Ujjayi Pranayama

Ujjayi Pranayama

Yoga’s Victory Breath

Many faiths’ creation stories involve a deity breathing into a human form in order to fill the being with life. When I am aware of my breath, I am also aware of that life-giving force that created me.

Often the past few days, I have often had to consciously seek out that breath. I was suffocating myself by unconsciously holding my breath. Audrey was suffering almost 4000 miles away in Madrid and all I chose to do was worry. When I was worrying, my chest would tighten, my neck and shoulders would squeeze into a hunched shape, and my belly became rigid. Then I remembered to breathe, slowly, intentionally. I listened to the sound of the air traveling through my air passages and a sense of calm entered my mind and body. By slowing down my breath, I gave my body time to take in the oxygen that I had been strangling out of it with my tightness. And I cleared out the stale air that had been lingering in my lungs when I was tense.

This morning, with my Qi Gong group, I breathed in the nectar of life that surrounded us in the gardens where we maintain our practice. God was fully with me. And I remembered that God is always with me. I am the one that squeezes out God’s love. Whenever I want to connect with it, I need only slow down and b…r…e…a…t…h…e…

Ujjayi Pranayama – The breath of victory

Namaste

Ardha Mandukasana -- The Half-Frog Pose

Lying prone on the ground with one leg bent at right angles and the other extended straight out is a reliable way to release tension around my sacrum. In other words, it's good for tight asses. Over the last week or so, I haven't been able to get enough of this asana. And now, as I walk, my wiggle quotient has skyrocketed. This tushie of mine is loose and free. Been too tense for most of my life. Good girls don't shake their behinds. Whether or not I've been a good girl, I'm not sure -- but I sure wanted the world to think I was. So -- I squeezed my butt as firmly as I could. And squeezed all the life out of my spine as I did so.

Now, like a frog, I'm loose and ready to jump. Am I still a "good girl?" Don't know, but this freedom sure feels a heck of a lot better.

My kids are leaving me behind to re-be me as they become themselves. When I was first becoming me -- in those years between birth and adulthood -- and all the world was pushing me down, I would get into sarvangasana, a.k.a., shoulder stand pose, so that all the me that had been tamped down could return my heart and head. Balanced there on my neck and shoulders with my legs and feet pointing toward the heavens, I could see the world turned upside down -- the way I wanted it to be so that I, a young, assertive female, could be on top, not on the bottom where my 60's world was telling me I belonged.

Almost a half century later, my feet are full and can no longer hold any more of the true me. It's time to put my life into sarvangasana. I expect that the world I will there will be much more to my liking.

Welcome to my year of standing on my own shoulders.

Namaste