By Javier Muriel, founder of Pranayam®

Every day I breathe about 20,000 times without consciously deciding on any of them. All I need to do is focus on a single breath to be able to lengthen it, hold it or make it silent. That dual nature – both automatic and voluntary – is the starting point of pranayama.

The word

Prāṇa In the texts on Hatha Yoga, it is the force that animates the body and is manifested in the breath. Āyāma means ‘extension’ or ‘regulation’. Pranayama is, therefore, the practice of regulating the breath with attention, rhythm and moderation.

It is neither a lung capacity exercise nor a technique for improving performance. It is a discipline that is learnt step by step, just like any other craft.

What happens in the body

At rest, an adult breathes between 12 and 20 times per minute. When breathing becomes slow and nasal, with the exhalation longer than the inhalation, the autonomic nervous system tends to shift towards the parasympathetic branch: the heart rate slows and attention stabilises.

I notice this through three specific signs: the abdomen moves before the chest, the sound of the breath almost disappears, and the mind stops jumping from one thought to another. You don’t need to believe in anything to observe them.

The Map of Tradition

Classical texts describe the path of prāṇa using their own specific terminology: the nāḍīs, the channels through which it flows, and the vāyus, the directions of its movement. I see it as a map of inner perception: a precise way of describing what one feels in the body when one’s breathing becomes more refined.

That map neither replaces nor competes with physiology. Both describe the same process from different perspectives, and in practice they complement one another.

Why learning takes place in stages

The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (15th century) compares the breath to a lion or a wild elephant: it is tamed gradually, never by force (II, 15). Six centuries later, the advice remains the same. In my teaching, the process consists of four steps:

  1. Stabilise your breathing: it should be continuous, without pauses or strain.
  2. Lengthen it and fine-tune it: slower, quieter.
  3. Incorporate mindful pauses (kumbhaka), only once the two previous stages are firmly in place.
  4. Let your breathing become almost imperceptible.

The aim is not to do more, but to do it more precisely. Each stage is tailored to the practitioner’s actual ability, and skipping one usually results in tension or breathlessness.

Off the cushion

What we practise whilst sitting down later manifests itself in everyday life: in how I rest, in how I move, in how I respond to a tense situation, and in how long I am able to remain silent. Pranayama is, above all, a form of breathing training.

To begin with

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