Anulom Vilom

Anulom Vilom is alternate nostril breathing: you inhale through one nostril, close it, and breathe out through the other, turn and turn about. The Sanskrit is plain about it. Anuloma means with the grain, in the natural direction; viloma means against the grain. The practice takes the breath one way and then the other, and the name is a description rather than a claim.

At the count taught here it is 12 rounds and about six minutes, on a 4:4:8 count once you have earned the hold, and 4:0:8 until then. One round is two full breaths: in through the left and out through the right, then in through the right and out through the left. Beginners routinely count that as two rounds and end up doing half a practice, so count a round only when you arrive back at the left nostril.

Two things are doing the work. The first is the ratio: an exhale twice the length of the inhale drops the breathing rate towards six breaths a minute, which is where the heart and the baroreflex start behaving differently. The second is the alternation itself, which is what people mean when they talk about balancing the two sides. Physiologically the nostrils do alternate on their own in a nasal cycle of roughly one to three hours, and the practice deliberately overrides that for a few minutes.

What it is not is a strenuous practice. Nothing in Anulom Vilom should make you hot, breathless or determined. If your face is tightening, the count is too long for today. Shorten it and keep the ratio.

This is the most common question I get about either practice, and most answers online say they are simply the same thing. They are close relatives, not twins. Here is the distinction as the hatha texts draw it, and as I teach it.

Put simply: every Nadi Shodhana is an alternate nostril breath, but not every alternate nostril breath is Nadi Shodhana. Anulom Vilom is the plain alternating breath. Nadi Shodhana is that same alternation performed as a formal practice, with a defined ratio, a long retention and the chin lock holding the pressure in the right place.

Does the difference matter for you? If you are practising six minutes a day at home to sleep better and think more clearly, no. Do Anulom Vilom, leave the retention alone, and you have everything you came for. It matters the moment somebody suggests you hold the breath for sixteen counts, because that is a different practice with a different risk profile, and it belongs with a teacher in the room. The full Nadi Shodhana page sets out that ratio and its conditions.

One more honest note. The research literature does not respect this distinction at all. Trials use the two names interchangeably, and a study titled Nadi Shodhana will often describe a protocol with no retention, which is what I would call Anulom Vilom. When you read a paper, read the method, not the title.

Numbers, because that is what people actually want.

• Week 1 to 4: 9 rounds on a 4:0:8 count. No retention. About four minutes.
• Month 2: 12 rounds on 4:4:8. About six minutes. This is the practice most people should stay on permanently.
• Month 6 onwards, if you are well and have a teacher: 12 rounds on 5:5:10, or 15 rounds on 4:4:8. Ten minutes at most.
• Twice a day: better than one long sitting. Six minutes morning and six minutes evening beats twelve minutes once.

Do not chase the classical 1:4:2 ratio at home. A count of 4:16:8 means holding the breath for sixteen seconds, twenty four times in a sitting, and that is where blood pressure spikes, where people get dizzy, and where the practice stops being safe to self teach. I have taught for four decades and I still teach that ratio only face to face.

Increase the count, not the clock. When 4:4:8 has been comfortable and silent for a month, go to 5:5:10 rather than adding rounds. Length of breath is the thing that develops; number of rounds is just how long you sit.

Early morning is best, on an empty stomach, before you have looked at a phone. The traditional window is brahma muhurta, the ninety minutes or so before sunrise, and there is a practical reason behind the poetry: the stomach is empty, the mind has not yet been loaded, and nobody will interrupt you.

The empty stomach rule is not superstition. The diaphragm has to move down into the abdomen to fill the lower lungs, and a full stomach blocks that. Four hours after a main meal, two after a snack. Water is fine.

If mornings are impossible, practise at dusk before dinner. Avoid the hour immediately after eating, and avoid the last thing at night if you find it makes you alert, which about one person in five does. For those people I move Anulom Vilom to the morning and give them Bhramari at night instead.

In a class the order is fixed: movement, then a short rest, then pranayama, then savasana. Ten minutes of Surya Namaskar or the ten minute morning sequence is enough to loosen the ribs before you sit. Sitting down cold and expecting a long, smooth breath is the commonest reason a beginner concludes that pranayama is not for them.

The seat decides the breath. Six minutes is long enough that a bad position will win.

• Best: Padmasana or ardha padmasana on a folded blanket, knees below hip level.
• Excellent and much easier: Vajrasana, kneeling, with a cushion between the heels and the sitting bones. This one keeps the spine upright with no effort at all, and it is the only sitting pose that is fine soon after a light meal.
• Perfectly acceptable: a firm dining chair, feet flat, back not touching the backrest, hips slightly higher than the knees.
• Not acceptable: a sofa, a bed, or cross legged on the floor with the back rounded and the knees up near the chest. All three collapse the front of the body and shorten the breath you are trying to lengthen.

Knees that hurt in any cross legged position are a knee problem, not a yoga problem. Use the chair without embarrassment. In forty years I have never seen a student get more out of the practice by enduring their knees.

Days 1 to 3. One nostril feels shut. The count feels long. You lose track of which side you are on. All normal. Do 9 rounds and stop.

Week 2. The blocked side starts clearing during the practice itself, usually around round five. Most people notice the exhale getting genuinely easier to stretch before they notice anything else.

Week 3 to 4. The thing students report first is not calm, it is that they catch themselves breathing slowly at other times of day: in a queue, in traffic, before a meeting. That transfer is the real result, and it arrives before any of the measurable ones.

What should not happen. Dizziness, tingling in the hands or around the mouth, a headache, or a racing heart. Every one of those means you are over breathing, holding too long, or straining. Stop, breathe normally for two minutes, and next time shorten the count. If dizziness happens twice, drop retention altogether and tell a teacher. For anxiety in particular, the yoga for anxiety page explains why a shorter, easier count often works better than a longer one.

Every published source gives a different number, and none of them says where the number came from. This is the ladder I teach, with no retention until the fourth week and none at all if your blood pressure is high.

If you have high blood pressure, are pregnant, or have any heart condition, stay on the no retention rows permanently. Lengthening the exhalation is where the effect is anyway.

Alternate nostril breathing without retention is the safest of the counted practices, and that is why it appears where it does on this site.

• Yoga for high blood pressure uses it as the main practice, nine rounds, with no breath holding at any point.
• Yoga for diabetes uses it as the sit down practice after the standing work, because it is something a person will still be doing in six months.
• Yoga for anxiety uses it once Bhramari has made the exhalation longer, and not before.

Sit upright with the spine supported, in Vajrasana, on a cushion or on a chair. It goes at the end of a practice rather than the beginning, after Savasana or before it, and it is the practice that the bedtime sequence finishes with. If the counting is what puts you off, a class is where that gets sorted out in five minutes.