Doing yoga to music can be uplifting and fun, but it can also hide the sound of your breath.
A dear friend asked me to write about the affect of music on yoga. The first thing that came to mind was my recent quest to re-find my ujjayi pranayama breath while practicing ashtanga yoga.
Ujjayi breathing requires gently closing the back of the throad when you breathe in order to make the breath audible. Successful ujjayi breathing sounds like ocean waves.
To do ujjayi allow the breath to fill the lower belly (activating the first and second chakras), then to lift the lower ribs (the third and fourth chakras), and finally breathe into the upper chest and throat.
The Hawaiian yoga teacher Wai Lana says Ujjayi Pranayama “tones the lungs and encourages the free and healthy flow of prana.”My experience with ujjayi is that it helps me go deeper in poses while protecting my body from injury. The breath itself actually informs how to do asana with integrity.
When I first started doing yoga, I was at a studio that focused on the breath (in the form of ujjayi) as the primary goal of practice. My breath was strong and robust and I could maintain ujjayi for the entire practice. Something in the last year or two caused me to drop my healthy ujjayi. My breath has become shallow and inconsistent.
Again, I find myself practicing in a traditional ashtanga class, and again I am instructed to focus on my breathing as the primary importance of practice. Hearing the ocean current of the class, I realized just how shallow and weak my breath had become. It quickly dawned on me that part of the reason my breathing has faded is because I have spent much of the last year doing yoga to music.
Music can be uplifting and enhance a yoga class, but it can also make it difficult to hear your breath.
I have a very high VO2 Max. Basically, this means that I process oxygen well and I don’t need to breathe a lot in order to get enough oxygen to move my body. I can run for hours and maintain a normal conversation without being short of breath.
In yoga, breathing serves many purposes, only one of which is to oxygenate the body. As I mentioned, breathing informs a yoga practice by allowing the body to move in to deep poses with integrity. If you are disconnected from your breath or only breathing shallowly, you may not notice that you are overextending yourself. This is precisely what I was doing. At the bottom of an exhale I could move far deeper in a pose than I could maintain in the inhale.
Having returned to deep ujjayi pranayama I am again doing poses with integrity and finding better alignment with a safer depth of practice.
So, what does this have to do with doing yoga to music?
Listening to your breath is the easiest way to monitor its health and consistency. If you can’t hear your breath because of music, you may be doing yourself harm or removing a potent part of your practice. If you have been practicing long enough and know that your breath is strong, by all means add in the inspiration of music. Ideally, you would have the music volume low enough to be able to hear both your breath and the music.
Happy Yogaing!
Lesson Learned: Before turning on the tunes, assure that your breath is strong and consistent. Listening to the steadiness of ujjayi pranayama can help inform your practice.
365yogastudy.wordpress.com 