Soundless or ujiay breathing?

Why would you need to make any noise? It’s just normal breathing. Would you breathe noisily whilst driving your car? To me it’s the same.

Of course Gab will give you a much more refined answer, but that’s my thoughts on it. It should be silent. It would annoy me too if someone was noisily breathing.

Hi Feenix,
There seems to be new controversy re. the breathing. I had a student recently return from visiting a studio and they told him to be silent…he’s probably less audible than Gabrielle on the video.

Take a look at Gabrielle’s free breathing video, I think she sums it up beautifully.
It is audible, not singing and vibrating or scratchy, but audible. I continue that “feeling” of the Pranayama breath she describes throughout my own practice. It may not be as “loud”, but it still is audible.
I don’t have a lot of (read: none) experience with Ashtanga breathing, but I will share some classroom experiences.

I am a teacher and I encourage my students to follow the breath. I may even have a student who is struggling with breath to follow the lead of a student near them and tap into their rhythm. Yes, I want them to eventually follow their own breath, but it helps when you are really lost to follow a cadence of breath. The student they are following is not making their breath really loud, it just sounds like white noise (remember Gabrielle has on a microphone in the video, it probably wouldn’t sound really loud if you were practicing next to her in class).

I have had students from other studios come and practice with us who seem to be trying to buzz us out of the room with the loudest breath possible, especially in Pranayama. They are adding noise to the process, it is very contrived. Interestingly enough, they also usually have problems making it through class…regular sitting and taking breaks, though we are up at high altitude :). It doesn’t seem that they can really recover from that challenging breath.

To me, the Pranayama breath is a primer for our class. We step off the street, into the yoga room and tap into our breath. We most likely haven’t had deep diaphragmatic breaths throughout the day and will be needing that throughout our class. We warm up the depth of breath in Pranayama and use that depth throughout class.

The student was clearly “tweeked” by hearing your breath. You may be adding noise to it that isn’t that useful to you in this practice. See how you can manage the same depth of breath you seem to be getting without the roar? of breath.
That being said, the student who decided to chastise you was out of line, IMO. We as yoga teachers and students are teaching breath, you can’t teach breath and tell someone to be silent. And yes, we do teach “silent classes” at our studio, where you can hear people breathe.

It reminds me of one thing I remind my students…
You know you are way over due for a yoga class when you can’t even stand the sound of someone breathing.

And finally, if it truly is a silent class then the student who chastised you should indeed remain silent. 😉

Hope this helps some.
Looking forward to Gabrielle’s thoughts and hearing your response.

warmly,
outward1

I’ve always operated under the assumption that the breathing is SUPPOSED to be audible – it keeps you focused and ensures that you haven’t forgotten to breathe, which happens all too often. If you’re unsure if your breathing was disruptive, or if you were simply doing ujjayi, I’d say to ask your instructor. It sounds to me, though, like the real distraction to the class was that woman’s rude outburst.

if i may offer my two cents, and yes, it’s only two cents, you are right about the ujayyi breathing being necessary in ashtanga to create the inner heat since the outside heat isn’t as intense. i learned recently from a hot yoga teacher (not a Bikram teacher) that the ujayyi breathing will basically get your blood “boiling,” to put it in ayurvedic terms and make your practice even hotter. she encouraged us to use silent breath for that reason alone. i know i am a blend between Vata and Pitta (cold and hot – again, ayurvedic terms) and once i use ujayyi breathing in Bikram (which i did early on in my practice), i start to overheat. also, if i hear other people breathing loudly, i find it really disheartening since it’s already hard enough and eventually, i start to take on the loud breather’s energy and slowly wither. i find that energy in the Bikram room is extremely delicate and the gentler the breathing, the stronger the practice for everyone.

my teacher also hosts a silent class every morning. it’s his own practice that, basically, all students are invited to attend. therefore, out of respect for his practice (he’s been a Bikram yogi for 30 years), i practice as silently as possible since he is an extremely quiet yogi. all i know is that Bikram encourages a quiet breath once the initial Pranayama is over. my theory, and i could be wrong, is that Pranayama gets everyone warmed up (in every sense of the word) and once that heat is induced, the quiet steady breathing helps us intensify and strengthen our poses. my teacher says, “your body should be hot while your mind and breath should be on ice.”

Hi Feenix

Thanks for the post. What an incredible experience to be chastised in a hot yoga class not by the teacher but by a fellow student. All quips aside, that was very poor behavior indeed. Robert has offered his opinion on that point and I heartily agree.

Having practiced Ashtanga I am aware of the instruction in breathwork. And as such I think that if you have that particular habit of breathing then you should be confident that you are doing a great job. I do know that over time you can develop your breathing to one that is less obviously noisy but one should still be able to hear the breath close up. So on that point only I find myself simply posing the question: Is it at all possible that the sound was louder than it needed to be? Let me know what your intuitive hit is on that query and please don’t base your answer on what that other woman was experiencing because that was totally out of line (and the less you reference your breathing to that incident the better! 😉 ). By the way I am confident you are not using your larynx when you breathe. Many Bikram students are coached to do this and it is not necessary.

Outward1 has kindly referenced my breathing video. Here is the link: Effective Breathing In Hot Yoga In it I deliberately edited the audio to emphasize the sound (with a closely positioned microphone) so that students would have a clear example of how the sound is generated. Most students only breathe this way in Pranayama. The way to breathe mindfully is to continue this breath technique throughout class.

As outward1 mentions it is a useful anchor for your practice to come back to the audible quality of your breath. It is one of those techniques often neglected by hot yoga students. This is a shame because many miss out on what is clearly a foundation of their practice.

The studio environment and the practice of hot yoga can elicit feelings of stress in the body. For the most part you can calm your body down by engaging the parasympathetic system by using your breath. Pranayama (and I mean the umbrella definition of conscious breathing not just the first exercise) draws in more breath and you cannot help but breathe deeply and more slowly. As a result you gain many benefits: better lung capacity, greater capacity to handle stress in and outside of the studio (by more easy/instantaneous access to your conscious breathing when you feel stress). So although your practice of normal breathing in class is adequate I wonder bonmar if trying to tie in some of your valuable Pranayama work into the rest of your class (life!) would be of interest to you.

Luckily with a solid practice your regular breathing has already been transformed. Most don’t remember what their regular breathing was like before and when they started hot yoga. But I can guarantee that it would be much better after having established a frequent regular practice. Just imagine how much more powerful your class will be when you mindfully engage your breathing throughout the 90 minutes.

Please remember that mindful breathing is not forceful breathing. You should feel energized not robbed of puff. Along with the sound is a feeling of that drawing of breath. Personally I find this to be one of the most rewarding parts of my practice that I can draw on at almost any time.

Looking forward to more discussion on this topic

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Feenix,
It’s funny that your classmate burst out like that! I was having a similar experience a few weeks ago. I switched my regular class time and wound up in a class where a gentleman grunts and snorts very loudly throughout the entire class! I’ve heard people yelp out in pain, breathe kinda loud, and fart over and over again. None of this compared to the distraction of this mans grunting. It almost felt like he should be in private with those sounds in the bathroom or the bedroom. I didn’t say anything during class because we have a no talking during class rule. Im pretty sure all Bikram schools have the same rule. I spoke to the instructor after class instead of to the student. The reason I did this was because I feel it is the instructors job to take care of these things. I shouldn’t have to ask a student to keep it down. The teacher told me that some people have a hard time not making noise in the class and to try and disregard the noise. I told the teacher to try breathing calmly and deeply while grunting loudly and I bet her five bucks she couldn’t do it! I suggested that her student might not be breathing properly and that couldn’t possibly be good for his practice. The next few classes we’ve been in together he has been much quieter and I noticed and smiled BIG when another instructor complimented the improvement of his breath! She must have said something to him and I feel good about it because I know he’s been practicing regularly for three years and no one has told him to close his mouth yet! I don’t think that woman should have yelled in the middle of class but most likely her own practice was disrupted more by her outburst than yours was. Let’s hope she’s feeling better today 😉