Gravity appears to be a pretty big reality. Or, at least, bigger than my own. It is one of the many natural laws that arranges the conditions for my life to existence in the first place. There are others, but gravity is a good enough example for today.
The human has within its body many ingenious structures that have been physically perfected over millions of years. Our organism is thus built to withstand gravity and to live freely above the Earth’s surface, whilst being subject to these laws during embodied life. We have a system of levers and pulleys which rely on the tension/integrity of all the interlocking parts within the system, working together WITH this gravity. Our body is literally a feat of architectural ingenuity.
To access the latent forces that are stabilizing this system is the work of yoga technology. With nothing done at all, the body is subject to the crushing effect of gravity. We can see, feel, and know what this looks like. Graceful movement is the opposite - to use and direct the forces of gravity through a system that appears unimpeded by its heaviness.
Yoga does way more than make a more flexible body. It aligns our individual reality with the One that is bigger. It’s quite logical if you think about it. The changes that take place in the brain are irrefutable, when it is attached to a body that is truly plugged into the environment.
I sense that peak meditative experiences arrive in a body that is structurally aligned so that the energy that is usually pulling us downward (as gravity) is reversed and travels upward. There must be a reason for all the angelic illustrations of humans ascending to a light above. There seems to be a commonality that spans across time for life reaching upward towards Light.
For a body and brain, this can very practically appear as alert relaxation through the body, so that the crown of the head has physically perfect circulation according to gravitational laws. I cannot say what having an experience like this might entail, but I am certain that it is significant.
Enter: bandha. I have been discussing bandha quite a bit in my classes lately and certainly exploring it very deeply in my own practices. In my experiences over the years of practicing yoga, bandha seems to be a barely mentioned subject. At best, it is referenced throughout a practice, and almost as an afterthought. Yet if we mine the texts, and we hear that bandha is a critical part of an effective yoga system, we wonder: why is it that we place so little emphasis on something that is declared as being so valuable?
I have numerous thoughts on this. The most primary reason: it takes time to really refine an individual's awareness of what bandha actually is. In a public studio or group class setting, this is simply unrealistic. For in many cases, we don't have time, but I feel strongly that this is an old paradigm that we ought to shed completely. I know that by doing what amounts to be a small quantity of pre-work and technical discussion, we can really, really radically transform our current yoga practice. The transformative potentials I will discuss in the next paragraph, but it is important to note that these are all reasons why I am taking such an effort towards practicing, teaching and implementing bandha effectively.
What really is bandha, anyways? There are three, and they function as the natural, internal locks which provide critical pressure control, inside of the body, as it receives and releases the breath. Think of them as pressure control and release valves. As we know, the breath is actually the result of a pressure difference between the inside of our body and the outside of our body. When we are first born, our initial breath is pushed inside of our tiny little infant lungs due to the environment rushing in the fill the vacuum. In a sense, the world outside of us, is literally breathing us. We don't take a breath - our inhale is received. And it has been like that since our first ever inhalation! We are being breathed. And the way in which our bodies orient to this breath, the way that we actually can maintain a rhythmic pattern to stabilize on Earth, is determined by the inner structures of respiration.
To explore the musculature responsible for respiration can be a long topic indeed, but it is critical here that we keep focus on the deepest structures that are the foundation for the whole system. Obviously, the diaphragm is a key muscle of respiration, but there are also others. In yoga, we are talking here about bandha. There are three of them (bandhas) according to yogic anatomy and physiology and they correspond loosely to the grosser structures as outlined by our more recent Western models of the physical body.
To use an analogy here might help. Picture a balloon with two open sides, inside of a highly pressurized box that is closed to keep the pressure in. If the balloon is slack and empty but pinched off on both ends, and the box is filled with this pressurized air, what happens if that one side of the balloon opens? Air rushes to fill the space that was created, and the balloon would fill, no? Then we pinch the end of the balloon and can keep it filled, for as long as we choose to pinch. But, if we remove the tie, then the air returns to the space around it. The system returns to equilibrium. What if we do the same thing again, only this time as we open the top pinch, we leave a tiny leak in the bottom pinch? The balloon fills, but it leaks out the bottom, and we cannot hold.
This is a crude example that illustrates the functioning of our internal 'pinch' mechanisms. Bandha. As discussed earlier, there are three in our body: one at the bottom, one at the top, and one in the middle. They are all important, but the one in the middle is perhaps the one to take specific attention to, for the reason that in doing so the other two sort themselves out.
I think the most critical thing to understand here is that these pressure pinching valves act as containing mechanisms for prana. This is the real essence of pranayama, which is often thought of us 'yogic breathing exercises' but really refers to 'energy restraint'. Prana is the all-pervading life force, or energy, that permeates our existence. It is all around us, animating us, and everything else. It is not unlike the energy that our quantum physicists are declaring as the fundamental fabric of our Universe - perhaps it is the same. Regardless, this energy is accessible and it is connected to the breath. Maybe it is partially related to gravity and the laws of physics that keep everything organized in a way for life to exist? Can our participation in these existential processes lead us to some higher comprehension about how the cosmos actually work? I think it can. Here is why.
The breath is pushed inside of us due to pressure differences. Bandha is the mechanical structure inside the body that orients and creates a container for the breath to come in and stay, like the pinching at the end of a balloon. Another example of bandha in action - exhale all the air out, and keep squeezing the air out until you feel the lower abdomen working to get the last remnants of air out of the body. Hold the exhalation out at the end, exhale retention (bahir kumbhaka), and over the course of just a few seconds feel the internal pressure created in the body. Before breathing in, take note of the pelvic floor, the lower belly, and the position of the throat. These structures are all orienting the body in space according to the pressure difference at the end of this forced exhalation, so as to provide the best possible receptacle of breath for when the inhalation arrives.
If we develop a relationship to these pressure changes, and we start to pay attention to how the body arranges itself accordingly, we naturally begin to align ourselves in space towards a more free and expansive breath. Which is what the breath really wants - to be free and ultimately expansive - because it IS! That is the nature of breath. It is infinite. It is the same breath that I take, that you take, that the trees and plants take... It is the massive, cyclical, and infinite loop of existence.
This is why bandha is critical in our practices. The more we develop awareness around their functioning inside of our system, the more 'our' system becomes naturally aligned with 'THE' System. The System of the freaking Universe, with all of the natural laws that allowed for Its Creation. This is not some fairy-tale pseudo-science. I am presenting facts that have their blueprint drawn from physics. It will be up to the practitioner to have the experiences that validate these claims, because theory is empty without practical wisdom to support it. It is obvious that the breath is important, but there is more to it than that. The body is also important and how the body receives the breath is important, and much of this has to do with bandha.
If you are searching for more information on this, I am here. Please reach out. I am interested and very passionate about sharing the practical methods for achieving alignment with Nature and the Universe. It is very accessible and it just takes a little bit of effort and time each day, but the rewards are endless. Get gravity on your side and see what you are capable of in life. These secrets are just waiting to be revealed within each of us.