Adding an Inhale Pause to Spinal Breathing?

[driftwood]

I’m curious whether anyone, particularly more experienced AYP practitioners, has experimented with incorporating a brief pause during the inhale into Spinal Breathing Pranayama.

Andrew Huberman has discussed a breathing technique for reducing physiological stress where, during the inhale, you briefly pause partway through or toward the end of the inhalation, then continue and finish the inhale before moving into a longer exhale.

That caught my attention because, with the ujjayi breathing used during AYP spinal breathing, my exhales are already naturally longer than my inhales. So part of the technique already seems to overlap with another breathing principle Huberman discusses for reducing stress: having the exhale be longer than the inhale.

It made me wonder whether adding this brief pause within the inhale, then completing the inhale as normal before beginning the ujjayi exhale, could potentially add another stress-reduction benefit without requiring a separate breathing practice. It seems like a good opportunity to hit multiple birds with one stone.

I understand that this falls outside the specific guidelines for Spinal Breathing Pranayama as taught in AYP, and I generally understand the reasoning behind sticking closely to the established technique rather than continually modifying it.

Still, I’m curious whether any more advanced practitioners have insight into this particular modification. Has anyone experimented with something similar, or would anyone with a strong understanding of the mechanics of spinal breathing be willing to try it and see whether it noticeably changes the practice?

More specifically, is there some reason that briefly pausing during the inhale, then completing the inhale before exhaling, would interfere with the intended effects of spinal breathing? Or, if it remains gentle and comfortable, is there potentially no issue with adding it as an additional component that could provide benefits over time?

I’d be especially interested in hearing from anyone who understands both the AYP reasoning behind the continuous breathing pattern and the physiological effects of different breathing rhythms.

[Christi (Tristan Dorling)]

Hi Driftwood,

So, firstly, and most importantly, Spinal Breathing Pranayama is not a stress reduction technique. It is a spiritual purification technique. It purifies the subtle nervous system by increasing and directing the flows of prana in the body. This usually has the side effect of reducing stress, but it could also go the other way and increase stress if too much purification is happening at once. This is why the timing of the practice is carefully regulated. If someone does become stressed, or starts experiencing panic attacks, they would need to self-pace downwards and focus on grounding for a while.

The practice works in a number of ways. Firstly, by slowing down the movement of the breath we put a draw on prana from the root chakra. This prana will tend to rise up through the body. And by deepening the breath we increase the amount of prana that is brought into the body with each breath. At the same time, by moving our attention up and down the spinal nerve, we cause prana to flow through that channel. Prana will follow the point of attention in the body, so if the attention is moving up and down the spinal nerve with the breath, prana will also flow in the same way.

This purification works best if the flow of prana is smooth, which means keeping the breath flowing continuously on the inhale and the same on the exhale. If we were to pause the breath on each inhalation half way up, this would stop the flow of prana and then it would have to start again. As well as this, it would be more difficult for the whole process to happen automatically and for the mind to come to silence and enter samadhi. Simply breathing in and out is a simple movement that does not require any thought. After a while it will happen automatically. But pausing the breath half way requires thought, which will detract from the easy (and eventually automatic) process of breathing.

It can happen that the breath will pause automatically for a time either after inhalation, or exhalation, or both. It is fine if this happens. But it is not a good idea to do this deliberately as it could lead to excessive purification taking place. When we breathe in, the prana rises in the body to the higher chakras, purifying everything it moves through on the way up. If we then deliberately hold the breath after the inhalation finishes, the prana will stay at the higher centres and further purification will happen there. If we are not ready for this, then it could put the system out of balance. The same is true for deliberately holding the breath after exhalation, that an excess of purification will happen in the lower chakras, which could destabilise the system. If these same breath retentions happen automatically, they tend to happen when the subtle neurobiology is ready for this additional purification to take place.

So, there is a science behind the technique of Spinal Breathing. Changing things, even slightly, can have detrimental consequences over the long term.