Bringing Kumbhaka into daily life

When many of us think of Yoga, we think of poses: forward bends, backbends, strength, flexibility, and occasionally negotiating with muscles that seem to have very different plans for the morning.

Yet Yoga means union. It is the meeting of opposites: inhale and exhale, effort and surrender, softness and strength, action and stillness.

This morning's practice was built around those opposites. The room was warm, everyone was sweating, and we spent much of the class moving back and forth: folding forward, opening backward, grounding down and expanding up. At times, it felt like a pendulum. At other times, like a coordinated argument between opposing forces.

Somewhere in that dance, my attention was on the tiny pause after the exhale:

The exhale had finished. The inhale was still not on its way. For a brief moment, there was nothing to do. No effort to make. No breath to control. Just a small pocket of stillness hidden in plain sight.

In yogic traditions, this pause is called kumbhaka, the technical translation is breath retention. With kumbhaka, the practical experience is more enjoyable since it is the moment when life briefly forgets to rush.

The more we pay attention to it, the more familiar it feels. And we can encounter this same pause everywhere.

A thought ends before the next one begins.

An action is completed before the next idea arrives.

Even a holiday ends before reality remembers your email address!

Life moves in cycles of advancing and retreating. We step forward for action, then step back to reflect. We engage with the world, then disappear for a while to make sense of it.

After teaching, I often notice this instinct. If a class feels particularly alive, I don't immediately want to move on. I want to sit with it for a moment. What worked? What surprised me? What can I bring into the next class? Reflection turns out to be part of the practice, too.

Perhaps growth is rarely a straight line. It looks more like the ocean tide: advancing, retreating, and somehow moving forward the entire time.

The mind follows the same pattern. Thoughts appear, disappear and hand the microphone to the next thought. Every now and then there is a gap between speakers. Tiny. Easy to miss. Surprisingly peaceful.

And once expanded, we find it easier to release ourselves from thought traps and bring up our true essence!

Yoga makes those gaps easier to expand.

And once expanded, we find it easier to release ourselves from thought traps and evolve upwards!