As if I Were a Heavenly Being: Ujjayi and Learning to Move with Victorious Breath

Just recently, I read a description of yoga as being like a diamond, with many facets that make up the whole thing. Before starting teacher training, I’d heard about some of the facets, with the most rudimentary understandings: things like pranayama (breathing), chakras (energy inside of us), and mudras (gestures).

Now that I’ve begun the training, we are learning about these things in more depth, even though I have a sense that I’m still just scratching the surface in my education.

One of those things is ujjayi breathing in pranayama. I’ve heard “fire up your ujjayi breath” a million times in the past seven years, and mostly understand how to do this: you inhale and exhale through your nostrils during the class rather than exhaling through your mouth, as you often do during exercise.

You also constrict your throat a bit as the air passes through, so that you sound like Darth Vader. (Or, some people describe the sound as ocean-like, aka: “ocean-breathing,” which seems more yoga-like than “Vader-breathing.”)

Anyhow, I sorta know to do ujjayi breathing and often begin class this way, but usually fall out of it quickly into the practice.

However, I read a bit about ujjayi this week in our textbook Yoga Beyond Belief and decided to focus my next class on maintaining ujjayi as consistently as I could.

(This is what I read in the book, first on breathing in general, and then on pranayma):

While the breath may be used many ways, the main point is to become aware of your breathing while you practice–watching the quality of breathing and endeavoring to keep it smooth, even, and rhythmic.

Inhalation increases energy while tightening and strengthening, while exhalation releases energy, softening and lightening…Generally, inhalation is used to lift out of a position and into movements that open, expand, and need strength. Exhalation is used to contract or to stretch and release deeper into postures.

The word ujjayi (pronounced oo jaah ee) mean “to become victorious…” It improves concentration and endurance while increasing the ability to flow gracefully…With smooth ujjayi, you can become more absorbed in your practice, hold poses longer, effectively regulate heat, and relieve tension.

In my last practice, then, I started strong with ujjayi breathing and maintained it through at least the first half of the 60 minute class, but I realized near the end that I had let it go at some point.

But I noticed three things that were different about the practice:

1. Sweat. I usually go to heated classes and always end the class dripping in sweat. But this time, I was sweating like I never have in four years of hot yoga. It was just pouring out of me like rain. And the striking thing was that I didn’t feel hot. I was just in a class the day before where I definitely felt too hot, which is unusual for me, and didn’t sweat as much as I did this day.
2. Endurance. Along with not feeling overheated in a very hot class, I also felt an endurance like lightness; like I was being partly carried through. None of the asanas felt particularly taxing or overwhelming.
3. One magical chaturanga. I’ve witness seasoned yogis go into chaturanga from standing not by stepping or jumping back, but softly floating in a way that seems to defy gravity. Well, I did it. For the first time ever. And I don’t even understand how, exactly. But for a split second, I came the closest I think I’ll ever feel to flying, as if I were a heavenly being.