Breathing

One of the most important aspects of Ashtanga yoga is special breathing which is called Ujjayi breath. Our teacher says - come on come on, create that sea noise. And it really sounds like sea. The idea is to inhale while shutting down your glottis a bit, in this case you will hear some noise coming out from your throat which is always a bit louder (in my case) on exhale because when we talk the voice also emerges when air comes out through vocal chords. Actually, sometimes this breathing reminds me a light snoring :) It is very important to keep breathing and movements synchronized and to breathe with ujjayi all the way through the session. Sometimes I cheat though. It's not actually cheating but in some asanas I just feel I need more air because ujjayi breathing is difficult in some positions and in those occasional moments I gasp air with normal way of inhaling. Hope as soon as I become more experienced my asanas won't be so difficult to enter and keep ujjayi breath at the same time. Overall this breathing heats your inner fire and believe me, it's not just words, it really works, you get heated up from inside which allows to you to stretch more and go beyond the limits which you thought you have.

Today I was trying a new asana - Pindasana. This is where I lost my ujjayi breath for a moment :)