The answer would seem to be obvious, but a recent book by Angela Ashwin questions this commonly held assumption. Instead, Ashwin argues, pranayama is not about working with the breath, but about working with the subtle inner forces ‘vital airs’, that in hatha yoga are called prana or vāyu. The problem here is that all these words are in fact borrowed from their original use in Sanskrit to refer to wind or breath. So, is there some room for interpretation here? Very little, I would say to support Ashwin’s controversial premise.
From the bibliography at the back of her book and references within the text, I would place Ashwin as a follower of the Bihar School of yoga, founded by Sri Swami Shivananda, during the British Raj. So, what had the great Shivananda have to say? “… If you can control the external breath, you can easily control the inner vital force, Prana. The process by which the Prana is controlled by regulation of external breath, is termed Pranayama.” ‘The Science of Pranayama’ p4 (1935).
Ashwin indeed admits that the easiest way to start working with these inner vital forces is by seeing how they move in response to the breath. For example, she says, is possible to feel, as you breathe in, a wave in prana, or vitality, spread out from the centre of your body towards its extremities. And, as you exhale, she says, you can feel that vitality returning to its source.
This is exactly what I experience myself, working with breathing and movement, as we were instructed by Mr Desikachar. Let’s take working on hands and knees, as described in chapter 3 of my book. If I start to breathe in before I start to ease forwards, I can feel this vitality coming into my hands. And as I start to breathe out ready to ease backwards again, some of this vitality drains out again.
So, Ashwin is definitely onto something and she is practising and teaching in the right area, developing and encouraging her students to develop a sensitivity to the subtle inner forces. However, I don’t see how it is for a moment necessary to dismiss the role of breathing in pranayama. Nor is it necessary to say that many of the breathing exercises described in chapter 2 of the hathayogapradipika are not to do with breathing at all. We can continue to follow the interpretations that we’ve been given by great teachers like Shivananda and Krishnamacharya. We just need to keep looking out for these barely perceptible waves in prana and other ‘vital airs’.
