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I first learned about Mula Bandha while practicing Ashtanga yoga. Definitions of how to activate mula bandha varied so much that I eventually stopped trying to do it. Instead I focused on practicing feeling my body and controlling it.
Now that I understand the body a little bit better my current understanding of mula bandha is that of pulling the tail bone towards the pubic bone. When doing this action the sensation can feel like a slight pulling up of the pelvic floor in the area between the tail bone and the pubic bone. This is in additon to the tail bone pulling forwards.
This action causes the Pubo-coygeous muscle to activate.
Helping to Control the Relationships between Sacrum and Pelvis
The pubo-cocygeous connects the tail bone to the pubic bone and so pulling the tail bone towards the pubic bone makes sense physically. It is also an instruction that applies equally well to men and women since in this respect our anatomy is the same.
By using the pubo-cocygeous to pull the tail bone forwards, the sacrum tilts backwards slightly with respect to the pelvis. (The tail bone is at the bottom of the sacrum. The sacrum is the downwards pointing triangle of bone that connects the spine to the pelvis.) This can cause the top of the pelvis to feel like it is widening from side to side at the space between the hips bones.
Doing mula bandha by activating the pubococygeous can be used to unify the sacrum and the pelvis, helping them to move as one unit without any "slack" between the sacrum and the pelvis. On some occasions we may want our sacrum to move freely with respect to the pelvis. At those times we can keep mula bandha relaxed. At other times we want our sacrum and pelvis to move or act as one unit. At those times we can engage mula bandha.
By noticing the sensations that accompany your mula bandha you can make your own decisions on when to use it and when to disengage it.
Halting the Downwards Flow of Energy
My own re-exposure to mula bandha came about while learning Pranayama in a course called "The Bridge" with Stephen Thomas. In the particular pranayama (or breath control) exercises that we were doing, we were taught to engage mula bandha while inhaling and to release it while exhaling. We were also advised not to use mula bandha if we were feeling constipated and women were advised not to do it while having their period.
Energetically, mula bandha prevents the downward flow of energy. Sometimes a downward flow of energy can be wasteful, especially if it is the type of energy that we could otherwise use since, by sending energy downwards, we are sending it out of our body. However in some cases, like going to the bathroom or while having a period, this downward flow of energy carries "waste" products out of our body. At such times we want to allow this downwards flow otherwise the waste gets stuck in our body.
This can also apply to emotional waste as I recently discovered.
Emotional Holding
I thought that my emotional work was going quite well until I had a disagreement with one of my teachers, someone who I admire and respect. In retrospect I realized that the issue that came up was one that was very similar to an issue that I had with my father. I also found that I was holding on to other issues from yet another relationship. All of these seemed to spring up at about the time when I started pranayama, in fact when I started playing again with mula bandha. The realization came to me while I was on the toilet. I was imagining all of the bad energy flowing out of me along with the physical waste and that is when it clicked that my practice of mula bandha may have been preventing me from letting go of my emotional waste.
Let me correct that. My improper practice of mula bandha may have been preventing me from letting go of emotional waste. Afterwards, going back to my pranayama practice I noticed that I wasn't totally relaxing mula bandha when exhaling. I wasn't letting go.
Two Views of the Breath
When I do and Teach Asana Classes I usually like to use the inhales to open and expand the body while at the same time I ground and make a strong foundation. While exhaling I focusing on relaxing... on letting go. An option is to make the inhales feel more relaxing and the exhales strong, as if using the muscles to squeeze each drop of air out of the body while exhaling. For myself the latter practice, strong exhales, tends to make me feel tense and so I practice more of the former, big expansive inhales and relaxing exhales.
After my revelation on the toilet I realized that I needed to do the same while practicing pranayama. I needed to let go completely while exhaling. This method, taking in air, becoming big, expansive while inhaling and then letting the experience go without holding while exhaling can become a metaphor or model for the process of life. Each experience we can take in fully while we are having the experience. Then we let it go. In so doing, the experience becomes a part of ourselves so that we can move on to new experiences of life.
How do we let go? By being aware that we are holding on.
Focusing on breathing we can gently and smoothly make the transition from inhale to exhale and from exhale to inhale. We can take a little pause to make the transition smoother. Likewise with experiences in life. We can take a brief pause between one experience and the next so that the experience can sink in. Then we let go and move on to the next experience.
Thus we continually experience life and we continually grow.
About this Author
Neil Keleher is a yoga teacher, engineer and artist. He lives in Taiwan. He created the website yoga4smartpeople as a resource for helping people learn their body intelligently. He is also the author of "Understanding Consciousness Riding the Wave of Time", a book designed to help the reader more easily enter the flow of life by learning to be more conscious.
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