Life Force

In order to play the trumpet well you must be in strong health, mentally and physically. As such, I have decided to include a column that addresses this topic. This article focuses on one of the eight branches of yoga, known as pranayama.

This topic is important to us for two reasons. First, studying and practicing aspects of yoga will be good for our overall mental and physical health. Secondly, the combination of our mental state along with the air or breath that we direct through our horns is the most important aspect of our playing process. A famous and well-loved trumpet professor, Bill Adam, concluded that those two elements accounted for 95% of our trumpet abilities, attributing only 5% to the embouchure. While Mr. Adam attributed a great deal to the mental process, my personal belief is that the two are not separable. If you have learned to control your body and breath, without the proper mental state, you still won’t play well. As we go, I will develop as many pieces as possible on the mental aspects of playing, both in this column and in the creativity section.

For now, let’s focus on pranayama. The first part of this word prana means breath. When the late great Maynard Ferguson was asked about his ability to play so well in the upper register, he attributed his ability to his mastery of prana. “I tell everyone, young and old alike to go out and get a couple of books on Hatha Yoga, and read the parts about breath, or prana. The Indians call prana ‘the life force,’ and sometimes we forget that if we weren’t breathing, we’d be dead.” He asserted that there was nothing special about his lip, rather it was use and control of air.

The phenomenon of breath control constitutes an entire branch of Yoga called Pranayama. Pranayama was developed to study patterns of breathing and their effects on the mind and the body. Ancient Yogis discovered that with breath control you can increase ‘Pranic Energy’ or life force, and control states of consciousness. Yogis of Pranayama assert that by bringing in and holding pranic energy through the breath one can control all the forces of the universe, the electric, bio-electric, magnetic and the atomic.

There are three stages to the breathing process. Inhalation, which is called puraka, fills the lungs with air and stimulates the whole body. Retention is called kumbhaka. During retention, the body’s temperature is raised and the oxygen is absorbed. Exhalation is called rechak. In rechak the diaphragm is returned to its original position. The intercostal muscles are contracted and the toxic air is released into the atmosphere. With pranayama practices, vital energy is distributed throughout the body, ensuring the proper functioning of all the organs and greater levels of physical energy.

It has been said that the lungs are like bellows stoking the fires of life within you. The richer the supply of oxygen, the more vigorous and beautiful is the fire. By breathing deeply you are delivering more oxygen into your system thereby giving your body the vital fuel it needs to nourish all your organs and keep your body strong and healthy.

Since the benefits of studying and practicing this branch of yoga are so strong, I encourage you to begin this journey today. There are several fine books and dvd’s on the subject. A few of those are: