This beautiful vibratory breath is described in the Tantras as the victorious breath or the ocean breath and there's so much wisdom in its simple technology.
Ujjayi breath is achieved by breathing through the nose with the lips closed and the jaw soft and as your awareness moves deeply into the rhythm of your natural breath you very gently restrict the glottis at the entrance of the throat so that the inhalation and the exhalation drag across the entrance to the throat down to the lungs and back up on the out breath.
This dragging or very subtle snore has the sound of the waves moving up onto the shore and retreating back into the ocean and there's a deeper beautiful metaphor here of the breath and our awareness being similar to that of the sea in nature.
Energy and information and prana flood into the banks of our system on the in breath and draw back out into the ocean of the atmosphere energetic and physical.
That vibratory sensation that's achieved through Ujjayi breath also stimulates the parasympathetic arm of your nervous system bringing back into balance the beautiful soft cyclical aspects of your body in your mind.
Your appetite and hunger and taste.
Your desire for movement,
Beauty,
Sound.
Your sleep cycles,
Your sensuality cycles are all honored through Ujjayi breath and so now our practice will begin.
So settle into your meditation practice and posture.
Feel into your body,
Align your body,
Soften your body,
Raise your body and take a moment to notice the story that your natural breath is telling you on the way in.
For the next few breaths just notice the way that you're breathing.
Notice the energy you're holding in your body.
Notice how you feel.
I want you now in your mind's eye to bring into your inner vision you standing at the shoreline of a beautiful wild beach.
Dawn is breaking and a range of beautiful purples and oranges start to creep into the sky,
Fingers of colors heralding the sun.
And look around you can see the growing light refracting and reflecting in the vast ocean before you.
Look down at your feet and see the colored waves drawing into the sand swirling around the ankles and retreating back.
This is your beach.
This is your inner wild place.
And sense into the minerals and the vitality in the atmosphere around you as the light begins to grow off the horizon.
And now connect with the practice of a jai breath.
But the feeling is you're inhaling,
You're inhaling the breezes of the ocean,
Dragging them in like a wave of air into your system.
And as you exhale allow the air to seep naturally dragging out of the system re-entering the atmospheric pool around you.
And now in your own way in your own timing on your own beach.
Continue now with the ujjayi breath.
So so so so so so so so so Making this next exhalation your last ujjayi breath.
You can release the focus now and allow your natural rhythm of breathing to ease back into where it needs to be.
And notice the beautiful expansive shift of ujjayi breath.
Connecting your awareness with your own stream of breath.
Connecting your awareness to the vast oceans on the planet.
And opening the vibration of your nature just like the sea.
All one.
You are a drop in the ocean of humanity.
You are a drop in the ocean of the universe.
Essential to it.
Unique and beautiful.
And our practice of ujjayi breath has now concluded.
So so
