What is Pranayama?

Understand Pranayama for improved health & wellbeing - Yoga 101 with Emmalene from Liquid Yoga

Actively working with the breath can be a key part of yoga practice

If you've been to a yoga class, you will probably have been asked at some point to work with your breath. But did you know that working with the breath is in itself a whole limb of yoga?

Consciously working with your breath can calm you, improve your mood, focus & energy, alter your metabolism and potentially increase your healthy lifespan. So let's dig deeper, what IS pranayama?

Working with your breath

On a practical level, pranayama refers to a broad series of breath practices which come down to us from the yoga tradition. These encompass simple practices such as counting the breath, box breathing, elongating your exhale or breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Pranayama techniques can be combined to create really powerful practices and some techniques require a lot of time to learn and cultivate the benefits.

Pranayama can be combined with yoga postures (asana) and or meditation in a class or practiced on their own.

What does pranayama mean?

The word 'pranayama' comes from Sanskrit and refers to the ability to work with our prana or life-force energy, which primarily comes to us from the breath (as we inhale oxygen to power our respiration).

Literally, prana = life force energy and yama = control or restraint.

You will often see pranayama described as control of the breath, however I prefer to think of it as working with and learning your breath; discovering the ways that skilfully using it can change your perspective and experiences both on and off the yoga mat.

Why practice pranayama?

If you have experienced stress or anxiety at some point in your life, you may be familiar with the feeling that your chest is tight and your breath is shallow. This is a change in your breath brought about by the physiology of stress & overwhelm, and it makes you feel more trapped in the sensation of stress as you have less oxygen and resources coming in to power your body and mind.

Pranayama is essentially the opposite of this situation, which is why it's incredibly useful for managing stress. When we practice pranayama we actively affect the oxygen in our bodies and get it circulating in an efficient manner. When practicing certain pranayama techniques, such as the bhastrika or bellows breath, we can quickly feel the results of altered oxygen saturation in the body.

Practicing pranayama gives us a better knowledge of our breath and increases our mind-body-breath connection, a feedback loop between our conscious experience and our nervous system. We learn to recognise the effects of the breath on our mood, energy level, coping capacity and resilience in different circumstances, as well as being to actively use the breath to calm ourselves down or give ourselves an energy or focus boost either on or off the yoga mat. We might learn our habitual patterns of breath (such as chest breathing) that contribute to an ongoing state of stress or lack of energy, and over time and practice we might even develop more lung capacity.

Ancient yogis practiced pranayama in part becuase they believed that control of the breath contributed to long life. Modern science has confirmed that by reducing stress and inflammation, improving cardiovascular health & resilience and increasing lung capacity, common pranayama techniques which slow down the breath and develop breathing into the diaphragm have a significant impact on longevity (sciency stuff here if you want to get geeky).

What are some common pranayama techniques?

The three part breath (or dirga pranayama) is one of the most often used breath practices in a yoga class. Of the three parts, we may use one or all of them to breathe more fully and slow down our breath whilst increasing our oxygen intake. In the first part, we breathe down into the belly, extending the diaphragm (enormous and wonderful muscle at the base of the lungs) downwards to experience deep lung capacity. In the second part, we breathe into the ribs so we can feel the breath moving 360 degrees into the base of the lungs, expanding our diaphragm out widthways in all directions. In the third part, we softly extend the breath into the top of the lungs by letting the breastbone and collarbones float up at the very top of the inhale. In class, I would usually guide students to use the first or second parts as standalone, but if the third part is used it's only in combination with the others once a sizeable lung capacity is already in use. If you experience a lot of anxiety or are under chronic stress, the third part is not necessary until you have real confidence and familiarity in the first two.

Alternate nostril breath or Nadi Shodhana (sometimes also called anulom viloma) is often used as a calming or mindful breath and helps to slow down the breath by focusing on one inhale or exhale at a time. You will often find this towards the end of a yoga class as it helps to balance the nervous system after a strong posture practice and prepare for the relaxation.

Ujjayy or victorious breath is a very common technique that you'll find in both ashtanga yoga and vinyasa yoga classes. It makes the breath audible, if only to you, to help continually regulate breath through what is often a challenging physical practice. If awareness of breath or even remembering to breathe in certain yoga postures is a challenge, ujjayy breath is here to help!

When do we practice pranayama?

We can practice pranayama as part of our regular yoga practice alongside asana, meditation and relaxation. In this case it's helpful to do activating pranayama such as kapalabhati breath or bhastrika breath before practicing asana and relaxing or balancing pranayama which lengthen the exhale (including nadi shodhana) at the end of an asana practice and before a relaxation.

It's also often helpful to take a relaxing pranayama practice before meditation in order to settle the nervous system and release mental chatter. One of my favourite pranayamas for this situation is the humming or bhramari breath. Working with the breath is often included in the earlier stages of a yoga nidra practice for the same reason.

We can also practice pranayama on it's own. In yoga studios we often find that the main focus of the class is asana, but as far as the yoga tradition is concerned, pranayama is at least as important a limb of yoga as physical posture. If you don't have a lot of time and or space for a yoga practice, you may get as much benefit from practicing pranayama alone as you would from a full movement practice, especially if you are looking for stress reduction and nervous system regulation.

Is pranayama the same as breathwork?

Yes, pranayama is breathwork. However, breathwork may not be referred to as pranayama because the teacher may not be trained in the yoga tradition or they may be marketing the class as a non-yoga class (particularly since in the West we often think yoga just means posture practice).

Is pranayama the same as mindfulness?

In a mindfulness meditation practice (which comes from the Buddhist tradition) we will watch our breath as the focus of meditation (sometimes called anapanasati), returning the attention to the breath each time we realise we have lost our focus (as Sharon Salzberg says- "begin again").

This is NOT the same as pranayama, as the breath is purely the object of our attention rather than something we are consciously altering in order to shift our current experience. Pranayama involves deliberately altering the pattern and length of the breath, whereas mindfulness mediatation uses the natural breath as an anchor for attention in the practice.

Where can I find out more and start practicing pranayama?

You can read more articles about specific types of pranayma practices on the blog, or head over to my instagram profile where you can find 30 days of bite size pranayama practices which have been shared in January and February 2026.

If you are keen to delve further into how pranayama can help you manage stress, anxiety, energy levels and improve your mood & outlook, get in touch for a 1-1 session which can also be delivered online or via personalised video content designed just for you.

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