Hi all,
I observed that if I do Kapalbhati/Bastrika before Kumbhaka (for me, usually it is Kumbhaka for Uddiyana/nauli/Navi Kriya as I am not yet into the Yoni Mudra), I can extend the duration of Kumbhaka considerably without any discomfort. For example, I can usually do only 30 lifts of Navi Kriya in one breath. But after a few minutes of Kapalbhati/Bastrika, I can do some 50-60 lifts in one breath. Internal Kumbhaka duration is similarly increased for nearly twice.
I guess this is due to an increased blood oxygen level. Certainly the increased kumbhaka limit is just a short-term effects. But I do think that there’s a benefits in doing the kumbhaka after Kapalbhati/Bastrika, to make it feel easier and used to the long duration without depriving yourself of oxygen??
The other factor, however, is that the oxygen level will probably drop back to normal (or lower) after kumbhaka, so that our meditation which follows won’t be benefited from the increased owygen level…
Any ideas?
Alvin
Bhastrika kumbhaka is a traditional method and has those results for sure.Lately I have been doing two cycles of it after pranayama and before meditation. each cycle for me is one minute of bhastrika breath followed by two or three pranayama breaths with khumbaka so it takes a total of about 5 minutes. I don’t do this all the time however as it seems to agitate my nerves. i use it when I am going through a transition and am trying to work through some stubborn blockages. Otherwise I find bhastrika too agitating but my taste but certainly is there in my bag of yoga tools
I have been wondering lately how I can extend my breath retention in yoni mudra. I have a strong feeling to stay longer in kumbhaka, but I have been practising it for quite some time now and progress is slow… Are there any other exercises people know of that can assist this?? Does anyone know what people do in the free diving scene to slow breath rate down? I do bhastrika myself but don’t want to overdo it.
Om Shanti,
V
You may not love this answer, but you may have reversed cause/effect. It’s not that longer kumbhaka will give you what you crave. It’s that what you crave will give you longer kumbhaka. As such, trying to extend it is inherently overdoing and straining.
Continue to meditate, let go, and dive down, and take your mind off this issue. I think you’ll eventually come to agree that attention to kumbhaka length is a distraction.
What side effects do you guys get from Bastrika? I never experience any bad things except some muscle pain in the abdomin which ceases almost immediately after I stop.
May be I’m just not sensitive enough to notice the cause-effects. I have some bad symptoms, but it’s not fair to blame any of my practices.
Alvin said…
[quote]
May be I’m just not sensitive enough to notice the cause-effects. I have some bad symptoms, but it’s not fair to blame any of my practices.
[/quote] Alvin, I don’t think anyone is blaming anything on your practices. What made you feel that somebody is blaming your practices unfairly?
I’m sorry about my poor English. I mean, my symptoms are not very likely to have anything to do with my Bastrika practice.
Thanks Jim,
Sometimes my impatience gets the better of me! You are right about the need to let go of the results, to surrender and trust that all is happening as it should… As for the Bhastrika Alvin, I find it useful in calming the mind, as it seems to work on the emotions. I think it can also help lung capacity but as it is powerful, my understanding is that quantity is best built up gradually.
Om Shanti,
V
Hi Vicki,
I’m also aware of its benefits: immediate calming my mind. But there’s no ill-effects. I am doing 3 rounds with 110-120 breaths each, both in the morning and afternoon, for about 2 months. So it adds up to about 700 breaths each day.
Hi Alvin,
I am sorry I misunderstood what you said 
…
I think you are doing good. If you have no ill-effect doing this, and you enjoy it… I think you should go ahead and do it… unless somebody here thinks differently. Maybe the days you feel depressed though, you may want to reduce it… I think I read somewhere over here that too much kumbhaka can cause energy imbalances… maybe the experts here can help…
Hi Alvin and Vicki:
The interesting thing about bastrika is that the more energy we have flowing, the less intense practice we need to continue with good progress and comfort. The energy takes over the process to a large degree, so we end up tweaking and letting go rather than hammering. This applies with all yoga practices. That is where the “less is more” phrase comes from.
So, as long as you are flexible about it, you will be okay. At the first sign of rapid energy flow, better take your foot off the accelerator a bit, or you could fly off the cliff. Increasing inner flow can manifest as excess emotions, like Shanti suggests, or in many other ways ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. When it happens, just be a safe driver with prudent self-pacing and you will be fine.
Jim gave you some good perspective on this above. Of course, we all have to go through a certain amount of our own trial and error to find our unique pace and limits. It is usually not good enough to do what someone else says verbatim, based on an experience we have not had yet. So, we push and find out for ourselves. There is nothing wrong with this as long as we know when to lighten up. It is our journey and we have to learn how to travel it within ourselves.
Let me also add that with all practices, especially pranayama and kumbhaka, there can be a delayed effect. So while we may not feel like much is happening right now, if we push too hard, we can find ourselves with too much happening when we least expect it. It is all part of the learning curve. Don’t run scared. Just run smart. That’s what we are working on constantly here – practical applications of the means for purification and opening. And then we have it all on our own – permanent self-contained ecstatic bliss pouring out all over the place! 
The guru is in you.
Thanks, yogani.
Yogani wrote:
Is this really true? Sound rather different from physical exercises then. Don’t we have to build up some practices? When our system can tolerate more practices, isn’t it necessary to increase our practices in order to go further in our spiritual journey?
For example, I found that unlike bastrika, Uddiyana/nauli/Navi Kriya are very easy to be overdone. But I think without working on it (close to but hopefully not exceeding my tolerance limit), I’ll never get further.
Alvin,
Check lesson#58 and lesson#69. These explain why “Less is More”…
Since you do feel depressed at times… I think you may be pushing too far. What I did learn in this one year of practice is… you don’t go too far by pushing yourself… your system can handle only so much at one time, and if you push too hard, it fights back … in my case it was with depression… when I accepted that and slowed down and took one thing at a time… and of course got scolded by Jim and David for trying too many things… I actually stopped everything… I started from scratch with spinal breathing and meditation… 10 mins and 20 mins. I was meditating for 2 hrs at a time(before AYP), and added everything on Yogani’s lesson list at one time. It was easy for me, I had done yoga for years and putting them all together was simple… NOT!!! Hey, you will learn in your own time I guess… I did after I tried everything and failed… I went back to the basics. David had said… do one thing… when you feel no extra energy from it… only then add another practice. Believe them when they say… “Less Is MORE”…
Hi Alvin:
Yes, we definitely build up according to our inclination (bhakti) and capacity. The latter, “capacity,” becomes a much bigger factor once our energy is flowing abundantly. Then we are limited by the energy flow and corresponding rate of purification we can tolerate in daily life, rather than by how much more we can pile on in practices.
Katrine spoke about this shift quite beautifully in one of her early posts. If I can find it, I will add a link here. My own way of explaining it is to say that for years I was chasing the goddess, and then one day I realized she was chasing me! That is what happens when kundalini gets active. We move from being instigator to being partner. Being a partner with kundalini (our active inner energy) is tweaking and letting go, rather than hammering. In that condition, if we are hammering, we will get hammered. That is why the folks around here with active inner energy raise an eyebrow when you talk about doing umpteen rounds of bastrika, kumbhaka, etc. I mean, that is way more than is necessary once the lights go on inside, and probably long before that, as Shanti points out in the previous post.
It is really easy to get the message and ease up on intense practices when the energy takes off (and/or crashes). We learn to let go – the greatest lesson we can have in life, coming directly from within us. Then we don’t need books and all sorts of advice anymore. We become the book and the advice is in our increasingly radiant nervous system. Pretty good deal, actually.
In that sense, yoga is not like physical exercise, though there are still parallels – conditioning ourselves for a particular function being the most obvious. But once the spiritual conditioning reaches a certain point, a vast energy and intelligence is awakened within us that will carry us forward along with our practices in moderation. That is where yoga departs from the analogy of physical athletics and enters an entirely new realm.
We are obliged to conduct ourselves accordingly. To ignore the reality of where we are arriving and how things work there, hanging on to other models we have been using (like athletic conditioning), can lead to some tough lessons in the school of hard knocks. The lessons don’t have to be hard to learn, especially with a few folks around who have already or are currently going through the same thing.
Of course, all of this rides on inner silence, cultivated in daily deep meditation. Have I brought that up lately?
The guru is in you.
I’m quite fond (to the point of beating it to death) of the barber analogy. Be worked on. Let the mantra work you rather than the other way around. Stop doing things and, instead, let yourself be “done”.
In fact, this sort of flip is really what this is all about. So it’s good to cultivate a taste for it.
Thanks, Shanti and Yogani. Very detailed answer. It’s a rather good news, since I won’t have to practice that much for my whole life.
Another question: suppose I stop the additional practices for one week(or even more), and do only meditation. May be even stop meditation. Will I be going backward? Or just stop progressing without going backward. I am doing all my best to speed up the journey. But there can be, and WILL BE some VERY special days or even weeks which I can hardly practice except may be meditating.
I am asking since I’ve read some books which claim that the effects of our meditation will very quick be washed away if we don’t meditation everyday. So there will be no use then. I would like to know if those authors are exaggerating, just to encourage people to meditate regularly.
My guess is that what we’re learning in meditation is the skill of letting go. So that even if we stop for a few days, it would just take a very short while to recall that skills of letting go. Very much like: we don’t have to start over again on how to ride bicycle after forgetting it a few years. We re-learn much faster, even though it’s necessary to practice daily in order to have even better skills. Am I correct?
Alvin
Hi Alvin:
The fastest progress comes with long term stable daily practice, without too much overdoing or underdoing. Either one can bring disruptions in progress. This is why self-pacing is so important.
Jim can tell you about his experience when he stopped for a few weeks. His case is probably more dramatic than most, but illustrates the point.
Sure, there are times when we are all pinched for time, and we do the best we can with our practices. See lesson 209 for a detailed discussion on this – http://www.aypsite.org/209.html
The guru is in you.
Hi Alvin,
Please don’t stop meditation… even if you don’t have time for anything else… don’t stop meditation… and if possible spinal breathing before that. Also, if energy levels get out of control or you just don’t have the time, and you stop or slow down your other practices… when you add them back on… one at a time… gently… whatever you add back seems bigger (that is the only word I can think of, to describes how I feel).
Go through lesson#18 and lesson#209… they may help you.
It’s not likely that I’ll stop because of lack of time, just as I won’t stop eating because of lack of time. But meditation and other pracitce requires an environment which I won’t be disturbed. If I travel with my friend(s), it will be very annoying to them if I suddenly said" hey, I am going to meditate, so please don’t disturb me for 20 mins!".
Now I enjoy 2 good sitting practices, both at home. That’s very nice. In the future, or in any circumstances, maintaining the morning practice is still easy-- just wake up a bit earlier. But the afternoon one is not. In the coming year, I may be out from 9am to 9:30pm on week days. I’m not sure whether I can find a comfortable place to meditate without feeling rushed, and without making it too close to my dinner. The other option is to meditate at night, at home, which is also difficult to control sine my brother, whom I share a tiny room with, has a very irregular sleeping time. The room is so small that if I mediate, he just can’t get in or get out.
For Americans, it would be easy as your houses are very large. Here the averge house is below 400 sq feets, for the whole family.
Alvin,
Actually, how much space you have does not really matter. I have a big house… but my house is always noisy… with kids and a dog. They used to bother me, but now they are like any other distraction… and I have seen lately there are times I don’t even hear them. However, the best place I find to get privacy is the bathroom 
… now don’t laugh… When I have to work long… I quietly sneak into the restroom… and sit and meditate there for 10 mins… I hope nobody is snickering here 
… At home, I have a walk in closet that I converted to a meditation room… however… if I really want privacy… I still prefer the bathroom… nobody ever disturbs you there… Try it… initially it may not seem right… but if you get used to it, its not bad…
By the way, I am used to living in a small place… it is the same in India… we all had to all squeeze into a small apartment… then, I did not meditate… but my father always did… in that 2 rooms we had… so, if you think you want to do it, you will find a way…