Mula Bandha Issues

Mula bandha is a process of stopping a wasteful flow of energy from your pelvis to the outside and is a primary objective for the practice of yoga. The principles of bandha promote a redirection of this energy internally, from different parts of your body to heart center. Once this energy meets heart center, the yoga practitioner feels being spiritually centered.

  1. About

    • Mula bandha is the first bandha, or energy stops, used to control the wasteful outward flow of prana, or positive energy. TPerform this bandha by placing a tightness in the pelvic floor, engaging your muscles from the buttocks to the navel. Use this tightness on its own or when performing other yoga postures. This helps support the spine and increases muscle strength in the pelvis and hip areas. When performed with the other bandhas, mula bandha directs your prana up through your pelvis and hips and into your heart center.

    Finding Mula Bandha

    • To perform the mula bandha, yoga participantst engage the pelvis from the buttocks to the navel. Several postures can help you find the engagement of the mula bandha. In the Tadasana, or Mountain Pose, you stand with your feet hip-distance apart and then inhale, pressing your hips back towards your spine. When you exhale, you press your pelvis forward again. Doing this several times will help you find a neutral pelvis held tightly and is associated with mula bandha. Once you've found it, when standing neutrally in Tadasana, your pelvis and lower half will feel very steady.

    Physical Issues

    • Many of the issues associated with mula bandha are caused because instructors don't teach it properly or even at all during yoga instructions. Without finding mula bandha before doing postures that exercise the pelvic floor, muscle strain in the pelvic floor can occur, causing incontinence. Because mula bandha helps promote spinal stability, performing mula bandha incorrectly, or not performing it at all, can increase the amount of stress on your spine in certain yoga postures.

    Energy Issues

    • Mula bandha is the first of the three bandhas, or energy locks, performed during yoga. Practitioners use these locks to prevent the unnecessary and wasteful flow of energy out of the body while doing yoga poses. Though you can do them separately, when performed together, the mula bandha is the first lock performed and must have a strong basis in order to perform the uddiyana and jalandhara bandhas. When mula bandha is not performed properly it can prevent the flow of prana, or energy, up from the pelvis through the ribs and into heart center, which is a primary objective of many yoga practitioners.