Am I Doing Bandha Correctly? | Mark Whitwell on Obeying the Breath
Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga
Bandha is the intelligent cooperation of muscle groups in the intrinsic polarity of strength that is receptive, of above to below, applied in the breath ratios of asana.
You can feel bandha arising in your asana practice when the principles that Krishnamacharya taught are all there. Asana, accurately practiced, creates bandha and it should never be taught or applied outside of the context of asana practice. Just notice what happens in the retention after inhale and in the retention after exhale.
For example, on inhalation the chest expands. In the pause after inhalation, the head is lowered to the heart forming jalandhara bandha. There may be a feeling there for you — a flush of energy. It is a beautiful action because it is the shortest distance between ajna chakra and your hridaya heart. Desikachar would say that jalandhara bandha is the action of surrendering the head to its source, the heart.
The lower bandhas, mula bandha and uddiyana bandha, are engaged on exhale and in the retention after exhale. Notice how on exhale, you lift the base of the body from the perineum (mula bandha) and you draw the belly in and up towards the spine (uddiyana bandha) supporting the movement of the breath out of the body. These bandhas bring strength and balance to the lower back and the abdominals which creates comfort in the posture. In this case, the strength of the body base and spine is given to the heart.
Yoga has been taught in the west in such an aggressive, bullying way. All over the world in studios bandha is being taught as this extreme thing that you do on yourself. People are trying to lock different parts of their body, manipulate their pranas, and they are actually hurting themselves. In reality, bandha is something much gentler and more natural than that. Prana has its own intelligence, Yoga is to participate in that not to force, lock, or manipulate it in any way.
My teacher U.G. Krishnamurti would say that Yoga arose because that’s what the body does in nature anyway. A traumatized body will start moving and breathing in rhythmic patterns to release that trauma. That’s what Yoga is. It is remedial activity to restore the natural state. Bandha serves that process of release by directing the agni, the fire of life, to obstructions in a very precise way.
My point here is that the body knows what to do, it knows how to release what it does not need. It is not a forceful imposition.
Alignment
Everywhere in the ‘Yoga world’ people are obsessed with alignment. In Yoga, bandha and breath in asana is what creates alignment — not anatomy lessons, not copying the teacher, not will of mind. Yet, the breath principles that Krishnamacharya actually taught have been strangely ignored in the popularization of Yoga in the west that flows now back into India and the east.
Instead, Yoga has been transformed into a practice of imposing and pushing idealized forms on the body. We have all been convinced by the culture that we need to struggle and work really hard to get somewhere and to become someone, in the vulgar denial of the plain fact that we all are already the intelligence, beauty, wonder, and harmony of the cosmos.
The popular brands and styles of Yoga are part of the culture’s merchandising of perfection, the sowing of the psychology of lack, of ‘I’m not there yet,’ and the promotion of body dysmorphic disorder in which people actually hate their bodies because they do not match up with the cover of Yoga Journal or the likes. We are trying o impose a man-made ideal of perfect on a body that is already perfect. Mother Nature is arising as your whole body in a sublime harmony of spirals and curves.
“You can cheat the body with will of mind,” Krishnamacharya said. “But you cannot cheat the breath, so make the breath the guru to the asana.”
In other words, Yoga is to unqualify our embodied life from the socially contrived demands of the social mind. It is only by surrendering the mind into the flow of the breath that the mind releases its death-grip on the pranas.
If the breath principles are not present, then the student remains has no internal means to become sensitive to and feel what their correct alignment is. Students look to external cues, such as the teacher demonstrating, in order to try and achieve alignment. As a result, the student remains removed from the native intelligence of their body and no Yoga occurs.
Seeing students unable to create alignment for themselves, and perhaps putting themselves at risk in the struggle to achieve gymnastic ideals, many teachers in the popular brands have resorted to making gross adjustments. In the intoxication and identity of being a ‘teacher,’ people unconsciously leap on the opportunity to become ‘knowers’ and authorities and to try and impose their will on the student.
When the principles of breath that Krishnamacharya brought forth from the wisdom traditions of India and Tibet are included as the only reason why we are doing asana (to participate in the column of breath, above to below) alignment of the body is produced very naturally and without any need to struggle in mind or body.
Many students of Mr Iyengar have found that when they include the breath and bandha principles of Krishnamacharya into their existing training they effortlessly achieve a safe and pleasurable alignment. It turns their Yoga into Hatha Yoga — strength-receiving.
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