Every yoga teacher eventually says it: the breath is more powerful than the posture. What they say less often is that this is precisely why the haṭha texts are so careful with it. The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā spends its second chapter on prāṇāyāma and begins with warnings, practice without preparation, it says, and the breath disturbs more than it settles.
Here is the order the tradition itself suggests for a beginner, every technique named below has its own page in the prāṇāyāma collection.
1. Learn to breathe completely first
Before any technique, the the three-part breath: belly, ribs, chest, lying down. Most of us breathe into the top third of the lungs and call it a day. Two weeks of ten slow full breaths, and the rest of prāṇāyāma becomes twice as easy.
2. Make the two halves of the breath equal
Equal breathing, inhale and exhale the same quiet length; teaches the steadiness everything else is built on. It is also the most portable practice on this site: four silent counts on a bus is a legitimate sādhanā.
3. Add sound, then alternation
The the ocean breath gives the ear something to follow; the the bee breath turns the volume of the mind down in ninety seconds. Then, and only then, alternate nostril breathing; the queen of the gentle practices, done without any breath retention for the first months.
4. Leave the powerful ones for later
Kapālabhāti and bhastrīka are wonderful and demanding, the tradition is explicit that bhastrīka belongs under a teacher’s eye. They are described on this site so you can understand them; understanding is free, and attempting them alone is not the plan.
The one rule
The Pradīpikā’s real instruction hides in plain sight: the breath is never forced. Dizziness, ringing ears, anxiety; these are not “deep experiences”; they are the practice saying stop. Ten comfortable minutes daily beat forty heroic ones every time.