Equal Ratio Breathing by Richard Rosen

Equal Ratio Breathing by Richard Rosen

Sama vritti pranayama 

sama = same, equal

vritti = literally, course of action

There’s been quite a bit of information online and in health magazines lately about even ratio breathing, that is, breathing in such a way as to equalize the inhales and exhales. It’s typically offered as a means of calming the mind and overcoming stress. Oftentimes the presenters breathlessly proclaim the many health benefits of this type of breathing, both physical and psychological, making it seem as if this technique was just discovered yesterday. You can search for “box” or “square”  breathing” on YouTube if you want an example. But of course ratio breathing goes back hundreds of years in India. 

Shutting out all external contacts ... making the in-breath and out-breath move evenly in the nose, the sage whose senses, mind, and wisdom-faculty (buddhi) are controlled, who is intent on liberation and ever devoid of longing, fear, and anger–she is truly liberated (Bhagavad Gita 5.27-28). 

Please read through the instructions and the tips carefully. If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact me through Nest Yoga. 

1. You have three choices for your position when doing this breathing.

a. Sit on a chair. Be sure to sit on the front edge of the seat, away from the chair back, though if you like you can insert a bolster between your back and the chair back to support your torso. Sit then with a long front torso lifted through the top of the sternum. Have your thighs parallel to each other and your knees over your heels, so your knees are more or less at a right angle (you can bind your thighs parallel with a yoga strap if you like). Rest your hands on your thighs or stack them, palms up, in your lap. 

b. Sit on the floor. Be sure to sit on some kind of support, such as a thickly folded blanket so that your pelvis is neutral and not tipped backward, with a long front torso lifted through the top of the sternum. If you need help sitting, you can sit against a bolster between your back and a wall. Cross your shins in front of your pelvis (as in Easy Pose, sukhasana), alternating the cross day by day (right leg forward on even numbered days, left on odd), and support your thighs on blocks if they don’t rest easily on your feet. You could also sit in the Courageous Person Pose (virasana), supporting your buttocks on a block if they don’t rest easily on the floor between your feet. Rest your hands on your thighs or stack them in your lap, palms up. 

c. Reclining. If you’re just starting a breathing practice, this is probably the best position to assume until you feel comfortable with the exercise. Make yourself a blanket support. Ideally it should be about three feet long and maybe four to six inches wide, and three to four inches thick. Sit on the floor just in front of one end of the blanket and lie back along its length so your spine and head are supported. You can also support the back of your head and neck on a second blanket if you like. Lay your hands off to your sides, arms about 45 degrees angled to the torso, palms up. You could also support your knees on a bolster. 

2. Close your eyes and “step back” from yourself, make any small adjustments in your alignment that may be needed. Spend about a minute or so simply being aware of yourself without judgement or expectation. Then bring your breath into the foreground of your awareness, again without judgement or expectation, just watch your breath as it comes and goes. Spend a minute or two “just watching,” notice as you do that your breath spontaneously slows down. Get a sense of the length of your exhales.

3. Then purposely begin to slow your exhales even more. Notice the slight pause at the end of each exhale, then purposely begin to “drag” these out; that is to say, linger in the pause for as long as you like. Remember, this isn’t a breath holding, it’s rather a pause, during which time you can again monitor your alignment and enjoy the stillness in the pause. If you wait long enough, say 12 to 15 seconds, you’ll feel the urge for the next inhale building inside yourself. Wait until it feels ready, and let the breath in without “grabbing” at the air, simply receive it with a minimum of effort. Then slowly exhale and repeat the process again. Do this for a minute or two. 

4. Now you’re ready to begin the equal ratio breathing. Exhale, pause, and with your next inhale, receive the breath and slowly count: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5, stop and immediately exhale, 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5, and pause and wait. You should co-ordinate the movement of your breathing with the count, finishing both the inhale and exhale with 5. If 5 is too much, then step back to 4. Continue on for three minutes at first, over time gradually extend your practice time to five to eight minutes. When done, return to everyday breathing for one to two minutes, once again closely following your breath but not interfering with it at all. 

5. Finally to properly end the practice, lie on the floor in shavasana for two to three minutes, be sure to leave some time at the end of your practice for this, please don’t skip shavasana (if you’re lying on a support, shift gently to one side and remove it from under your back). When you’re done, roll to one side, head on the floor, wait 20-30 seconds, make your head heavy, and push your torso up, head trailing. Practice time will be between 10 and 16 minutes. 

TIPS

1. To get the maximum benefit from this practice, try to be as regular as possible, at least 4-5 times each week, 5-6 would of course be even better. Don’t expect miracles at first, in fact don’t expect much of anything for awhile. Remember the 3 P’s for success: Practice, Persistence, and Patience.

2. If you get tired before the allotted time has elapsed, DON’T force yourself to continue. STOP immediately and lie down in shavasana. The same goes for any negative feelings that may arise, like frustration or irritability. STOP. Never push yourself in breathing. It’s not unusual to have an off day now and again, I still do after nearly 40 years of practice. But if the discomfort persists for more than a few days, either contact me through Nest or talk to your teacher about the situation.

3. If you have some extra time, you might spend a couple of minutes in a passive chest opener, such as lying over a block or a rolled up blanket, before you begin breathing

Richard Rosen's Asana Breakdown: Scissor Pose

SCISSOR POSE

Modified Parshvottanasana

parshva = side

uttana = intense stretch (NOTE: in Sanskrit, when a “u” begins a word that follows a word that ends in “a,” like this, parshva uttana, the two words are joined and the letters blend to an “o,” like this, parshvottana)

1. Stand on the front left corner of a short end of your mat so the length of your mat is behind you. Swing the right foot to stand to the outside of the left so the legs are crossed, or we could say “scissored.” Exhale and lengthen the torso forward into a standing forward bend. If you can’t easily touch your hands to the floor, rest them each on a block. 

2. Look back along the length of your mat at the right edge. Inhale, step your left foot back about a yard to that edge, so that now the right foot is on the left front corner and the left foot on the right edge. Straighten both knees and bring the inner feet parallel to the long edges of the mat.

3. Check the position of your right hip. Typically, if you’re tighter in the hips, the right hip shifts off to the right and up toward the right shoulder, which shortens the right side of the torso. If needed then, hook your right thumb in the hip crease and push in and back, lengthening the right side of the torso. Sometimes when you do this the weight shifts to the outside of the right foot. If needed, as you continue to release the hip, use your left thumb to firmly press on the base of the right big toe–not the toe itself, remember, but on the toe’s mound on the ball of the foot. 

4. While pressing the right big toe mound firmly to the floor, think of doing two things: 1) draw imaginatively up along the inner leg from the ankle to the inner right groin, softening that groin more deeply into the pelvis; and 2) from the base of the toe, again draw up in your imagination, this time diagonally across the leg to the outer hip. Imagine the legs are pressing toward the back of the mat as the torso lengthens forward. 

5. From the release of the inner groin and outer hip, lift the torso slightly up and forward on an inhale and from deep inside the pelvis, draw the belly out, creating as much space as possible between the pubic bone and navel. Then exhale and lower your torso down again, maintaining the length in the lower belly. 

6. You can continue to perform the pose as a forward bend, but if you want to create more a bit more stretch in the outer hip, rotate your torso to the right. Keep the left hand on the floor inside the right foot, and bring the right hand up onto the hip. Let the left hip drop slightly toward the floor, and soften the inner right groin to receive the twist. Make sure you don’t lean to the right, keep your torso more or less perpendicular to your legs. Remember that as with all twists, the rotation is rooted in the groins, not in the lower back and belly. You might spread your right palm against your sacrum and press back through your tail bone to maintain the length of your lower back.

7. Hold for 30 seconds to a minute, release the twist with an exhale, and with an inhale lift the long front torso up by drawing down on the tail bone. Be sure not to finish by stepping forward onto the right foot. Turn the feet parallel to each other and step or hop the feet together. Reverse to the left side for the same length of time.

Richard Rosen's Asana Breakdown: VIRASANA

VIRASANA

vira = literally, “man,” especially a brave or eminent man, hero, chief; cognate with English words like “virtue, virile.”

You may not be able to sit all the way down to the floor, at least at first, so have a yoga block within reach, just in case it’s needed.

BENEFITS:

According to Yoga Journal, Virasana increases flexibility in the knees and hips, tones the muscles in the arches of the feet and increases circulation in the feet and legs. https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/master-hero-pose-virasana-5-steps/

PRACTICE:

1. To begin, kneel on the floor with your thighs and torso upright. Separate your feet slightly wider than hip width.

2. Press your fingertips into the backs of the knees, and draw the calves toward your heels. You might have seen students moving into the pose by turning the calves laterally, that is, from the inner leg to the outer. This isn’t recommended here.

3. Once your calves are drawn away from the backs of the knees, slowly sit back. As mentioned, it may not be possible to sit all the way down on the floor. In this case, position the block between your feet, be sure to sit across the block so that both sit bones are equally supported. You can place the block at it lowest height, on one of its faces, or if needed, at its middle height, on one of its sides. If needed, use a second block to sit even higher.

4. Your inner heels should be slightly away from the outer hips. You should ideally be able to slip your thumb between the heel and the hip. Also see that your toes are turned slightly in, so that the swell of the hip matches the curve of the foot’s inner arch.

5. Use your yoga x-ray vision to gaze through the flesh of your thighs to the thigh bones (femur) underneath. Your femurs should be more or less parallel. Since the female pelvis is slightly wider than the male, a woman’s inner thighs may be slightly apart.

6. With your right hand, hold your right knee and lift it a few inches off the floor, stretching the front ankle. With the knee slightly elevated, allow the head of the to “drop” toward the floor. Imagine the bone is like a see-saw, so that when the knee end is lifted, the hip end descends. Then carefully lower your knee back to the floor, and repeat on the left.

7. Slide your hands under your sit bones and pull them back and apart. Then press the bases of your hands into the hip creases, right where the thighs join the pelvis. As you push firmly down on your femurs, lift your front torso through the top of the sternum. Then press the bases of your hands against the outer edges of your feet, widening the tops of your feet on the floor.

8. Finally, lay your hands on your thighs, palms down, or cup your hands around your knees and pull, using that to lift the top sternum.

VARIATION

Curl your fingers under your toes, palms rest on the soles. With an exhale, lay your torso down on your thighs, head on the floor. Try to keep your buttocks as close to the floor/support as possible. If your head doesn’t easily rest on the floor, support your forehead on a block.

COMING OUT OF THE POSE

To protect your knees, it’s essential to come out of the pose properly. There are three ways to do this.

1. Lean to the left and hold your right ankle. Pick your right leg up, and keeping the knee completely flexed, stand your foot on the floor. Drop your knee off to the right, extend your leg out to the side, then swing your leg in front of your torso. This assures that there’s no rotary movement in the knee, which is a hinge joint. Repeat on the left.

2. Press your hands to the floor and lift your buttocks up off the floor/support. Cross your ankles under your buttocks, lean back slightly, and stretch your legs straight forward into Dandasana (Staff Pose).

3. Press your hands to the floor and with an inhale, step back into Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog).

TIPS

1. If you feel tightness in your knees, try this. Take a yoga belt and fold it in half. From position (1) above, lean forward and rest your crown on the floor. Wedge the belt tightly into the backs of your knees, then lift your torso up and sit back. The belt should ideally create some extra space in your knees.

2. If your ankles complain, roll up a towel and place it under your ankles. Over time, as your ankles release, make the roll smalller and smaller until it’s no longer needed.

3. Have some extra National Geographics around? In the old days, we would place a stack below our buttocks, using just enough issues to sit relatively comfortably. Over time, as the thighs released and we could sit more easily on the stack, we’d remove one of the magazines and so sit a bit lower. This we’d repeat each time we felt our thighs releasing, and so gradually we worked our way down to the floor.

4. Want to really ground the femurs? Buy a 25-pound barbell weight and lay the edge into your front groins. The flat surface of the weight should then rest against your belly. You can secure it in place by looping a belt around your torso and the weight.

Why 108 Sun Salutes?

At the oldest level of Hindu spirituality, the Sun is one of the three most important deities. The world’s source of warmth and light, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, the Sun is thought of as the source and sustainer of life on Earth. But it also destroys the world at the end of its life cycle. 

The Sun is at the center of creation, at the point where the manifest and unmanifest worlds come together. So it’s the gate to the unmanifest aspects of divinity, the “path to the gods.” The Sun is “visible divinity, the eye of the world, the maker of the day ... The planets, the stars ... the lord of the wind and the lord of fire, and all the other gods are but parts of him” (Bhavishya Purana). 

The Sun is the “soul of the world,” the selfsame soul that dwells in and animates each of us, realized in our heart as a prodigious source of light.  Because of this, the Sun is “deserving of adoration” and “worthy of praise.” 

In ancient times, expressions of adoration and praise directed at the Sun were a regular part of Hindu worship. These expressions always included a mantra, which was often accompanied with offerings such as water, flowers, and rice. With this, the petitioner might simply be praising the Sun, making an appeal for its forgiveness for wrongdoing, or asking for deliverance from troubles. 

The form of Sun Salute we know so well has only been around for 80 years or so. It was first described in a book titled, The Ten Point Way to Health, by the Rajah or Aundh to benefit the health of his population. The Rajah’s son, Apa Pant, also wrote a book on the same subject, titled Surya Namaskars, first published in 1970. 

The Nest Yoga 108 Sun Salute Challenge 2021 will extend over the entire year. Around each equinox and solstice, we’ll gather to perform 27 repetitions, so that at the end of this year, at the Winter equinox, we’ll have completed 108 rounds. 

We all have a vague sense that 108 is a “spiritual” number, and it’s believed to be so not only in India, but in many other traditional cultures.2 One theory suggests 108 is a member of a family of numbers based on 18, a highly charged number in Hindu myth and spirituality. All we need do is insert a zero between the 1 and 8. The Sanskrit word for zero, shunya, is another name for the Absolute (Brahman). 

One of the strangest theories involves calculations based on the diameters of Earth (7,917 miles), Sun (864,337 miles), and Moon (2154 miles), and the distances between them (Earth to Sun, 92,955,807 miles, Earth to Moon, 238,900 miles). There are three versions.

a. First calculation involves the distance between Earth and the Sun. 

This distance is supposed to be 108 times the diameter of the Sun. 

Check: 92,955,807 divided by 864,337 = 107.5, not a bad approximation. 

b. The second calculation involves the distance from Earth to the Moon. 

This distance is supposed to be 108 times the Moon’s diameter. Check: 

multiply 2154 by 108 = 232,632 (actual distance 238,900). Not bad, about 

6,000 miles shy.

When we divide the actual distance by the diameter, we get 110.9, still in 

the ballpark. 

c. The diameter of the Sun is 108 times the diameter of Earth. Check: 

864,337 divided by 7917 = 109.1, again very close. 

Whatever the reason that makes 108 special, we hope you’ll join Nest Yoga’s year-long 108 Sun Salute Challenge. If you do, there just might be something waiting for you around the time of the Winter equinox, just in time for Christmas. 

- Richard Rosen

For references see The Ten-Point Way to Health: Surya Namaskars by Shrimant Balasahib Pandit Pratinidhi, B.A. RAJAH OF AUNDH

Richard Rosen's Asana Breakdown: Balasana (Child's Pose)

BALASANA

Child’s Pose

Technical note: there are two Sanskrit words spelled b-a-l-a, one with a short first “a,” the other with a long first “a.” The latter is transliterated into Roman letters with a short horizontal line, called a macron, over it. Child’s Pose is spelled with the long “a” and is pronounced baa-laa-suh-nuh. 

There doesn’t seem to be any precedent for Balasana, the pose in which the buttocks sit on the heels, the torso rests on the thighs and the head on the floor, in the traditional literature. I searched through the 425-page Encyclopedia of Traditional Asanas, which includes 900 poses, and found three that approximate Balasana. One is called Ardha Kurmasana, Half Tortoise, in which the forearms are placed on the floor with the elbows squeezed between the knees, the other is its companion, Kurmasana, in which the thumbs are hooked into the armpits and the elbows spread to the sides. The third is Catakasana, the Sparrow Pose, in which the forearms are placed on the floor and the head lifted to look forward.

Balasana can be performed passively or actively. Like Makarasana, Balasana is an excellent way to learn to breathe into your back torso. 

1. For both versions, bring your big toes to touch, sit on your heels, and separate your knees at least as wide as the sticky mat, at least wide enough to allow the hip points to snug down into the inner thighs so the front pelvis can narrow and the back widen. Lay your torso down on the thighs and rest your forehead on the floor. 

2. Passive version: simply bring your arms alongside your torso and lay the backs of your hands on the floor beside your feet. Allow your shoulders to release.

3. Active version: stretch your arms forward toward the front edge of your mat. Then lift your sit bones an inch or two off your heels and reach your hands even farther forward. Press your palms firmly against the floor, and think of the heads of the upper arm bones (humerus) lifting up into their sockets so your armpits seem to deepen.

4. Push the hands away from your crown and release your sit bones back to your heels, feeling the stretch lengthen along the sides of your torso and into your armpits. Continue pushing away with your hands, and use that pressure to draw your inner groins back into the pelvis. Then without bending your elbows, scrub your hands back toward your crown and lengthen your front torso along the thighs. Continue working with the hands to deepen the inner groins and lengthen  the front torso. 

5. Imagine your outer arms sliding away from the sides of the torso through your little fingers. Imagine these two digits reaching away from your hands and lengthening along the floor. At the same time, imagine your tail bone reaching along the floor away from your pelvis. Feel the V-shape formed by the tail and the two little fingers. Imagine the legs of the V stretching more and more. 

6. Now, whether active or passive, direct your inhales into the space between your shoulder blades (scapula). Expand that space with each inhale, with each exhale allow your torso to rest more fully on your thighs. As a simple rest-release, stay 30 seconds to a minute. To work with your breath in the back torso, stay 2-3 minutes. 

7. When you’re ready to exit, imagine your tail bone tugging on your back torso, lengthen the front torso through the top of the sternum, and slowly lift with an inhale. 

TIPS

If your head doesn’t rest comfortably on the floor, support it on a block or thickly folded blanket. If your buttocks don’t rest comfortably on your heels, put a folded blanket between your thighs and calves. If your shoulders don’t easily release in the passive version, support them on blocks. 

Photo by Alexandra Tran on Unsplash