual nostrils so you are getting one nostril the left nostril, the same balance as your right and visa-versa. And then the kumbhaka breath.

The Kumbhaka breath is the breath retention. Whether the lungs fill up and then you retain it or when the lungs are empty, you retain them empty. But you must watch the rhythm of the heart also. The oxygen we breathe, you don’t just breathe through your nose, you breathe through the pores of your skin, as well. And that’s vitally important. And also, it makes you a different person; you feel if you had normal, natural control of your breath, Then you would breathe normal natural, because breathing is tidal and if you learn to utilize all of the lungs, and if you learn to stabilize your breath and that is going to stabilize you as a person, because if you breathe haphazardly you are thinking haphazardly. So that is the importance of a little bit of breath control understanding. I mean don’t go into it too drastically, otherwise you are going to drive yourself crazy and you are libel to damage the central nervous system. But gradually allow yourself to become aware of the breathing and you can see then, yourself personally just how untidal that you are breathing. So you say to yourself, “I am going to attempt, I am not going to try, (trying is negative) I am going to attempt to balance five cycles of breath and you’ll find that by the time you get to the fifth, as a beginner, you will find that you are puffing. So that is the importance of pranayama is the stability, stabilizing. When you start that and you feel that you are getting a benefit and that’s when the functions are beginning to happen and you are beginning to reap the benefits and then you will pursue it more. But don’t change. You can build up your ratio but don’t go on to another pranayama. Unless there is something drastically wrong, and then just experiment quietly.

©shelley piser 2009

Breathing is the action of merging with life. Think about something or someone that you love. When you are with that person or enjoying that thing that you love, you can take in a very big breath.  You can also exhale in a way that brings total relaxation to your body and to your mind.  All things that we want to merge with; we drink in energy/love of any person/place/or thing through our inhalation. Our deep, full breath merges our life in THAT MOMENT with the environment around us. We exchange experience through a deep breath. IF you are in love, make love, enjoy smelling a flower, a box of strawberries or chocolate or simply a moment of peaceful relaxation; you want to breathe so deeply to merge with that experience of beauty you are merging with.   When my mind completely merges with my breath, at that moment in time I forget myself (thinking) and simply become part of what I am involved with. In those quick seconds or minutes there is no resistance. I feel free. I am free.  This is freedom.

Remember walking along the seaside or through the mountains. What brings back the ethereal experience of the memory? The visual will change from natural environmental changes, changes in population or style but the smell and vibration don’t change.  We remember the air.  The quality, the smell, and the spirit. We remember from the deep breath that merged us with that environment.  

On the other side of this is the feeling of smelling something very unpleasant. In this situation you avoid taking any deep breaths. If you find yourself in the company of someone distasteful, you may feel claustrophobic. You don’t want to even sit too close to them.  The last thing you want to do is to take a deep breath. You don’t want to merge with that experience.

When do you exhale? Do you really completely  breathe out, completely letting go? That “sigh of relief” that says “relaxation.” Movement through the body requires complete and balanced, rhythmic respiration- exhale and inhale.  Notice what allows your exhalation.  Notice that feeling that brings on that really big exhale. Watch what inspires big inhales and what inspires big exhales.

As autumn passes watch how a leaf falls from a tree. You see how it swoops down and rises back up and softly sways from side to side gliding on the support of the breeze surrounding it on its descending journey.

I think of my inner body being as being supported in a similar way with the breath. I feel the lightness of space as I move into any posture led by the intelligence of the tidal rhythm of my breath and moving along the wave-like movement that my mind can follow.  One student said it perfectly.  She discovered the demand of concentration which led her this insight.  She reflected in a moment following a posture, “I have to watch myself with every breath.”  This is true, so simple, yet so difficult to attain.

Breath gives life.  It gives intelligence to the brain.  The breath is your bigger brain.  Look to your breath for answers, not your brain.  Let your brain pause to listen through your breath, and sooner or later, calm insight will effortlessly take you where you want to go.

©shelley piser 2009