What is Prana?

Namaste. Welcome to the Om Som Yoga and Ayurveda podcast. A space to dive into how we as humans can live more intentional, ethical and sustainable lives. Now how we can come into harmony with ourselves, others and nature in the process. We share tips to help you cultivate a healthy body, calm mind and strong purpose through the traditional Vedic wisdom of yoga and Ayurveda. My name is Aaron Petti, I'm a yoga teacher, a teacher trainer, yoga therapist but most of all a student of the yoga tradition. My name is Paige Taylor, I'm a yoga teacher, Ayurvedic health consultant, advocate for sustainable living and level of all beings. And on today's episode we are going to be talking about the elusive subtle nourishing quality of prana. Prana is one of those things that gets spoken about in very mystical kind of ways. It's like always spoken about in yoga, right? If you don't get the right alignment in your poses, then the prana might not be able to flow. It's kind of the thing that I see really commonly. And a lot of people get kind of really stuck in that idea that the pose has to be this specific way because that's how the energy is meant to move through the body. So we want to dive into prana today. We want to dive into how we can understand prana, how we can experience prana, what is prana. And hopefully it will enlighten your practice in a way that feels like it's applicable for you. Yeah. So for me, I think when I started teaching yoga, when I started learning about yoga, this endetics part of it was was really the most confusing part. Of course. I didn't really get how the poses or the breathing or the meditation could affect the energy because I didn't really have an experience to go off. I didn't have an experience of energy. And so as I continue practicing and really taking the time to listen to the feeling of what exists after the practice, only then did I understand prana and its importance. Right? It's kind of this idea of the effect, the cause and effect. It was spoken about so much. We talk about an inayveda, we talk about it in the swasta episode in the dharma. It's all about some action, some technique and its effect. Right? And that effect can be measured as we spoke about in the last episode through the quotient. It can be a physical effect, a mental effect, an energetic effect or an emotional effect or it can have an effect at the deepest most subtle layer of the self. And then what I think is so fascinating is that like you said, like energy and this subtle side of yoga can be so hard to grasp at the start because it is that it's just subtle. It's more subtle than what we can experience. But what I find and like just even in modern day spirituality, this idea of like energy is like so woo woo so out there. But actually like if we're like looking through the lens of the kosher that we spoke last week, you know, prana, my kosher is the second layer. Like prana, my kosher then is like more dense than the mind or more dense than the emotions. And I think that's so fascinating that we have such like, you know, understanding of mind or thoughts or feelings of emotions. But when it comes to prana, like I think it's only because we don't have the words to describe it in the English language and specifically context, like, you know, emotions. We have words to describe emotions. We have anger. We have sadness, you know, that describe this feeling. But in the Western world, this idea of like prana, there's not so many ways to describe it. And so often when we're speaking about it in such simple terms, we're just like, well, keep it simple. Like is your energy feeling high or is your energy feeling low kind of thing? That we can fathom that. We can understand that. And then we'll start to go into what we'll talk about in our conversation today, like the prana values and different expressions of prana. And then when we start to understand and have the context for prana, then it becomes easier to understand. But I think it's just simply that that actually we just don't have the words or the experience in the West to be able to describe our energy efficiently. But thank goodness that we do in the yoga tradition. Yeah, well, I want to challenge that. I want to say, or do we? We just don't quite realize it. And I think for me, what really helped me to bridge physical and prana is to go down into the atomic. Right? That if you take a microscope and you look deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, everything is vibration. Yeah, of course. Right? And so that is leading into this idea that everything has frequency and energy is frequency. Right? And so what makes the floor the floor is at the atomic particle level. There's a certain vibration that gives it its form and its structure. And so the only way to understand that as prana is to understand while the translation of prana. So when we translate the word, we translate it into pranu. Pran means the first, the primary. It's the innate, something that's always been there, always will be there. It's the first. Anu is the same as our word, atom. Yeah? And so it's the tiniest particle imaginable. Right? And so then we can take these two things together and we can think of prana as the first, the innate, tiniest, indestructible unit of energy. Yeah? And so that governing the physical nature is the idea of prana. Then once you look beyond the physical, the next logical place to explore self and the nature of reality is frequency and vibration. It's like that classic Nikola Tesla quote, if you want to understand the secrets of the universe, you need to think in frequencies. And so it's starting to look at the natural movements of the physical, the nature itself, the life itself that flows through the physical as its own layer of experience. Right? And that's something that's really unique to yoga, along with other different traditions as well, but it encourages us to search for that experience, to seek it out and to understand that experience and then use that experience to inform our understanding of the physical as well. Yeah? So some other ways that we might translate that word prana, the classic is like the life force. So it's life flowing through the body. Another classic one is just simply energy. We could think of it as that which animates, right? That which gives life when life leaves the body, because the prana is leaving the body. And so it's a subtle experience that is informing the gross experience, right? One layer deeper than your body. It is interrelated with both mind and body. It's almost like a mediator between those two places. But the prana will inform how the body functions and the mind will inform how the prana functions is the idea that if the mind is scattered and distracted, the prana scattered, distracted. But when the mind is focused, concentrated, the prana is focused, concentrated. Yeah? The idea is that you take the power of the sun and you put it through the tiny magnifying glass to amplify its power. Yeah? And so you're using mind to focus your energy on maybe it's something you want to do or something you want to cultivate or maybe it's your practice or maybe it's the inner experience of meditation. One of the Upanishads or the Gita or something says something like prana is the bow which shoots the arrow of the mind toward the target of God. Yeah. And so it's this idea that prana is the life giving force, it's the force of propulsion, it's what flows out of the chakras into the world to give life to anything that is living in nature, including you. So the basic framework that we use to understand prana is called the prana values, yeah? Pancha prana. Five different types of prana are these kind of subcategories that we use as the different energies which are always influencing the natural movements of the physical body. So there's five in total and the way that you can think about this is not like the cosmic prana, it's not something that's like woo woo and non-existent but actually it's what is informing your physical body to do specific functions, right? Each of these five energies, they call the prana value, value means a world which means that they have their own certain direction. But the energy moves in a certain direction, as it moves in that direction, it gives rise to certain experiences in the body. The five are Prana, Apana, Samana, Vyana, and Udana. So maybe let's start with the five directions, and then we'll pair them to the names, and then we'll give some examples. Prana is in woods, it's receiving energy. It's anything moving into yourself that gives you energy. The second is down and out that you're releasing something. That's the Apana. The third is this movement in a navel that digests. This is kind of integration. Fourth is Vyana, which is energy, which is expanding outwards, and circulating through. And the fifth one is Udana, which is upwards and outward, so it's like this expressive dynamic active force in the world. And so between these five, you've got Apana, which governs every function of your body. So shall we make it a little bit more practical? What could be some examples for the Prana, via the internalization, the receiving of energy? Any main examples? Eating might be one. I take some food and I put it in my body. I take the energy from outside and I put it inside. Breathing might be another example. I inhale the oxygen, the energy into my body. The sunlight on my skin. The sunlight comes onto my skin, and it comes into my body as energy. Same with love and affection and time spent with your friends. Anytime you receive nourishment from the world around you, that is Prana moving into you. Therefore we call it Prana, Vyu. And we call it Prana to differentiate it from Prana, Vyu as a whole group. Prana, Vyu is one of the Prana Vyus. That is the inward focus. Technically it's the Prana Prana. Okay, so that's number one. You are receiving energy. Maybe like just in terms of your yoga practice as well. Okay, yeah. So if you want to cultivate that, if you want to receive, what would you do? You would have to open yourself. You think about your body as a container for the Prana. Tap away lunchtime. If you want to eat the food, if you want to fill the container, you have to take off the lid. Open it up so that it can receive that. And so what are we doing in your yoga practice to open? We do back bending. We do heart on a block. We do these big expansive things that allow us to become receptive and to open in order to receive. We also focus on the inhale. We also focus on drawing Prana in through the breath. We often speak about this idea that Prana and breath are not the same, but Prana rides on the breath. But the breath is the vehicle or the carrier of Prana. And so every time you inhale, you have the opportunity to draw in Prana, to draw in nourishment and receive that process. So if we're looking to cultivate Prana via you, yes. As Aaron said, we're working to open to expand and also to draw in, especially with the inhale. Yeah. And so you'll see that in classes, right? Sometimes in yoga class, there's a whole theme around opening and expanding. You know, big back bends, big strong inhales, all of that kind of stuff. And we thread them together in such a way to cultivate that internalization and that capacity to receive the energy and the nourishment from the world around us. Yeah. Okay. So that's the Prana value. Second is called a Pana value. Pana value is down and out. Easy to remember because up is down, right? There is always opposites in yoga. So a Pana value is energy which moves down and out. What could that be action wise in the physical world? It would be going to the toilet, releasing the toxins from your body. It would be menstruation. It would be childbirth. It would be anything that moves down and out. Anything that you're releasing, right? Even like, if I catch up with you, Paji, for a chai on a Tuesday morning and I've had a rough week and I want a vent, then I'm releasing energetically. That would also be like venting, emotionally releasing, mentally letting go, would all be a Pana value. So how would we work with that in a practice? How would we cultivate that? In the yoga practices, we're looking at forward folding. Forward folding is where we're releasing, where we're letting go, and where we're kind of just emptying ourselves to that capacity. Of course, it depends on what style of practice you're doing and where you're practicing in the context of your practice. Forward folding will cultivate a Pana value and will cultivate this downward movement of energy out through the body. Why? Because when you do a forward fold, but a pressure on your colon, which is the organ of, excretion, it's down and out. That lower belly region is usually considered the home of a Pana value. Most forward folds create that compression in that area. So there's this kind of physical connection, but also the movement of the spine creates that energetic effect as well. And a Pana value is good for this idea of releasing of letting go, but also this idea of grounding and stabilizing and strengthening, especially through the lower body as well. And we work a lot with the exhale for a Pana value. So we'll work on more of an exhale focused pranayam, maybe extending the exhale twice the length of the inhale or so on like that. The exhale is that literal release of the breath, that literal out of the breath. And so when we work with the exhale like that, we're cultivating a Pana value. And I think this play, this interrelationship between prana and a Pana is something that we really explore in a lot of depth in our yoga practice without even realizing it. But a point of reflection that I really like to give on this is this idea that if you struggle with the inhale or you feel less comfortable holding at the top of the inhale, then your problem in life is receiving what you need. And if you feel less. the problem in life. Well, your general tendency within their life, so it stands as. You struggle releasing. You struggle receiving. And if you are struggling with your exhale, you struggle to hold at the bottom of the exhale, then you are struggling. Your problem in life is letting go. Let it go. Right? I don't know. I think it was relatable for me. You have a problem. All right. That is something we're trying to avoid. Anyway, let us move on. Next is Samana Raya. What is Samana Raya all about? I think that is so fitting that we go to Samana Raya from here because you were talking about this balance as dance between prana and a Pana between inward and outward. And that's what Samana Raya really is. Samana Raya is this place of balance, of harmony, of equilibrium that exists between the two, a Pana and a Pana. The location of Samana Raya is in the navel. The belly. And it's all about this idea of integration, of digestion, of assimilation, not only in our physical sense and the food that we consume, but on all layers of our being, the thoughts that we have, the experiences that we have in our daily life, our subconscious beliefs, Samana Raya is all about the integration, about taking with you the lessons that you learn and letting go of what you no longer need. Yeah. Someone means balance. And so it's the balance between receiving what you need and letting go of what you don't. Exactly. It's the balance between prana and a Pana, which is the epitome of hatha yoga. Samana Raya is that digestive force. And as Pati said in the navel, it's your digestive system which takes your food and it breaks it down to all its little pieces so that your body can decide what's useful and what's not useful. Right? That goes the same for your mind and the information that you receive. You might listen to this podcast. You might go for an hour, half an hour hopefully, in this crust. But your mind is then going to have to decide what is applicable and helpful for you. What do you want to keep? And what is just nonsense that you don't need to. And so that process is samana vaya, it's digestion. All right. Number four. Wait, the yoga. Oh, how do we do it in yoga? Well, you know what the classic is? The toxifying twist, digestive twist. The toxifying is not really the word. It's what we've got thrown around a lot these days. But it's speaking about this idea of integration and assimilation. Digestive twist is what we're looking for. Exactly. That we're working with twists in our yoga practice, whether that's active twists or passive twists. Also like belly down positions where your belly is in contact with the floor will work to cultivate samana vaya as well. And anywhere that you find balance between inhale and exhale, balance between the back bend and the forward fall. Balance between the active and the passive that anything balancing will help us with that samana vaya. Absolutely. The twisting pastures in particular, they do, they give this little bit of a. It's like a compression. to the digestive system, your intestines, and your stomach, and your liver, all those things that we need functioning effectively for some honor by you to be flowing. - And the direction of some honor is in towards the center. So it's like this idea of drawing everything in towards the center so that that digestive process can unfold. - Yeah, exactly. Okay, the other thing is that we might be using the breath in equal ratios, that kind of thing in a some honor class. I mean, like Nadi Shudana, some of Riti Prenyama. - Which is like four, four, four, four box breathing as it's cold in the Western world. - Yeah, so all of those things, we're gonna be focusing toward a more balanced kind of practice. Yeah? Okay, next was Vyana Vyana is, (imitates explosion) expansive energy. - In all directions. - Yeah, out in all directions. And so the idea then is top of the inhale, that kind of thing that I'm fully expanded. - Yeah, and what you'll find is that when you're fully expanded, there is an elevation in your heart rate, which pumps the blood around your body a little bit quicker. - And Vyana Vyana is all about circulation. It's all about moving and promoting circulation and promoting like flow of prana or of energy of equal movement. It's also about adaptability and that experience of being able to move and change and adapt as needed and that is the Vyana Vyu. - Yeah, and deliverance, right? It's like what you've digested that nourishment. You've brought in digested, removed what's not necessary, then is taken up and it's delivered by Vyana Vyu to all of the cells and all of the different parts of the physical body, mind and energy. - Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. - All right, so how might we work with Vyana in a yoga practice? - Now yoga practice, we're looking at moving in lateral way so that literal expression of expansion out from center in all directions. So side bending in all capacities work with Vyana Vyu. And as Aaron mentioned, this idea of inhale retention and working to expanding that in that way as well. - Yeah. So with Vyana Vyu, we can also work with like Surya Namaskar, a little bit of cardio, things to get the blood moving, right? Anything that's flowing and creating movement will create blood or demand for blood flow, not create blood, but create demand for blood flow and that blood flow is Vyana Vyu, is that kind of heating, active force that will then bring activity into our lives. Yeah, cool. So Vyana Vyu expansion, Udana Vyu expression. Udana Vyu is the force in the body that allows us to speak our truth, right? It's the force in our body that allows us to act in the world to do stuff, right? You've taken the energy in, you've digested it, you've released what you don't need. It's been circled around and then you get to actually use it, right? You go for a run or you film your podcast or you do your work at your laptop or whatever you want to do in the world, the energy that you're using, the energy that you're expressing is called Udana Vyu. And there's a couple of ways that we can use Udana Vyu, right? It's our growth. So especially like kids that are still constantly growing us with this like cellular renewal, that duplication process is Udana Vyu. But also it's just like, yeah, that capacity that we have to take the energy that we've received and then put it into action. In a yoga context, it's a little bit more subtle than that, that actually by balancing the prana-apana, Udana is the force that allows prana to rise up the spine to create the inner experience of yoga, that there's a more subtle Udana or a different tension for the Udana Vyu that allows us to move our awareness and now shut the up into the higher chakras and have a more pure transcendental experience. So we can use Udana in that way. In a yoga practice, Udana is all about what post-category? - Invergents. - All about inversions. Because they believe that the prana follows the laws of nature, still governed by Dharma, therefore gravity applies. And so if you put your body upside down and the prana will flow from the base of the spine up to the crown of the head and bring about that experience of yoga. So that's one way that we can use Udana is to get upside down for a long period of time, a couple of minutes at least. The other way is to use expression in our yoga practice. And I think it's something that I really see often in our online things. People will come and they'll take the Asana Sada and Dharma course and they'll say, "Oh, I've never chanted during a yoga class before. I've never done mantra and Asana as a paired thing." And that's the Udana piece. It's like that you are chanting a sound, oh, as you move back to Down Dog for more force. As a way of bringing that like, "I am expressing, you know, I'm taking up space. I'm letting something out. And that being a really transformative force in the practice." And I'm sure that a lot of our students and people who've practiced how hot the style would have tested that being such a potent part of our practice. - Absolutely. - So yeah, Udana Vau, there's a lot of other ways that we can use it. They sit resizing the throat. So sometimes we might use neck twisting, neck style careers, but a lot of the time it is it's just the inversions and the chanting that is the most powerful way to cultivate Udana Vau. So I think that we should do a quick little recap here and do this second analogy of like eating the apple. So we always speak about this analogy that we have an apple as a source of nourishment. And the first motion is that we put the apple up to our lips, we take a bite and we chew. And then we take the apple in. That's prana. That's receiving the nourishment of the apple into our body. And then from there we have the samana value. The samana value is that which integrates, that which digest, that's which assimilates. It basically takes the apple that we've eaten. And it says, okay, what am I going to use to turn this into nourishment? And what part of this is no longer necessary for the body. So that process of digestion takes place. Whatever is no longer needed for the body is excreted out through the body through a panna-value that down and out as our poo's, as our whee's, as a menstruation. Literally anything that our body no longer needs to hold on to, a panna takes out, right? And then from there we have this idea of vianna value. It takes this nourishment that has been pre-digested by the body. And it says, amazing, we need this nourishment, we need this prana and it pushes it out, out in all directions towards ourselves, towards whatever tissues in our body need, that source of prana. And then the final expression is that of udana value, that we use the sustenance, we use this nourishment, we use this prana to express ourselves to live in the world, to experience life. That is udana value. Powerful analogy. That's such a simple one. It's a simple one. It happens every single day of your life. Every day you eat and that energy comes in, it goes through the system, and then you use it, right? And the more of that energy you use, the more you need to receive. It's this endless cycle of pranic relationship. And I think that that's why we're so fascinated by the prana values. And if you've studied with us, you know we place so much emphasis on the prana values. And more so than so many other energetic anatomies is because it's so easy to understand it's so simple and it's so easy to affect that we know that backbending poses affect prana value. We know forward folding poses affect upon a value, twisting some on a value, lateral sidebending's vianna value, inversions udana value, like within our practice, it's so easy to influence the prana values and cultivate a specific intention. And so from there, it might be helpful to understand like if you do practice with us, we're always sequencing based on these prana values. It wins a prana that when we're practicing luna hotayoga, we're mostly working with up on a value and some on a value down and out and balance of integration, stabilizing, grounding, calming, that's always our bavana of luna hot the practices. When you work with prana value and vianna value, this receiving, this energizing and this expansive force in our solar hot the practices, we're always drawing energy in. We're always expanding and getting the heart rate up in our solar practices. And then udana value can also work into solar practices as well. But sometimes it becomes more of that fire practice, more of that subtle kind of transformative practice that we start to do that calls in udana value. - Yeah. So they're infinitely applicable to every aspect of our practice. The simplest way to understand prana and its functions is through the prana values. And so if it's something that's new for you, maybe there's a little bit of more research you can do around this or maybe it's just to reintegrate through inference and through experience, right? Now that you know about these five movements of the prana, you can listen for that. [BLANK_AUDIO] practice and you can make the intention to notice the energetic effect of everything that you do in your practice and once you actually stop to listen you'll really start to notice how different practices affect you and maybe it's the right effect maybe it's not the correct effect that you're looking for and therefore you can back it off a little bit or you can have a little bit of a different intention for some time to balance it out. Alrighty I have got a couple of sources here for a couple of texts that speak to Prana I want to give you one from Hatta Yoga, Pratika first and it's this classic idea that we always come back to which is the mind following the Prana. And so it says when Prana moves the mind moves when Prana is still the mind is still. Yeah and so in the context of Yoga which is the practice that allows us to still the mind Prana then is a central part that if it's Prana that makes the mind still the stillness of the prana that makes the mind still we need to understand the Prana and we need to understand how to get it still. Right and it's that very slow process of first having to come into Prana awareness before we can come into Prana mastery. Yeah okay there is one from the Prana Upanishad which says that Prana divides itself into five each serving a vital role in sustaining life. Right so this is kind of like an origin for Prana Vayus. And then we have this point in the Yoga Sutra in the second chapter where Patanjali starts to talk about Prana Yama and Prana Yama being the cessation of the movement of inhalation and exhalation. Yeah and that it's actually this we'll talk about Prana Yama probably in its own episode but the idea is that Prana Yama is the effect on the Prana that it doesn't actually have to do with the breath it's something deeper than a physical and this is kind of one of those ones that just hints at that as the reality. And that's kind of what we're speaking about before that the Prana and the breath are not the same they're linked but it's Prana that rides on the breath that it's not Prana is the breath. And this is the perfect bridge into the last one that I've got for you which comes from the last episode the Titria of Punashad the gods breathe in and follow Prana the breath of life. And that's it this month maybe not the month of the maybe the month of the release of this podcast on the Sanga we're talking about. And we're doing Prana Dharana. And that's one of the stages of Prana Dharana is to focus your attention on the Prana which rides on the breath that you use the breath as a bridge into the experience of Prana right the gods breathe in and follow the Prana the breath of life. And so it says your physical breath your lungs the air the nose the nasal cavity that's not that shouldn't be a focus. That's the physical layer but actually there's something deeper there's something which is driving breath there is a part of nature which is willing you to breathe that you're not breathing you are being breathed by the universe. Love that concept. And I think like it just gives us this deeper layer to our practice right that we so often come into your grenades like oh where am I meant to be feeling the stretch or what's the body meant to be doing how do I do this pose but actually the more time we spend on our mat the more we realize is it about the Asana or is it about the focus that Asana gives us so that we can direct that focus toward and experience on Prana and Prana's the next layer. Yeah once we still the Prana then we can start to still the mind and then we move in deeper and deeper. Yeah and I think that's such an interesting reflection on like in the way that we teach like we're not super alignment heavy in terms of like physical adjustments in our teaching like I teach with a lot of physical awareness and a lot of physical points of contact but I use my voice to give it so that my students have that point of reference but it's their experience and you'll find a lot of times in our studios that the teachers often teach with their eyes closed for for some of it and thus the students practice with their eyes closed like I'm truly surprised at how much my students trust to practice with their eyes closed and that's really the experience of yoga and that like if and there's nothing wrong with hands on adjustments there's nothing wrong with walking around the room when you teach but when when you do in my experience it takes me as a student out of the practice on higher alert on like awareness of the external environment and so you know allowing that space for students to turn inwards and to kind of like bypass that original kind of like am I doing this right kind of thing and work through that on their own as well as obviously in conversation with us it allows for something deeper allows for that experience of Prana as an internal experience to unfold and because the Prana wants to move in those directions with time continuing to come back to these us and as continuing to come back to awareness there will be these shifts and like there's so many students come throughout studio with postural things happening without even a conversation yeah there is a shift in that postural thing like someone who has to have a block behind their head in Shavasana in six months doesn't have to have a block on their head in Shavasana because their spine has created space to be able to lay down flat on the floor again but that's not a conversation it's not a me grabbing their head and pulling it back it's just that the practice and the focus and the awareness will unfold and the Prana will eventually do what the Prana does yeah which is nourish yeah yeah yeah cool all right I'm happy with it are you happy with it audience out there um yeah so life is good we are happy Prana is Prana please follow the podcast please share it with your friends yeah please check the show notes because you'll see many different offerings from us yes we have different retreats happening yoga teacher trainings and online courses what do you want to talk about today page um I think let's talk about Bali all right then I think what's really exciting is in September this year in 2025 we are going to Bali for seven days it is a yoga and I have a retreat so if you want to kind of calm and get this experience of what like true Prana feels like what it feels to actually nourish your body to feel these values these winds of Prana move in different directions on different intentions then come and join us for an extended pilgrimage like this how all idea of retreat is that you remove yourself from daily life so you can actually feel the effects of your practice so that you can actually illuminate where it is that you need to place your awareness and your attention in life um this Bali retreat is running September so 21st to the 28th of September there's yoga practice there's meditation practice there's Ayurvedic wisdom chats it's all about starting to create a life for yourself where you can propel yourself towards vitality and joy and vibrancy in your own unique way so if you're interested in joining us for something like that we only have a few spots left so make sure you check out the show notes and sign up as soon as you can yeah it's all about really truly experiencing what it is that like to receive nourishment and once you feel nourished then you can go home you can make the decisions to align yourself with that nourishment for good yeah that's it all right I hope you have the best day of your life please share this episode with someone that you love we'll see you in the next one how do you?