Ashtanga Pranayama and Meditation, Chanting from Manju (also Sharath) and my favourite chant from Ramaswami.

I mentioned after the recent TT with Manju that he taught Pranayama and Chanting at the end of  practice, at the end of Primary, at the end of his led 2nd series ( with the Sanskrit count). He referred to this as a traditional practice.

But was that just because we were on a TT course, supposedly experienced practitioners? No, on Sunday I attended Manju's Led primary at Stillpoint yoga, this was open to everybody and there it was again, at the end of practice, in the final padmasana, we practiced nadi shodana pranayama with kumbhaka followed by chanting. A traditional Ashtanga Practice. You don't have to practice that way of course, you can do utpluthi at the end before laying back in savasana. I prefer the pranayama and chanting option.

It's my own preferred approach to practice. Ramaswami put it like this, and I think he was loosly quoting Krishnamacharya here, "Why clean the room (asana/pranayama) and then not live in it ( meditation). 

A note about the chanting.

Ramaswsami refers to chanting here as Dharana, it's one of the meditative limbs of Ashtanga,  concentration on an object (next, according to Patanjali you would move on to concentration without an object). The object might be an icon, the breath, or here a mantra. Ramaswami would have us practice Japa mantra meditation, repeating a short mantra over and over, Manju happens to have has us chant a number of Shanti (peace mantras). I guess you could replace your own preferred approach to meditation practice here if you not yet comfortable with chanting ( I wasn't for the longest time)

On the TT course in Crete during one of the Mysore self practice sessions I would hear a couple of students (who had attended Manju's course before) quietly chanting to themselves, almost under the breath. I listened carefully, shanti mantra's. Was it disturbing to my own self-practice, not at all, quite the opposite, wonderful actually and later in the course, in my own self practice, I too would finish with pranayama and the few Shanti mantras that I had already memorised.

Try to attend one of Manju's courses the finishing section is the wonderful. This from my post on the Led at Stillpoint yoga sunday.


"Best of all was at the end of the practice, Manju skips utpluthi/tolasana and goes straight into pranayama, some nadi shodana with and without kumbhaka also sitali and then the chanting. I missed Niko from Crete and his nice, big, booming, confident chant that I could hide behind a little or follow along with in those lines I wasn't sure of. It was quieter here and we had no hand-out of the chants to help either, instead we had to listen carefully to Manju as he would break the chants down into phrases. Some parts went better than others of course, Manju is so relaxed that you feel relaxed too, you're going to get some bits wrong, it gets better as you tune in. I need/want to work more on those later chants on his Shanti mantra CD though, first few I'm OK on". And that was that, Savasana.

Manju's finishing routine seems to go something like this.

Shirsasana ( long stay here)
Ardha chandrasana (still in headstand but bringing the legs down to parallel with the floor, an inverted dandasana if you like, lower and raise three times).
Balasana
Badha padmasana
Yoga mudra ( and Manju pointed out it should really be the top of the head not the chin on the mat)
Parvatasana (mountain pose still in full lotus - this is the final posture on the Nancy Gilgoff 1974 syllabus and on David Williams poster). It's in two stages, in the first the arms go up with the finger interlaced then you you bend forward, head to the mat, arms outstretched above your head, hands still interlinked. Stay for a number of breaths then raise back up to seated and lower the arms.
Padmasana -  Bhairava/Bhairavii Mudra - Palms of hands together (in the lap), Men right palm up, women left palm up. Bruumadhya drishti, dash dirgha recheck puuraka
Padmasana - Chin Mudra - the familiar hands to knees, thumb and first finger joined, nassaagra drishti, dash dirgha recheck puuraka

This is where Manju brings in the pranayama and meditation practice ( chanting)

Chant the invocation to Gayatri ( number 10 on the sheet below )

Take the hand to the nose, thumb on one side, first two fingers curled into the palm, third finger in the other nostril. ( manju has a method here where you can change which hand you use for this so that you always remember which side to exhale out of after the kumbhaka - I've never found remembering a problem.

Pranayama practice ( see video below): this might change depending on time and inclination. You might practice some suryabheda, followed by chandrabheda, nadi shodana, nadi shodana with kumbhaka, and perhaps sitali ( curled toungue)  or sitaki ( through teeth). There tends to be three to five deep ujjayi breaths between the different pranayama's. Sitali is a cooling pranayama so you only tend to do it in summer. Some days we practiced most of these other days just a little nadi shodana.

Chant the gayatri mantra  - number 11 on the sheet below. So with Manju after the pranayama you chant gayatri. manju has you counting on your finger the length of the kumbhaka, (the breath retention). With the palm loosely open the thumb moves to each joint of the fingers. manju tended to take a count of 12 or 15 i believe. With Ramaswami we would chant the pranayama mantra, basically the longer version of the Gayatri mantra below ( there is a shorted version of gayatri), this is still the way I tend to practice.

Meditation practice (Dharana, concentration on an object). As mentioned above, with Ramaswami we would practice japa mantra meditation, chanting a short mantra over and over silently. With Manju we would chant a number of Shanti ( peace mantras - see one of the below, number 9 ). The mantra's can be chanted out loud, quietly to ourselves or I imagine mentally.

Savasana - Manju would then have us lay down in  savasana. he doesn't seem to include utpluthi/tolasana here. the idea i think is that we are relaxed after the finsihing sequence of the long stays in shoulder stands and headstand, nice and satvic, so we the perfect state for pranayama and meditation practice. It makes sense to then go straight from meditation into our savasana. I guess you get to practice tolasana after badha konasana, before jumping back in lotus,  if you really miss it.

I love this approach to practice. Manju calls it a a very traditional practice, how his father taught him. I imagine it's also how Krishnamacharya taught manju's father and also I imagine very similar to how Krishnamacharya seems to have taught Ramaswmi in his later years, finishing each lesson/practice session with pranaymama and meditation/chanting.

This page is from Manju's book written with Greg Tebb - I've added my review of manju's DVD, BOOK, CD bundle at the end of the post

I tried to transcribe the session above but it's difficult to hear, this is what I came up with ( inc. some additional notes in brackets) to assist in your own listening. Let me know if you hear it differently. As I said, Manju approached the pranayama practice a little differently each time, it doesn't seem to be a fixed routine/sequence although there does seem to be an order. If you're going to practice suryabheda that would come before chandra bheda ( sury is sun, warm) and these would come before nadi shodana. you would practice nadhi shodana without kumbhaka before bringing in kumbhaka and there would be a few Ujjayi breaths in between the different pranayamas.

Loose transcription of the video above


(Sit with ) Back straight
Make Chin mudra (right hand here - first and second finger curled in towards the palm)
Press your left nostril (with 3rd and 4th fingers)
(Lean forward on each exhale)

(Nadi Shodana pranayama- alternate nostril breathing)

(1st cycle)
Inhale ( through the right) (come back up on each inhale) Start of the cycle
Exhale on the left ( switch to press right nostril with thumb)

(2nd cycle)
Inhale left
Exhale right

(3rd cycle )
Inhale right
Exhale left

(4th cycle)
Inhale left
Exhale right

(Nadi Shodana with Kumbhaka)

(1st cycle)
Inhale right
Kumbhaka ( hold breath, engage bandhas ) ( can drop hands, , count to 15 on fingers)
Exhale right

(2nd cycle)
Inhale right
Kumbhaka
exhale left

(3rd cycle)
Inhale left
kumbhaka
Slowly exhale on the right side

(Repeat 8-15 times)

Sit back and end with five Ujjayi breathing.

3:35 Sitali

Here's Manju teaching the chanting of shanti mantras in Encinitas last year. Thank you Amanda Manfredi for posting this


Sharath too posted a pranayama video recently from Stockholm. which included kumbhaka ( breath retention) and even uddiyana Kriya.



Ramaswami teaching chanting.

If you want to learn to chant then you can get hold of Manju's cd of shanti mantras or hi DVD which has him going through the chants phrase by phrase with a class of students (see the review below)

Or you could have a look at Ramaswami's chanting page. He teaches chanting in the way that Krishnamacharya taught him, breaking down the chants into phrases and then building them back up line by line until you have the full mantra. He chants the first phrase or line then chants it very softly twice more so you can follow with your own repetition, lovely approach.

Have a look at Ramaswami's Chanting page which has a number of downloads including a yoga sutra chanting tutorial
http://vinyasakrama.com/Chants

Here's a link to the pranayama chant
http://vinyasakrama.com/mp3s/Learn%20Pranayama%20Mantra%20Chant.mp3

This is how I learned to chant, something I never saw myself doing a few years back. I put some of Ramaswamis chants on my iPod and listened to them cycling to work. I would then find myself humming them all day, singing little bits here and there. The first chant I leanrned was the pranayama mantra i.e., the longer gayatri mantra above and then I learned a Ganesha prayer in Tamil and Patanjali prayers. Then I was hooked.

Before the Tamil Ganesha prayer and Patanjali prayer Ramaswami often used to chant something else, I loved it but never got to learn it or find a transcription. Ramaswami has just posted this group of mantras in a Youtube video and I've made a practice sheet to go with it, enjoy.