The Bandhas, the Inner Locks

This article takes up the bandhas, the subtle internal engagements that experienced practitioners describe as the hidden support of an Ashtanga practice. It separates carefully what can be said anatomically from what belongs to the traditional, energetic account, clarifies a distinction that confuses many students, that the engagement used during movement is not the full classical lock, offers practical guidance and real cautions, and gives an honest picture of a research base that remains thin.

The part you cannot see

The postures are visible. The breath is audible. The bandhas are neither, and this is why they are the last thing most students come to understand, often years into a practice.

The word bandha means a bond, a lock, or a binding. In practice the bandhas are subtle internal engagements, chiefly of the pelvic floor and the lower abdomen, that experienced practitioners hold to give the body a quiet internal support and, in the traditional account, to contain and direct energy. They may contribute to the lightness some practitioners feel in transitions that look difficult, and their absence can leave a strong practice feeling heavy and effortful.

I want to treat this subject with particular care, because few areas of yoga are described as loosely, or claimed for as much, as the bandhas. So I will keep two things apart throughout: what we can reasonably say about the body, and what belongs to the older energetic language of the tradition.

The principal locks

Three bandhas are usually named.

Mula bandha, the root lock, is an engagement at the base of the pelvis. Uddiyana bandha, the upward-flying lock, is a drawing in of the lower abdomen. Jalandhara bandha, the throat lock, is a gentle lowering of the chin toward the chest. In dynamic Ashtanga practice the first two are the ones a student works with continuously; jalandhara bandha belongs mostly to seated breathing practices with retention and appears little in the flowing sequences, so I will treat it only briefly here.

Mula bandha, the root

Anatomically, mula bandha is directed at the pelvic floor, the hammock of muscles slung across the base of the pelvis. In contemporary anatomical interpretations, it is often associated with a subtle lifting response of the pelvic floor. It may overlap with some of the muscular action used in pelvic-floor exercises, but the two practices are not necessarily identical, and classical and modern readings of mula bandha differ. A gentle lift of these muscles raises the floor of the pelvis, supports the organs above it, and may lend some stability to the spine that the pelvis carries. The key word is gentle. This is a light lift and tone, not a clench.

In the traditional account, mula bandha has an energetic purpose that sits alongside the physical one: it is said to check the downward escape of apana, the descending current of vital energy, and to turn it back upward. You do not need to accept that framing to benefit from the muscular engagement, but it is worth knowing, because it explains the language you will hear in class.

Uddiyana bandha, and a distinction that matters

Here is where many students are quietly confused, so let me be precise, because two different things share one name.

The full, classical uddiyana bandha, as described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, is performed only on an empty breath during external retention, seated and still, when the belly is drawn deeply up and back under the ribs to create a hollow. That is a static breathing practice, not something done while moving or breathing normally.

What a practitioner engages during a flowing Ashtanga sequence is different and much lighter: a continuous, gentle drawing in of the lower abdomen, associated with the deep transversus abdominis, the innermost layer of the core muscles that wraps toward the spine. Practitioners often experience this engagement as contributing to trunk organisation, spinal support, and a sense of lift during transitions such as jump-backs and jump-throughs. Calling it uddiyana bandha is common, but it is not the full classical lock, and confusing the two leads students to grip far too hard. In the traditional account this upward engagement is linked to guiding prana upward through the central axis of the body.

How the bandhas work in practice

Coordinated lightly and responsively, the two lower bandhas do something a beginner can eventually feel directly: they help turn the torso into a stable, slightly lifted container, so that the limbs can move around a steady centre. This is what gives a mature practice its quality of grounded lightness. The support comes from inside, so the outer body can stay comparatively soft.

They also work intimately with the breath, which is why they follow the breath article. The lower abdominal engagement and the breath share the same territory around the diaphragm and deep core, and learning them together, rather than as separate tasks, is what eventually makes both feel natural.

Finding them as a beginner, and not overdoing it

My strong advice to newcomers is to underdo the bandhas rather than overdo them. Most beginners, told to engage a lock, clench with everything they have, which stiffens the breath, hardens the belly, and makes movement worse rather than better.

Start by noticing a light lift of the pelvic floor. Begin by imagining the subtle action used to prevent the passing of wind, followed by a gentle inward-and-upward lift through the base of the pelvis, held softly enough that you can still breathe smoothly. Do not repeatedly practise by stopping the flow of urine, which is only a one-time way to locate the muscles and can, if done habitually, interfere with fully emptying the bladder. Add an equally light drawing in of the lower belly. If either engagement makes your breath catch or your body rigid, you are gripping too hard. The bandhas are meant to be a subtle, sustainable tone, closer to good posture than to a muscular effort.

A genuine caution belongs here. A constantly clenched pelvic floor is not a healthy goal. Some people, including many with pelvic pain or pelvic floor tension, already hold too much tension there, and for them more gripping is exactly wrong. If you are pregnant, have pelvic floor dysfunction, pelvic pain, or are recovering from childbirth or abdominal surgery, treat pelvic floor and abdominal engagement as something to learn with a qualified teacher or a pelvic health physiotherapist, not to force on your own.

What the research says

This is an area where honesty requires admitting how little has been directly studied.

The anatomical descriptions above are broadly reasonable. The muscles the bandhas point to, the pelvic floor and the deep transversus abdominis, are real and are among the recognised muscles of core stability. To that extent, saying the bandhas involve engaging these muscles is uncontroversial. Pelvic-floor muscle training has an established clinical role of its own, particularly in the management of urinary incontinence and some pelvic-floor disorders. That evidence, however, should not automatically be transferred to mula bandha, or to every traditional claim made for it.

Research on the bandhas specifically is very limited. One small randomized controlled trial studied a twelve-week mula bandha yoga therapy programme, added to conventional treatment, in fifty women with mild symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse. Some symptoms and quality-of-life measures improved, but the intervention was a broader yoga programme rather than mula bandha in isolation, and the difference on its main outcome, the PFDI-20, was small, around 5.7 points, fell below the threshold regarded as clinically important, and was not statistically significant on the intention-to-treat analysis. The findings are preliminary, and should not be read as evidence that mula bandha itself treats prolapse.

There is also an honest debate within the yoga world itself, worth passing on. A number of thoughtful teachers question the common instruction to hold the bandhas in a fixed, constant contraction throughout an entire practice, pointing out that deep stabilising muscles are not designed for continuous maximal gripping, and that over-holding can interfere with the very breath and movement the bandhas are meant to serve. This fits the practical advice above: lightness and responsiveness, not a permanent clench.

The energetic claims, about apana and prana, sit outside what current research can test. They are best understood as the tradition's own language for effects practitioners report feeling, not as findings that have been measured.

Closing

The bandhas are the quiet architecture of an Ashtanga practice, and they reward patience more than force. Do not worry if they stay mysterious for a while; they tend to reveal themselves slowly, as a felt lightness rather than a muscle you can name. In the next article we bring the first three elements together, breath, gaze, and these inner engagements, in the practice that opens every session: the sun salutations.

Before then, in your next practice, try the lightest possible lift of the pelvic floor and lower belly, just enough to sense it, and see whether your breath stays free.

References

Sweta, K. M., Godbole, A., Awasthi, H. H., & Pandey, U. (2018). Effect of Mula Bandha Yoga in Mild Grade Pelvic Organ Prolapse: A Randomized Controlled Trial. International Journal of Yoga, 11(2), 116–121. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.IJOY_32_17 (PMID: 29755220)

Muktibodhananda, Swami (trans.) (1998). Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Munger: Yoga Publications Trust, Bihar School of Yoga. Descriptions of uddiyana bandha and mula bandha appear in Chapter 3 (approximately verses 3.55–3.69).

Note on sources: The anatomical descriptions in this article draw on the yoga-anatomy literature and on standard accounts of pelvic floor and core-stability musculature. Direct scientific study of the bandhas as such remains scarce, and the energetic aspects of the tradition fall outside what current research can evaluate. These summaries reflect sources available at the time of writing.