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Ujjayi Pranayama (breath regulating technique) is a soft, whispering breath which you’ll also hear called victorious breath, or perhaps ocean breath. It’s compared to the sound of the wind through the trees or the waves coming to shore.

Below are the Sanskrit terms key to Ujjayi Pranayama:

• Ujjayi: Victory over
• Pranayama: Prana – life force, breath; Yama – control, restraint, regulation

The mechanics of Ujjayi breath

With Ujjayi breath you breathe in and out of the nose with the lips sealed – no breath passes the lips. This also serves to build heat in the body. The lips gently close and although the breath is passing through the nostrils the emphasis is in your throat.

Actually if one is doing Ujjayi to get calm and focused, one’s metabolic rate will lower as the breath slows down. Metabolism is what creates body heat as it is a by-product of metabolic reactions. We don’t recommend trying Ujjayi with a fast rhythmtrust us, it probably won’t feel calming. Ujjayi is a victorious, uprising breath, very efficient in softening the charge of internal disturbance - remember this as often as possible. Your breathing can effectively shift entire rooms full of people (not that that is the point, but it does).

You create a constriction in the throat as if breathing in and out of a thin straw. Whilst maintaining a closed mouth position be mindful of held tension in the teeth, jaw, throat and/or neck – let it go. You can feel the breath stroke the back of your throat as you inhale and exhale. This comes hand in hand with the audibility of the breath, compared often to the sound of waves, Darth Vader and my husband in deep sleep. The tone, the audibility is smooth and steady, continuous uninterrupted cycles of inhales and exhales, often you cannot tell the difference in sound between the exchange of in and out breath cycles.

Sama Vritti

Sama:same Vritti: whirlings, fluctuations, modifications

Along with the even tone of breath, the length of the breath is the same on the inhale as it is on the exhale. You complete a full in-breath within the same time as you complete your out-breath. Using a metronome is a brilliant practice, if you are a musician you might have one already but if not there are some great online/phone applications that I’ve used with my students before. Set your metronome at 75 bpm, inhale for 4 beats, exhale for 4. An app that accents/ punctuates the beginning of each new cycle of breath is preferable.

With an even tone and length of breath, the last refinement is to breathe fully, deeply and completely (air volume of breath). Within each cycle you spend the entire inhale filling up and entire exhale releasing breath – at no point do you hold the breath – seamless and smooth, try not let the breath run out.

A Beginners’ Guide to Ujjayi Breath

I tend to instruct students who are beginners to breathe with their mouths open to get used to the physical sensation at their throats and sound of breath.

• Sit in a comfortable seat, where your sit bones are grounded and bearing even weight on both sides. Knees no higher than hips. Stacking head over neck, neck over shoulders, 4 corners of ribs stacking 4 corners of hips. Perceive equal length in both sides of your body, spine feels lifted and tall. Chin is parallel to earth.
• Rest one hand on your lap/ thigh, Palm facing up or down and the other hand at the same height and in front of your mouth, Palm facing towards you.
• With your mouth open exhale into your palm, imagining you are steaming up a mirror/ glass and feeling the warm breath on your palm. On your next inhale keep the hand where it is, breathe in making that same sound. Practise this for up to 10 cycles (4 count in, 4 count out, x10). Notice if you find the inhale or exhale more difficult.
• When you feel comfortable here move on to closing your mouth on the inhale but opening mouth on the exhale. See if you can maintain the sound even with the lips are sealed. Next inhale with mouth open and exhale with mouth closed, keeping sensation in your throat and the sound of breath the same. Do each for 5-10 cycles.
• When you feel you want to move on from here, relax your hand and begin Ujjayi Pranayama. You might time yourself with a stopwatch for 2 minutes or chose how many cycles of breath you want to aim for (feel free to use the metronome here).
• Again notice where resistance lies in the breath. Maybe you find the audibility awkward, equalising the volume of breath on both inhale and exhale difficult, or you notice the discrepancy of ease between in-breath and out-breath. Notice where you need to focus and what you need to practise on. I recommend that my students shorten the longer breath to meet the shorter breath if they are unable to stretch the breath evenly on both sides. You don’t want to feel out of breath or gasping at any point. There is absolutely NO RETENTION, it’s like a continuous sea of waves, no holding, totally fluid and seamless. Equanimous.

When to use Ujjayi breath

You can practise Ujjayi breath any time you wish. You don’t have to be on your yoga mat. But if you are on your yoga mat, acknowledge that the breath creates heat in the body. If you are doing a Yin or Restorative yoga class you may not want to add this element of heat in the body. Instead you might want to maintain a soft and fluid breath without sound. There also might be times in your practice where adding heat is inappropriate (e.g some pregnant practitioners find Ujjayi breath too heating to maintain for an entire practice) or where breathing in and out of the nose is impossible (e.g. blocked sinuses). At times like this you might want to keep the intention of Ujjayi breath in mind without practising it.

When I first heard my teacher Cat Alip-Douglas describe the breath as “non-preferential” the breath took on a deeper level of meaning and intention. Ujjayi breath is a pragmatic teaching of equanimity, non-attachment, not being swayed by the pulls of our desire to feel good (Raga) and repulsion when we feel bad (Dvesha).

Ujjayi in practice

Notice when you’re next holding Utkatasana / Chair pose for 5 breaths, you’re doing your tenth Surya Namaskar B (sun salutation B), or you’re holding pigeon pose for 20 breaths…Your breath shows you where you are holding, where you are finding it hard to let go, where you are over exerting.

Not only does Ujjayi hold a mirror up to your existing unconscious habits but it soon becomes a new habit, one that can soothe, lull and seduce your body and mind into a state of increased and progressive ease. You can sit in the fire of a posture (or an emotion), feel the heat yet feel radically calm and undisturbed. Now take that off your mat into your next review with your boss, when dealing with your toddler’s tantrums, or an argument with your partner.

Your yoga tool box

Your victory and triumph is the composure you learn to maintain by sticking with it, grounding yourself in your considered and calm breath. Unwavering. I remember being particularly upset early last year and after a heated conversation with a loved one, stood up, slammed the door (yes, yoga teachers do it sometimes too!) and sat outside hyperventilating.

I heard a gentle voice encouraging me to breathe Ujjayi breath. [FACT – you cannot hyperventilate or even cry and breathe Ujjayi breath at the same time.] Pretty instantly my entire system slowed down and a sense of calm came over me. In your yoga tool box you’ve got this breath technique, this antidote, wherever you go. I find it so empowering to be able to cultivate these inner resources whereby I can learn to tune in and switch from a reactive state to a proactive state of experiencing. This is the magic of breath.

EkhartYoga members – put this into practice

Explore the sound of the Ujjayi breath in this 15 minute tutorial with Tashi Dawa.

Ujjayi breath and the nervous system

From our very first breath until our final exhale we are, without any deliberate effort, continuously breathed by our Autonomic Nervous system (ANS). Unlike other ANS actions in the body (like pupil dilation) we are able to take voluntary control over our breathing and thus, critically, can influence our Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous system.

When we breathe Ujjayi breath we transform the automatic into the deliberate and thereby become the master of our internal landscape; we can positively affect how we feel by regulating the length, air volume and sound of our inhales and exhales.

Yoga is a practice of integration and deliberate identification. Ujjayi Pranayama is another tool to add to our box, another practice which encourages the mind to rest its awareness on the present moment, and identify with our immediate experience. This process of mindfulness can be one of our biggest conquests. Mastery of the conscious mind. We become absorbed as we synchronise our movement with our breath. Our level of agitation settles, the fluctuations of our mind (chitta vritti) decelerate and for glimpses of a moment we are ‘all in’. As we learn to regulate the gross body through different yogic practices including pranayama, we can access and influence our subtle bodies.

Alchemy of breath

Many of us never learned Ujjayi breath formally before rocking up to class, rolling out our mats and being instructed to use the breath throughout our practice. We heard fellow students around us making a funny noise and felt slightly awkward when trying to copy them, feeling sure that we would get it wrong, which would expose us as newbies and imposters – oh the shame!

It is not uncommon to feel self-conscious when first making sound with breath, and then you pluck up the courage to try and a big snorting sound comes out. Like all things Yoga it takes practise and a relinquishment of self-identified inhibition – which also takes practice!

Art Of Living Foundation

Which breath, which style?

Some styles of yoga (e.g. Ashtanga & Jivamukti) and certain teachers are more breath-focused than others, meaning they call/instruct each and every inhale and exhale throughout the class. They become a human metronome setting the rhythm which you begin to internalise. In other classes you will not be breath-led in this way which as a novice to Ujjayi might mean you spend a lot of time practising asana without breathing optimally. Many students have shared with me “ah-ha” moments when experiencing a breath-led practice for the first time. It is a key that unlocks many doors and can transform your practice.

Related

Art Of Living India

• Learn the Ujjiya breath as part of the Yoga for Beginners course with Esther Ekhart.

Ujjayi Breathing Art Of Living Environments

We love when yoga teachers spread the good word about a breathing practice that can help all of us alleviate a little stress. That’s why it’s so important that the information we disseminate to hungry ears is accurate and, therefore, safer. We found this yoga teacher’s advice online and although we like the message, there are a few pointers that need to be ironed out so that the overriding message can be used to its full benefit. We’ll extract the points that are to be discussed specifically and list them in quotes and bolded text. But please go to her article to get the full story. Here’s the advice on Ujjayi:

1) “It warms the entire body by increasing oxygenation and body-heat.”
Actually if one is doing Ujjayi to get calm and focused, one’s metabolic rate will lower as the breath slows down. Metabolism is what creates body heat as it is a by-product of metabolic reactions. We don’t recommend trying Ujjayi with a fast rhythm…trust us, it probably won’t feel calming. But since the metabolic rate lowers, Ujjayi does not increase body heat or oxygen levels.

So does she mean increasing oxygen in the blood? Well, that generally only happens if you increase your aerobic activity and get the heart to pump faster and increase your breathing rate, which will increase the amount of oxygen in the blood (assuming proper circulation). Increasing the level of oxygen in the blood is not always necessary, however. If you are in a static position, your body does not need as much oxygen as it would need if you were to say, run a marathon. So, increasing oxygen in the blood shouldn’t always be the goal. However. that doesn’t mean that Ujjayi breathing isn’t useful. Let’s say that someone is so tensed up that the process of the breath is a struggle. A focused breath practice may help relieve that tension and allow the breath to happen more easily. If that happens someone may feel a sense of warmth, which can be attributed to better circulation, both physically (blood) and energetically.

2) “When you are focusing on the three-part breath (belly, upper chest, throat) AND on the sound of engaging your glottis muscles at the back of your throught, your monkey-mind has a harder time interfering with your practice.”
It’s difficult to agree with the three-part breath that is often referred to in pranayama. Whenever we breathe, air only goes into the lungs. Because of the downward movement of the diaphragm during an inhalation, it is healthy to see belly movement when practicing relaxed breathing (not in all situations or types of breathing), but that is not because you are breathing “with your belly.” You can read more on that in this past blogpost. One does have to use the glottis muscles (vocal cords) actively to create the whispered sound that characterizes Ujjayi. But the glottis is not at the back of the throat, it refers to the opening between the vocal cords at the entrance of the larynx.

Ujjayi Breath Pdf

We do agree that the “monkey-mind” has a much more difficult time interfering when you do this practice and we hope people understand how important that is! The limbic system in our brains is the part associated with our emotions, or more primal urges. It is related to the prefrontal cortex (which is part of the thinking, or more human brain) in that it modulates those urges. Sometimes an overactive limbic system can interfere with some of our higher functions. In other, words we can lose our ability to put the brakes on our emotional responses. The prefrontal cortex (the area right behind our “third-eye”, is key to self-regulation and emotional management) is in charge of executive function. When we practice focused intention with our bodies and movement we are doing if from the prefrontal cortex, like intentionally using the vocal cords to create a sound with controlled breathing. This is how we can gain control over our limbic systems, a.k.a. the “monkey mind.”

Kim, who just became certified in Movement Efficiency Training, will be writing a blog post soon that illuminates more of the theories behind this fascinating neuroscience as it applies to attitudes towards movement.

4) In describing how to practice: “You still engage the back of your thoat, but this time almost like you are snoring.”
As we’ve already covered, the glottis is not in the back of the throat, but you do engage the vocal cords to perform Ujjayi. This is important to understand, because if you “engage” the back of your throat you might end up constricting it, which would not feel relaxing at all! In fact, throwing in the cue about “almost snoring” is not the best one to use. Snoring and the noise that accompanies it happens, because airflow is obstructed. This obstruction, at one of its more dangerous and chronic extremes is sleep apnea. This is a serious and dangerous disorder that you don’t ever want to emulate or suggest to the body! This is actually counter to the intention and practice of Ujjayi. Other than engaging the vocal cords we should not feel constriction when practicing this breath.

5) “Repeat, this time with your mouth closed for both the inhale and the exhale (this keeps the prana circulating in your body).”
Prana is ALWAYS circulating in your body. It is sanskrit for “vital life force.” as it particularly refers to the breath. You don’t have to keep it going. A breathing practice can help you take control of your prana and even increase it, but just as the breath is always there, so is prana. It is the quality of prana, as with breath, that you can improve.

Ujjayi Breathing Burns Calories

6) “Vinyasa Flow classes are all about linking breath with movement. Although it is challenging to keep up with Ujjayi breathing for the entire class, see if you can bring yourself back to it every time you remember, particularly in challenging poses where you can really benefit from the calming, centering, stabilizing breath.”
Ujjayi is not always appropriate in every movement situation (especially if you are trying to see the belly move). Different breathe is appropriate in different situations. As we always say, the idea is to have options. One will definitely find it difficult to keep up Ujjayi in a flow class that is very fast or when poses are performed that necessitate core strength and balance. It’s much more difficult to perform one-legged asanas without an engaged core and it is very difficult to engage your core if you are intent upon a “three-part” Ujjayi breath as described in this article.
The ability to engage your core also protects your back and in some cases can help you breathe more easily and create stability.

But what this teacher points out here is extremely important! She is illuminating that in times of difficulty, whether emotional, physical (like in a vinyasa class) or mental (like when you are about to speak on stage) we lose awareness of our breath or even stop breathing momentarily. In these instances it is beneficial to use Ujjayi to remind us not to hold the breath. This is about increasing your internal awareness so that you can stay grounded and centered when you feel like you are not in control. Or more so, to feel centered and grounded when we know for sure we aren’t in control!

We are grateful to this yogini for sharing her experience and for reminding us about the importance of pranayama. We wanted to discuss these points not to be antagonistic or argumentative, but so that yoga can continue to reach people. In order for that to happen we must all pay attention to the information we use to teach and constantly evaluate it.

So much of what we know about the breath has been taught to us by Leslie Kaminoff. You can find in him at the Breathing Project in NYC. Go to his ABC classes or look for him up on youtube. You can’t find a better source on pranayama and anatomy than him! Also, if you want a wonderful book to read about neuroscience that is accessible and interesting please check out: Pictures of the Mind: What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are, by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald.