Chandra Bhedana

Chandra Bhedana is nine rounds, about three minutes, at four counts in through the left nostril and six counts out through the right, with no breath retention, practised in the evening or whenever you are too hot or too wound up. Build to twenty seven rounds, about nine minutes, over two months. That is the dose.

The name means piercing the moon, and chandra is the left nostril, associated with ida nadi and with coolness and quiet. The single rule that defines the practice is that the inhale is always on the left and the exhale always on the right. It does not alternate, which is what separates it from Anulom Vilom, and it is the mirror of Surya Bhedana.

This is the practice I give away most freely, because the list of people who must not do it is unusually short. There is no forceful movement, no abdominal contraction and no retention, so almost nothing about it raises pressure anywhere. It is also the nostril practice with the most directly relevant trial behind it: twenty seven rounds in twenty two people with high blood pressure, which is where the count of twenty seven on this page comes from.

Nine rounds to begin, twenty seven as the working practice. A round at 4:6 with the hand moving takes around eighteen seconds.

• Week 1 to 2: 9 rounds at 4:6. Three minutes.
• Week 3 to 6: 15 rounds at 4:6. Five minutes.
• Week 7 onwards: 27 rounds at 4:6. Nine minutes. This is the count used in the published hypertension study and it is where I stop.
• Frequency: once or twice a day. Evening is the natural slot, and there is no harm in a second sitting when you are wound up in the afternoon.
• Retention: none. I do not teach it in this practice at all.

If you have low blood pressure, do four or five rounds and stand up slowly rather than working up to twenty seven. And if you want a longer sit, add Bhramari after it, which goes in the same direction and is equally safe.

Twenty seven is not an arbitrary number here. It is the count the published study used, at six breaths a minute, in patients with essential hypertension. This ladder walks up to it over two months.

The exhale column is the one that decides whether this works. Six counts out against four in, with the last two counts emptying the chest, is what takes the breath down towards six a minute. At 4:4 you are simply breathing through one nostril and wondering why nothing happens.

This is the most quoted evidence for left nostril breathing and it is worth stating precisely, because it is usually inflated.

Twenty two patients with essential hypertension, twelve men and ten women, mean age 58. They did twenty seven rounds of left unilateral forced nostril breathing at six breaths a minute. Measurements before and after, using a semi automatic monitor. Heart rate fell, systolic pressure fell, pulse pressure fell and the rate pressure product and double product both fell, all statistically significant. Men showed reductions in both heart rate and systolic pressure, women in heart rate alone.

Now the limits, which the authors state themselves. Twenty two people. A single group with no control arm. One session, so nothing at all is known here about lasting effects. No blinding. Accidental sampling. What this study supports is the sentence: one session of twenty seven rounds produced an immediate fall in heart rate and systolic pressure in a small group of people with hypertension. It does not support the sentence: left nostril breathing treats high blood pressure. The high blood pressure page here keeps to the first sentence, and so should you when somebody tells you to stop your tablets.

One hand position, three practices, and a lot of confident writing about which does what.

The 2024 crossover trial of forty seven men found the two unilateral practices behaved much more alike than the table's third row suggests: both raised SDNN, both slowed the breath, neither moved the parasympathetic markers. So use the traditional distinction to choose your time of day, which is what it is genuinely good for, and be careful about asserting the mechanism. If you want a practice for both ends of the day, learn Nadi Shodhana and be done with it.

Its natural place is at the end of the day, and it is one of the few practices here that works well entirely on its own.

1. Sit down. Nothing else needed. A cross legged seat or a chair, spine upright.
2. Chandra Bhedana: 9 to 27 rounds, three to nine minutes.
3. One minute of ordinary breathing through both nostrils.
4. Straight to bed, or into Bhramari for another five minutes if sleep is the aim.

After an asana practice it goes at the very end, after Savasana rather than before it, because it needs the mind steady enough to count. It also works as an afternoon reset in the middle of a working day, which is where it overlaps with the desk sequence, and it sits naturally at the front of the bedtime sequence.

If you are building a first practice at home, this and alternate nostril breathing are the two I would start with, in the order the home practice guide sets out. In the online classes this is the practice I use to close, because it is the only one nobody in the room has to sit out.

This is the practice most often recommended across this site and almost never warned against, which is unusual.

• Yoga for high blood pressure recommends it, without retention, and states plainly what the twenty two person study does and does not show.
• Yoga for anxiety recommends it, and it is what that page sends people to instead of the forceful practices.
• Yoga for beginners over 40 uses it in the first month, because it can be given before anybody's blood pressure is known.
• Restorative yoga and chair yoga both fit it easily, since it needs no floor, no strength and no mobility.

Sit for it in Vajrasana, Padmasana or a chair. If you want somebody to check the finger pressure and the count once, that is what an introductory class is for.