I have been practicing pranayama for the last fifty years. In the beginning, my grand father taught me and then I learnt more from reading books. In my early thirties, I formally learnt pranayama from a guru and became a teacher. I have since taught and continued practice all through my life. There are two possibilities to feeling tightness during or after practice of pranayama assuming that one is practicing it the right way having formally learnt it from a yoga and pranayama teacher or guru. This answer does not deal with such effects due to wrong way of practice and if you are not sure if you are doing it right or not, I suggest stick to the simple practice of FGCB instead, which is explained in the article linked below.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What are some breathing exercises for beginners who struggle with focusing on their breath while meditating?
Do this for just three minutes and see if it helps. Sit on a straight back chair with feet flat on the floor, the entire soles of the feet from tips of the toes to the heels firmly contacting the floor. Keep your back erect, you may place a cushion behind your back for support if required but do not lean back on an inclined backrest of the chair. Let your head be held straight, neck straight, shoulders square and relaxed. You may tilt the head very slightly downward to gaze at a point on the floor in front of you a few feet away from you. Keep your eyes fixed on that spot for the three minutes without moving your eyeballs. Allow your eyes to be half open and half closed and hold that spot in a gentle gaze and not a stare. You are not looking there to see something but simply holding that spot in a gentle gaze. Exhale with a loud sigh from your mouth and use gentle effort to empty your lungs as far as possible without straining too much. Then relax your body and allow the inhale to happen effortlessly and soundlessly through your nostrils. When you sense that the inhale is over, do not put any further effort to breathe in but repeat the exhale from the mouth with the sound and gentle effort. I call this conscious breathing. Effort only for the out breaths and allowing in breaths to happen effortlessly. This entire process is called FGCB or fixed gazing with conscious breathing. You may set hourly reminder alerts on your smartphone and repeat this 3 minute FGCB every hour throughout the day today and see how it helps with calming your mind. This is a powerful grounding practice and you can do this even when you are driving and waiting for the red signal to turn green. Allow any such interruptions in your day to remind you to come back to the practice of FGCB repeatedly. For more information and plenty of free resources to aid with the practice of meditation and deep healing, please visit my website.
Now let us look at why tightness could arise. The first possibility is that the person is already suffering from a chronic condition such as asthma, bronchitis, hypertension, or any other chronic cardiac or lung related illness. With these conditions there would be a tightness in the chest region, it would be there all the time without the person being aware of it. Tightness in the chest region includes a heaviness, contraction, mild ache, fluid retention, etc and is the physical manifestation of an underlying energy block. Practice of pranayama begins to open up and release the block and that is why it shows up as a felt sensation. If this is the cause, continued practice of pranayama would eventually heal the underlying condition itself.
The second possibility is that pranayama is increasing the body heat or acidic pH and this causes tightness. Chandrabedi pranayama and Sheetali pranayama helps to cool down the body heat and Anulom Vilom helps balance the energies.
One important suggestion I would like to make is to ensure that the mind shifts from its normal restless thinking mode into a quiet being mode as you practice pranayama. That is why a practice of Energy Movements or gentle yoga movements and stretches before the pranayama and a practice of sitting meditation afterwards is better than just doing pranayama as if it is a physical exercise. Wholesome physical activity is not just exercising the body when the mind is busily engaged with thoughts or watching a movie or news or listening to some podcast or news or songs. The following article explains this in more detail.
Awareness Journey · November 17, 2022
Mindful wholesome physical activity. Self-care Series Part 5 Age is only a number and you can make this true for you when you understand that the body needs a certain bare minimum set of routine wholesome physical activity to remain alive youthful and active always. If you are living in an urban world engaged in a desk job, you get tired and exhausted the end of the day and the best way to feel rested from this exhaustion is to do wholesome physical activity. Even when you are engaged in certain physical activities as part of your work you could get exhausted by the end of the day with lack of wholesome physical activity. These include standing most of the day as teachers would, or driving most of the day or travelling in a bus of plane or train. Thats because the body is strained but there is no movement or flow. If you are a sports person or a body builder or you live in a rural countryside engaged in outdoor work, you may just read this to understand what is wholesome physical activity just to confirm that your body is getting what it needs. However if you live in an urban space and your career involves working in an office or home, understanding this and creating a small routine for yourself by including some wholesome physical activity would help you be more productive and effective in the work you do. Especially if you are in your twenties or thirties and leading a career that results in a sedentary lifestyle you will not know what you are missing because you still feel healthy due to your youthful body. You might realise what you have been missing when you practice the suggestions at the end of this article just for a week and experience the amazing benefits it can give you. It is never late, even if you are over sixty or seventy you can immensely benefit from understanding and practicing wholesome physical activity. Wholesome physical activity is stretching and flexing each and every part of your body while being fully focussed on your breath and on the movement and flow. In other words, being fully present in your body with your awareness as you engage in exercising your body. I would call this inner body awareness and it is different than looking at your body with your analytical mind. Each cell in your body is capable of being aware of the sensation that exists there and your higher mind is capable of holding all of the sensations of your entire body in awareness. This is only possible when you let go of focusing or concentrating or engaging or looking at any one part of the body with an intention to find out what is wrong there or to fix it or change whatever is happening there. I recommend at least 40 minutes to one hour of physical movements or exercises or stretches while staying with your body awareness everyday. An hour of outdoor walking while holding in awareness your breath and the movements of your body is a good way to give your body what it needs. Listening to some music while being engaged with such activity is ok if you need something to keep your mind from running away into thoughts. However listening to news or something engaging or talking with someone takes you away from the inner body awareness and such activity only leads to stressing the body instead of releasing the stress stored in it. I have put together a set of thirty body movements that includes flexing, stretching and yoga and put it up on YouTube as SelvanS 30 Yoga. This takes 20 minutes to do and it can fulfil your entire body’s minimal need for movement and flow if you do it twice daily. There is a learning version (click here to view) and then there is a practice version (click here to view). There are also two shorter versions for practice during the day just to relieve stress and it takes only ten minutes (click here to view) and five minutes (click here to view). I have also put together a set of sixteen(8+8) energy movements that takes ten minutes to do once you learn it. The first set of eight energy movements are called EM for Balance and Flow of energies and the second set of eight energy movements are called EM for clearing and healing of energies. You can learn these movements by enrolling for the first module of the Awareness Journey online course. The minimum wholesome physical activity needs of the body can be fulfilled by cultivating a habit of practicing the 8+8 EM (ten minutes) twice everyday, once immediately upon waking up and once just before going to sleep and by practicing the SelvanS 30 (twenty minutes) once any time during the day. This practice will keep your body energetic and alive throughout the day and in fact make you naturally want to engage in a more physically active life. This practice will help you be free from accidents and body injury if you are a sports person or a gym enthusiast by keeping your body flexible, toned and free from energy blocks. The self care series will be of five parts namely: 1. What is wholesome sleep? 2. How to enjoy wholesome sleep? 3. Water can become the elixir for everlasting health and well-being. 4. What is healthy mindful eating. 5. What is mindful wholesome physical activity.
The following link will guide you with an appropriate practice before and after pranayama to make it a wholesome daily practice.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
How can you maintain mental and spiritual balance in today’s world?
Note: above picture copied from a google search of “rope walking images” Your question is very apt because never before in human history has there been so much disturbances to our spiritual balance than in today’s world. This is because of the energy pollution in the space around us. Our physical body is not the whole of us although that’s how it appears to our physical sense perception. Our physical body is contained within and also permeated by our energy body. Our energy body has been variously referred to or recognised as bio field, bio plasma, human electromagnetic field, energy body, aura, athma, spirit body or spiritual body. It is a field of electromagnetic energy and it makes up the five overlapping layers of our mind with its five separate aspects. Energy pollution is the energy vibrations of all the digital communications happening in the telecommunications network around us between the cellphone towers and all the mobile devices, computer systems, the satellite network, TV devices, radio stations, microwave devices, etc. The space around us is filled with information in the form of these energy waves and to our energy body it is pollution. It causes disturbances. This energy pollution by itself is however not the primary pitfall in today’s world. The distinction of primary pitfall goes to the modern culture of being in the thinking mind all the time. Throughout our waking time and also during sleeping time our mind is engaged and busy with activities in it. These include the monologues in our mind with ourselves, the dialogues we carry out mentally with an imaginary person, the voices of others in our mind telling us what not to do, memories of past events, worries about the future, planning, working, calculating, computing, watching something, reading, studying, fantasising, imagining, dreaming, etc. We are habituated to this and so it seems to be happening effortlessly and automatically although we are doing it. This habit is the biggest pitfall in our efforts to maintain mental and spiritual balance in today’s world. Now that we know the pitfalls, it is easy to learn and cultivate a new habit to help us remain connected with the natural earth and cosmic energy flows and remain balanced. The article linked below shows the way.