48. Explore your energy: A prana meditation

In yoga, prana is your vital life force. It’s not something you can see or touch, but it’s certainly something you can learn to feel, understand, and work with.

This meditation is a gentle introduction to prana, combined with a practical check-in to help you notice what is nourishing your energy, and what may be depleting it.

Through simple awareness of your breath, body and mind, you’ll begin to:

• connect with your internal energy state
• understand how your day is affecting you
• explore the relationship between breath and nervous system
• gently shift from feeling overwhelmed to feeling more steady

We’ll also touch on the foundations of pranayama - not just as breathing techniques, but as a way of working with your energy through the breath.

This practice is both reflective and regulating, and you can return to it whenever you need a deeper check-in with yourself, a reset during a busy or overwhelming day or a gorgeous moment to reconnect with your energy and priorities.

Enjoy!

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If you’re thinking “I want to understand how to actually use my breath to change how I feel”, then I’d love you to join me for my free workshop:
Pranayama: Ancient Practice, Modern Science 

In this workshop, we’ll explore:
🫁 how breathing affects your nervous system
🫁 how to move from feeling overwhelmed to steady
🫁 how to practise safely and effectively

The details:

🗓️ Wednesday 17th June

⏰ 12:30

💻 Held on zoom 

💛 Save your seat to join live, or get the recording 

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💤 Yoga for Sleep: A nervous system approach

🗓️ Thursday 21st May

⏰ 12:30

💛 You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of how sleep works, insight into the relationship between stress, the nervous system and rest and practical tools to help your body and mind settle before bed. 

🙏 Free to join - save your seat here to join live, or receive the recording

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👋 work with me

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Personalised support for anxiety, sleep issues, stress or back pain. Take a look here

🌻 therapeutic workshops and retreats

Small, supportive sessions focused on anxiety, deep rest or back health, blending yoga, breathwork and evidence-based education. Come join us here 

🦋 vinyasa flow 200 hour yoga teacher training

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Transcript

Welcome to today's meditation on Prana Yoga's Subtle Energy. This meditation [00:01:00] give you some insight into what Prana is and how to connect with it, how to feel it, and then we'll move through prana check-in a little bit of time to reflect on what's nourishing you and what is depleting you.

And know that you can come back to this practice whenever you want a slightly longer check-in of your prana, and a bit of a reminder about what Prana is or you can use the shorter in on my insight timer profile as a bit of a daily reset. So finding a comfortable position. And for me, that could be sitting down.

It could be sitting on the floor, but you most certainly don't have [00:02:00] to. You could be laid down. You could be stood up or moving around. As long as you are safe and comfortable, then that is perfect.

And if it feels okay, softening your gaze slightly or closing down your eyes. And let's start just by noticing the breath. No need to change it in any way. Just noticing the rhythm of the breath,

noticing the location of your breath,

and whether your inhale or your exhale is most noticeable.

And then bringing your awareness to your body and noticing any [00:03:00] areas that feel heavy or light,

any areas that feel tense or at ease.

The yogis would say that what you are connecting with here is the prana.

Prana is yoga's subtle energy, sometimes called vital life force. It's not tangible. You can't. Touch it or see it, but I would argue you can feel it. And in yoga philosophy, there is so much written about Prana entire text, in fact, and we won't cover all of that today, but there is [00:04:00] ways of understanding and connecting with prana that feel useful in modern life.

And if you find this interesting, I'm running a free workshop, Pranayama: ancient Breath Practices, Modern Science on Wednesday, the 17th of June. We'll go into this much more deeply, much more practically, and you can join live or get the recording.

So what is Prana? Prana is the energy of life itself.

It's the force that moves through everything, through your body, your breath, your mind. It's the thing that keeps you alive, but also the thing that influences how you feel, [00:05:00] your energy levels, your emotions. You are never system state,

and this is where pranayama comes in. Prana is often translated as breathing techniques or breath control, and whilst that's not wrong, it's only part of the story Prana. Means life force. ayama means expansion. So pranayama is about expanding your energy using the breath as a tool to achieve that.

And how amazing is that? Because your breath is one of the only things in your body that is both automatic. And under your [00:06:00] control when you want it, the breath is a bridge between body and mind.

So when you slow your breathing down,

you are changing your physiology. You are influencing your nervous system. You are positively affecting your heart rate, your blood chemistry, your brain. Pranayama gives you a way to work with your energy rather than feel at the mercy of it. It gives you a way, in fact, it gives you the empowerment.

To shift from feeling overwhelmed to feeling steady.

With that in mind. [00:07:00] Come back to that awareness of your body once again, noticing areas that feel heavy or light tense or at ease.,

and then start to move your attention to your day so far

without judgment. Asking yourself what has felt, depleting conversations, tasks, thought patterns, environments, anything else,

and now asking yourself without judgment. What has felt nourishing, [00:08:00] even small things. A pause, a moment to take a deep breath, a moment of connection, a nice environment, a sense of space,

And now bringing your awareness to your breath,

allowing your inhale to come in as it wishes. And if it feels comfortable allowing your exhale to be slightly longer

and noticing, does anything shift? In your body, in your energy, in your [00:09:00] mind,

and having checked in with the body and the mind and reviewed your day so far, ask yourself, what do you need more of? and what do you need less of?

And then expanding your awareness, noticing the space around your body, the air on your skin, Connecting your body, your breath, your energy, and your mind, and notice how you are feeling when you are ready. Blinking your eyes open gently. I hope you found that [00:10:00] useful To help you connect with the qualities of your prana today, and a little guidance on what you need more of and less of.

Remember, you can come back to this check-in whenever you need that guidance on Prana and a bit more of an in-depth check-in. Or there's a shorter practice on my insight timer profile, and you can use it as a daily reset. But as always, happy practicing.