Muscle Energy
and Organic Energy

The muscles of our body are wrapped around the skeleton, just like a turban. Tone your muscles, feeling them hug on your bones. Feel muscles and skin squeezing your arms, legs, and body starting from your foundation all the way up. Beginning with Tandasana and throughout all your asanas, keep that sensation of your muscles toned, alive, being in your whole body, present. Imagine you are wearing a wet suit, feeling its tightness on your body, from the boots all the way up to the hood.

As the muscle energy is tightening inward, engaging bones and joints, feel your organic energy coming from the center of your core radiating outwards. Feel this energy as truly coming from your soul. Allow yourself to feel your radiant energy body glowing and expanding outward. Bringing these two “opposite” actions into play, pressing from the inside out, and from the outside in, you create a compact shell, a container that is strong, steady and able to sustain and maintain the light and the energy that arises from your asana practice.

Bandas are the key points to opening the energy channels in your body and to maintaining an erect torso, strong core, and extended spine. These bandas create domes within the body, drawing the energy upward.

1. Mulabanda: by gently engaging your lower abs, about an inch under your navel, feel as if there is a string pulling your spine forward, and another string pulling your pelvic floor upward. The key to the Mulabanda is to totally relax your pelvic floor. In order to do this you need to release the muscles of your genitals and anus, called sphincters. This will allow the pelvic floor to rise in an inward and upward pull, creating an internal dome of energy.

2. Udyanabanda: Coming into Udyanabanda means that the whole diaphragm rises into a dome shape upward. This upward moving energy assists the lift of the ribcage up and away from the pelvic floor. In essence the same engagement in the lower abs we use to come in Mulabanda, is the same action that will bring us into Udyanabanda.

The Mulabanda and the Udyandabanda assist in the upward movement of energy called apana. This is the energy that assures the core strength and the lengthening of the spine. But this energy should not go up to the head. This would create problems anywhere from a simple headache to a stroke, and in any case is wasted energy that would only create stress. To avoid this, we use the throat lock.

1. Jalaharabanda: while you are extending up through the crown of the head, feel the lengthening of your cervical spine, allow your chin to gently come down towards your chest. The indentation under your adams apple, where your throat meets your chest cavity is where the lock takes place. This is exactly where the sound of Ujjayi pranayama comes from. With the downward movement of the chin, feel the constriction of the throat at that point blocking any upward moving energy towards the head.

Since our muscles wrap around our bones, feel the energy of their rotation by imagining the strength of cables. As the cables are woven into a spiral, their strength multiplies. In the same way, the muscle’s strength multiplies, in a spiral motion. Coming into the rotation will allow you to be in an engaged state (in asana) with much less effort, and will assist you into correct alignment.

1. External and internal rotations:  Our arms can rotate both internally and externally. To understand what this means, come into a five pointed star. Open your palms upward to the sky and feel the external rotation from your hands all the way up to the shoulders. Then, keeping your shoulders in place, from the elbows down, bring your forearms and hands in an inward rotation. This strengthening rotation applies to almost all asanas, especially in downward facing dog, where it is most obviously felt and assists alignment.

2. Since the knee is a hinge joint (not a ball joint like the elbow), the whole leg will either rotate internally or externally. In the case of the down dog, both legs move into an internal rotation. This assists with opening space into the sacrum. In the case of the warrior postures, the front bent leg moves into an external rotation, lining up the knee with the space between the first and second toe, preventing it from collapsing inward. Simultaneously, the straight back leg comes into an internal rotation, bringing the weight of the back foot onto the outer edge.

Yoga is breathing. Yoga is dancing with life; a dance between the body and prana. The breath leads, the body follows. Breathing is about bringing consciousness within. Prana is everywhere around us, in the food we eat, the water we drink, and in abundance in the air we breath. It is the force of the sun (bioenergy.) Air comes into our lungs, allowing prana to flow into every cell of our body. All life is supported by the process of photosynthesis. When prana enters our body it is called Shakti, it becomes one’s personal energy, and manifests as thoughts, words, and actions. “It is in form, where Shakti waits to reveal itself.”

It is more than oxygen that we breath in from the air around us. This beautiful mysterious force that sustains a kite in the air, that makes trees and whole forests dance, carries within it the force of life itself. We are born into life with an inhalation and leave this world with an exhalation. This birth and death cycle is lived over and over again with each of our breaths. Inhalation brings fresh prana and aliveness into our body, while our exhalation discards all that is toxic and dead.

We generally use one sixth of the capacity of our lungs. It seems as if people do not want the fullest light within them. Through the practice of pranayama we can tap into prana, increasing our personal Shakti, and calming, opening, invigorating, warming, and detoxifying our body. Most importantly, the regular practice of pranayama awakens us to the present moment, in its unlimited potential. Shakti is what is present. Yoga is a practice in the present moment.

The choice of which pranayama to use depends upon our goal at any specific time and point in our practice.  We use calming pranayama for sitting meditation and invigorating pranayama as preparation for and throughout our asana practice.
The following sequence can be used for everyday practice:

1. Durga Pranayama:  center yourself
2. Kapalabati:  warm up your body
3. Ujaya pranayama:  ocean breath through movement and asana
4. Nadi Shodhana:  alternate nostril breathing

Durga Pranayama:
This three part breath calms and centers the mind and body.  It uses the full capacity of the lungs, removes stale air and toxins, renews the entire system, and improves digestion and elimination. Durga pranayama has the wonderful effect of bringing one into the present moment.

Kapalabati:
Kapalabati means “the skull polishing breath.” It is called this because of its awakening effect. It energizes the body, massages the internal organs, and revitalizes the central nervous system. It brings mental clarity and alertness to the whole body.

Ujjayi Pranayama: Victory Breath
Ujjayi is the ocean sound breath. Allow the ocean of prana to come into the beaches of your body, mind, and soul. Use the sound of the ocean to be your main dristi point throughout practice. When you do not hear your own breath, recognize that your attention has drifted away. Bring yourself back into your breath and back onto your mat in the present moment with ujjayi pranayama. It is a full deep breath that sustains a continuous flow of oxygen and prana into the body, facilitating the release of stale air and toxins.

The ujjayi pranayama lights the internal fire. It should be used continuously throughout our asana practice. This is the alchemical ingredient of the practice of deep yoga. This fire purifies and cleanses the energy body and the physical body. Using the ujjayi pranayama will change your practice from a physical practice to deep inner transformation of the self. Tapping into the metabolism through the thyroid and parathyroid glands, it creates a chain reaction, affecting all the glands of the body. This strongly affects the physical body by balancing the hormones which are secreted.  It affects the energy body through the chakras correlated to each gland.

Nadi Shodhana: Alternate nostril breathing  
This is a balancing breath that is strengthening and calming. It stimulates both sides of the brain, synchronizing the two hemispheres. Most importantly it balances the two main nadis called the ida and the pingala (the two main energy channels coiling up the vertebra known as sushumna.)  The ida and the pingala energy channels start from the base of the sacrum and spiral up to the top of the sternum.  The sushumna starts from the base of the sacrum and extends up to the sixth chakra, the pineal gland, where kundalini climbs to, opening our sixth chakra and bringing forth enlightenment. The practice of hatha yoga (sun/moon) is the action of using opposite forces to balance; the left with right, masculine with feminine, and night with day. After all the previous pranayama, and especially after one’s asana practice with ujjayi breathing, nadi shodhana brings equilibrium to the whole self. It helps the entire body integrate the effects of practice and allows for the free flow of energy.