Breath can be used to shift physical, emotional and mental gears. Controlling the breath can lead to some interesting experiences. In fact, your body is regulating these shifts all day long. For instance, at any given time in the day one of your nostrils is more open than the other. This is not a hypothesis; it is something you can see for yourself. Check it out! There are moments when both nostrils are pulling through equal amounts of air, but this is only during the short time when the equilibrium of the breathing is being shifted from one nostril to the other. Otherwise, one nostril or the other governs each moment of the day. Certain activities are ideal depending on which nostril is governing the air movement into and out of the body. In the Upanishads, it is said that one should eat only when the right nostril is open. Otherwise, the food is not digested right in its initial stages. On the other hand, if you eat while the left nostril is governing, the body will quickly shift to the right nostril. Exercises for purposefully shifting the dominant nostril will be given shortly in this course.

It is most useful to know which side of the nostrils accentuates different activities. These dominant nostril exercises help restore coordination between the two sides of the body and the brain. You can voluntarily switch the flow of air from one side of the nose to other, thus preparing yourself for whatever task is at hand. If you are about to take a test, eat, or run a marathon, perhaps you would like to open the right nostril and make it the dominant side for the breath to flow.

If you have trouble going to sleep, perhaps you would benefit from opening the left nostril, which supports less active energies in the body, therefore promoting sleep. One way to do this would be with nadi shodhanam breathing exercises. Another is quite simple. If you lie on the right side, the right nostril closes and the left opens up. Laying on the side, with one nostril higher than the other, triggers the erectile tissues in the lowest nostril. This is not because of gravity, as was thought for a long time. It is because pressure on the down arm and the side of the chest trigger a reflex that dilates the nostril that is up and closes the one that is lower on the side where the pressure is.

All of this said, the purposeful direction of physiological reflexes triggered by left or right nostril dominance in the breathing is not a good idea to force for more than a few hours. It is said by yogis that it will invite disease into the body if one nostril stays open for six or eight hours. If the breath stays on one side of the nose for a day or more, the possibility for disease is quite serious. The ancient yogis documented their studies of the breath and found that it must be related to the flow of energy (prana) and it is important to let it run its natural course most of the time. It is not uncommon for a person to notice that he or she isn’t feeling quite right after nose surgery, and ones who have had a long time blockage in one or the other of the nostrils or inner passageways are reported to have mental illnesses. To have the nose changed can tamper with the emotions and mind, tampering with the basic foundation of oneself.