Yoga Spirits: Breathing Exercises )Pranayama)

This teaching debunks the fallacy that yogic breathing oxygenates the body and improves health. The majority of yogic breathing techniques are variations on the theme of self asphyxiation: they significantly slow and restrain breathing in unnatural ways and even suspend it. Breath restraint and breath suspension bottle the waste gas carbon dioxide in the body. Carbon dioxide buildup changes blood chemistry in undesirable ways and retards brain function.

A minority of techniques involve hyperventilation. Hyperventilation causes the body’s carbon dioxide level to drop substantially, which reduces blood flow to the brain and deprives the brain of oxygen.

Meditating on the breath is an exclusionary attention exercise that develops the skill of detachment (from embodied existence). The ultimate goal of yogic breath work is “perish the breath” and “perish the mind,” to quote a Tantric yoga manual.

If you want to de stress or relax, you are better off using the clinical (non-yogic) 2:1 breathing technique.

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