The hydroelectric image

A few pages later he offers the image that gives the essay its theme:

“The analogy of the production of energy through hydroelectric power may prove helpful. Stagnant water can create no energy, which means if you are not breathing, you are dead. If you are breathing normally, there is some flow, and you produce just enough energy for the requirements of the moment. But there is no surplus to be invested in other projects. It is only by the techniques of pranayama, which regulate, channel, and (in retention of breath) dam the flow all the better to harness and extract its inherent power, that we produce sufficient energy to vitalize the whole system.” (p. 71)

A dam gives a river a shape. The water gathers, the pressure builds, and the current can then light a house. Absent a dam, the same water floods a field. Iyengar adds the elemental detail: prāṇāyāma is “the technique of generating cosmic vital energy through the fusion of the antagonistic elements of fire and water,” and the breath is “the interface whose flow in the lungs provides the dynamic stream that fuses water and fire” (p. 71). Fire stands for the quick, drying mind, and water for the tidal body. The breath gives them a place to meet.

A day that feels like a week

In India, a single day can feel like a week, because events and experiences arrive in such quantity. On those days I feel the question of Chapter 3 in my own body: what holds all this current? Sometimes the answer is a simpler āsana. Sometimes it is an early night. Iyengar’s teaching tells me that generating energy and holding it belong to two different skills, and the second one supports the first.

Learning to love the breath

I loved prāṇāyāma from the beginning. I preferred sitting, and it took me time to grow used to lying down for the practice. In the Iyengar method a supported reclining position serves a purpose: the floor and the props hold the spine, the chest opens, and the practitioner learns the breath before asking the body to carry the posture. 

Iyengar himself found the road long. “I did not start the practice of pranayama until 1944 when I had already been teaching yogasana for several years. You can take comfort from the fact that however poor your own pranayama is, it can scarcely be worse than mine was for the first few years” (p. 69). He describes the gap between intention and action with honesty: “Everybody needs a teacher for pranayama. I had no one and fell into the gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘doing.’ I knew I had to take a deep, slow breath, but it did not happen. I could not do it” (p. 70). Then comes the turn: “It was my asana practice that kept me on track” (p. 70). Years of āsana prepared the vessel, and the breath eventually settled into it.

Inviting the breath

His advice on technique stays gentle. “You cannot catch a horse in a field by running after it. But if you stand still and hold out an apple, the horse will come to you” (p. 73). Prāṇa “has to be invited, enticed,” and he adds a line that every practitioner can test tonight: “Let the breath and the intelligence move simultaneously. If the intelligence moves first, you are using force” (p. 74).