Your body doesn't know the difference between a predator and a deadline.
The sympathetic nervous system - our ancient alarm - doesn't need a tiger. It doesn't even need danger. A thought will do. An email. A headline. And here lies the dubious achievement of modern life: we have engineered a world that keeps us perpetually ready to fight or flee, with nothing to fight and nowhere to run.
Modern yoga swings like a pendulum. Stressed? Try a power flow. Burnt out? Collapse into restorative. We ping-pong between extremes, borrowing modernity's heavy-handed logic: correct imbalance by overcorrecting. The Ayurvedic tradition has a name for this - vikruti chasing vikruti. Imbalance chasing imbalance. It mirrors the very dysregulation we came to the mat to heal.
But there is another way. Not stimulation, not sedation - but Sattva. The balanced state. And there is a practice that leads us there: Nadi Shodhana, alternate nostril breathing. The path home.
The classical yogis understood something we are only now rediscovering: the breath is the bridge between the voluntary and the involuntary, the conscious and the autonomic.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, written in the 15th century, catalogues eight formal kumbhakas - breath retentions. But before any of them can be practised, the text prescribes nadi shodhana. Channel purification. It is the foundation: the practice that clears the pathways so prana can flow.
Centuries before we mapped the vagus nerve, the yogis mapped its territory. They called this work Prana Vidya - the knowledge of life force. And they discovered it not through theory, but through practice.
Modern science calls it Heart Rate Variability - HRV - a measure of how fluidly your nervous system shifts between activation and rest. High HRV signals resilience, adaptability. Low HRV signals a system stuck in overdrive. Researchers now study what yogis have practised for centuries: slow, balanced breathing retrains the autonomic nervous system.
For the sympathetic alarm that needs no tiger, Nadi shodhana is its antidote. Not by force, not by positive thinking, but by speaking directly to the body in the only language it cannot refuse - the Breath.
Prana vidya is not something to believe. It is something to know - one breath at a time. If this resonates, I invite you to go deeper. The texts can point. The science can validate. But the truth lives in Practice.
This February, I am leading a Pranayama Weekend Intensive - two afternoons of guided practice grounded in classical instruction. We will explore the breadth of the pranayama tradition, with Nadi Shodhana as our anchor. Theory will frame the practice; practice will make the theory real.
7-8 February 2026 | 1:00 - 6:00 PM | Pagoda Street
Come ready to practise. Whether you have spent years on the mat or are simply curious about what yoga holds beyond asana, this weekend is your invitation to find out.
Nithya Priyan is an ERYT500 yoga teacher and founder of Nithya Priyan School of Yoga.
