Pranayama

Ujjayi: the ocean breath

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20268 sources

Family

Pranayama

Breaths

No set pace, slow

Carbon dioxide

Depends on the practice

How well tested

Weak

Risk

Low

Timer

Run it on this page

Ujjayi is slow breathing through your nose with the back of your throat slightly narrowed, so every breath makes a soft sound like the sea. The narrowing slows the air down, which makes a slow pace easier to keep. In the one lab test that compared them, plain slow breathing did better for the heart and blood pressure. We’d use ujjayi when the sound helps you keep the pace, and drop it when it starts to feel like work.

Ujjayi gets taught in yoga classes as a special breath, and the oldest text on it makes big promises. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, written around the 15th century, says it clears phlegm from the throat, raises body heat and appetite, and cures dropsy. The sound makes all of that easy to believe, because you can hear yourself breathing slowly and steadily the whole time.

The sound is the useful part, since you can hear right away when you start to rush. In beginners, though, the effort of the narrowed throat took back some of the benefit of breathing slowly.

What it is and where it comes from

Ujjayi means victorious, and it’s often called victorious breath, or ocean breath for its sound. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, written by Swami Swatmarama, tells you to draw the air in through your nose with your throat partly closed. You should feel it from your throat down to your chest, with a sound as it passes. Then you hold it and breathe out through the left nostril.

Today you’ll meet it in yoga classes and at the start of Sudarshan Kriya, the breathing program taught in Art of Living courses. There it’s very slow, 2 to 4 breaths a minute, with each part of the breath stretched to an exact count.

How to do it

1. Sit tall or lie down. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose.
2. Narrow your throat a little. The Art of Living’s own page compares it to the narrowing you make when you speak in a whisper. You’ll hear a soft rushing sound from the back of your throat.
3. Start on the breath out. Breathe in normally through your nose, then breathe out with the narrowing. In the lab test, ujjayi on the breath out did better than ujjayi both ways.
4. Add the breath in when it’s easy. The Art of Living page says each breath should be slow, soft, deep and long, with no tension in the throat.
5. Pick a pace. The lab test used 5 seconds in and 5 out, six breaths a minute. Run the timer below for five minutes and add the throat sound on every breath.

A simple way to picture it

Ujjayi is like letting the air out of a balloon while you pinch the neck. The air comes out more slowly, you can control how fast it goes, and it makes a sound the whole way.

What happens in your body

Narrowing your throat puts a brake on the air, so each breath takes longer and you can stretch it to a count. On the breath out, pushing air through a smaller gap also raises the pressure inside your chest a little. Researchers thought that might add to the calming effect of slow breathing. In beginners it made the heart work a little harder instead.

Your heart speeds up a little on every breath in and slows on every breath out, and slow breathing makes that swing bigger. Why does slow breathing calm your heart? covers it. The extra effort of ujjayi seems to take a little of that calm back.

Pulling hard on the breath in against a narrowed throat is a bit like the Mueller maneuver, a hard breath in against a closed airway. It’s known to strain the heart, and the 2013 researchers pointed to it as a likely reason ujjayi on the breath in did worst.

What the evidence shows

In 2013, researchers taught ujjayi to 17 young, healthy people who’d never done yoga. Then they lay down and breathed at six a minute in different ways, two minutes each, while machines tracked their heart, blood pressure and oxygen.

Plain slow breathing with equal counts in and out did best. It boosted the baroreflex, the reflex that steadies your blood pressure, the most, and it brought the top number down from about 122 to 111 (mmHg). With ujjayi on the breath out, the top number only fell to about 118 and the heart beat a little faster. Oxygen went up by a tiny bit more, 0.1 to 0.2 points from about 98 percent. With ujjayi both ways, the baroreflex gain was too small to count.

It was only 17 beginners, for two minutes per pattern. The researchers expected that experienced people might find ujjayi easier and get more out of it, but nobody has tested that.

Nobody has run a long trial of ujjayi against plain slow breathing, so whether weeks of it add anything is still unknown.

Who should skip it

Very few people need to skip it.

• A tight throat or neck. You’re narrowing too much. Ease off until the sound is soft, since the Art of Living page warns against any tension in the throat.
• Lightheaded. Breathe smaller and keep the pace slow. In the 2013 test, slow deep breaths lowered carbon dioxide in the breath, and MedlinePlus lists lightheadedness as a sign of low carbon dioxide. Why do I feel dizzy after breathing exercises?
• Heart disease. Keep the narrowing light and on the breath out, and ask your doctor if you’re unsure.
• Chest pain or shortness of breath at rest. Stop and see a doctor. MedlinePlus lists both as reasons to see your provider.