Almost two years of regular practice, at my home, I took my first class of pranayama with an advanced Iyengar certified yoga instructor. A lot of people had thought Prana to be about the management of breath, but if you look at breath, what was breath? It was Energy. So, Pranayama was the management of energy.
The yoga instructor said there was a large part of our lungs that we don’t utilize. We wanted to utilize this area with deep belly breathing. So, We did an inclined pranayama. The legs were on the floor while the chest was supported by A bolster and a folded yoga blanket to support the back of the neck on top of the bolster.
We did a slow inhale. Then stopped. I inhaled more. I did it two more times. My stomach blew up like a balloon. We then did a slow raspy exhale. After five cycles, I was in a dream state, not a sleep not awake.
The yoga instructor then read something that Guruji had written about the feeling of negativity while doing pranayama. What She was reading was exactly what I had experienced. The goal was to see the negativity and use yoga to make it positive.
The Yoga Bridge 