Spanda - the Yoga of Vibration
As I write this, it is November in the northern hemisphere. The clocks have gone back, the evenings are drawing in, and the trees are quietly letting go of the last of their leaves. For many people, this slide into the darker months can feel heavy. Energy dips, moods change, and there’s a sense of wanting to turn inwards.
In yoga philosophy, there’s a lesser known concept that speaks to the changing rhythms of life in every season: Spanda.
What is Spanda?
The Sanskrit word Spanda can be translated as throb, pulse, vibration or wave-like motion. In the Spanda teachings, the whole universe is understood as a living field of vibration. Nothing is static. Everything is pulsing with life, including us.
Spanda is not limited to a particular time of year; it’s the constant movement of life, present in each breath, in every emotion, in the rise and fall of our energy, as well as in the changing seasons.
Unlike the yoga sutras attributed to Patanjali, these yoga teachings don’t ask that we try to escape the world or shut down our senses. Instead, the teachings ask us to tune in to consciousness right here, in the thick of our ordinary lives. Rather than problems to be controlled, our senses, touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste, are sacred pathways through which we can experience this living vibration of consciousness.
To practise yoga is to stay close to the subtle movements of life as they arise. The breath moving in and out. Sensations shifting and changing. Emotions swelling and subsiding. Seasons turning, year after year.
Spanda and the seasons
Nature expresses Spanda in a very tangible way. Spring bursts forth. Summer expands. Autumn softens and releases. Winter draws in and appears still, while quiet work is happening beneath the surface. All of these phases are expressions of the same underlying pulse.
In November, we see the leaves fall, the vegetation returning to the earth. On the surface, this can look like an ending, even a kind of death. Yet this fallen life becomes shelter and nourishment for insects, larvae and other small creatures, a quiet refuge for the unseen life of winter. What returns to the soil becomes compost, quietly feeding the new growth that will appear in spring.
Spanda invites us to notice the movement inside the apparent stillness. Even as the landscape looks bare, something is quietly pulsing beneath the ground, roots deepen, seeds and small creatures rest. Life is reorganising itself.
If the darker months feel difficult for you, it can help to remember that you are part of this same rhythm. You’re not failing because you feel slower or more inward. You’re responding to the season. You're allowing your own ecosystem to rest and reorganise, so your roots can deepen.
Rather than pushing against this, the teachings of Spanda offer a path to lean in and listen.
The pulse of breath and body
Perhaps the most apparent expression of Spanda in our yoga practice is our breath. The in-breath and the out-breath, expansion, then release and contraction are present in each breath cycle.
The breath moves on its own. You don’t have to make it happen. Yet as it flows, it quietly moves and massages the whole body. Ribs widen and settle. The belly responds. The back subtly shifts. There is a constant wave of micro-movements, even in what looks like a still pose.
We can make this more tangible by allowing the body to respond more visibly to the breath in familiar postures that we might usually hold quite still. For example, you might stand or sit in a shape you know well, and on each inhale gently bend the knees and elbows a little, then lengthen them again with the exhale. You’re exaggerating the natural pulse that’s already there, letting the breath shape the body from the inside.
Over time, you can make the movements smaller and subtler, until the posture appears still, while you can still feel this quiet inner rhythm. This is a way of leaning into the energy of vibration rather than bracing against it.
This can be especially supportive in November. As the outer world grows quieter and darker, you can explore how vibrant your inner landscape remains.
The senses as gateways, not enemies
From a Spanda perspective, the senses are not distractions from practice. They’re part of practice.
You might explore this in simple ways, such as:
Listening meditation: Sitting quietly and letting sound move through you. Not naming or chasing the sounds, simply feeling the way they arrive, vibrate in the body, and fade.
Walking as meditation: Noticing the texture of the ground beneath your feet, the temperature of the air on your skin, the play of light and shadow, whether it is bright, grey, frosty or warm.
Practising asana with curiosity: Rather than focusing on how a posture looks, staying close to how it feels. The subtle buzz of muscular effort, the spreading warmth, the quiet hum of tiredness or release.
In all of these examples, we’re not trying to create a special state, but letting the ordinary sensations of life show themselves as Spanda, the natural vibration of living consciousness.
Spanda and sound: chanting to Kali
Sound is one of the most direct ways to experience Spanda. When we chant, vibration becomes unmistakable. The body becomes an instrument.
Chants that invoke Kali, such as the Chamunda chant, invite us to look honestly at what in our lives is no longer serving us, what we might be ready to let go of, and the old ways of being that are ready to be dismantled. Kali is often associated with destruction, yet this destruction is in service of clarity, truth and renewal.
In the context of the seasons, this energy can be felt as part of the dying down of foliage in winter. The trees do not cling to their leaves. There is a wise, unapologetic letting go. What falls away becomes part of the soil that will nourish new growth.
When we chant to Kali in this darker part of the year, we might quietly ask:
What am I ready to lay down?
Which habits, roles or stories have become like dead leaves, no longer alive for me?
What wants to return to the earth of my being, to be composted into something new?
As we chant, the vibration of the mantra moves through the chest, throat, mouth, skull, and sometimes the whole body. If you pay attention, you can feel the hum of it in your bones and tissues. This is Spanda made very clear: wave-like motion, pulsing through you, reshaping not only your energy but also your sense of self.
Chanting can also be a way to feel less alone in the darker months. Whether we chant in a group or quietly by ourselves, we are joining a current of sound that has been repeating for generations. That continuity can be deeply steadying.
Meeting difficult emotions in the darker months
For some, the descent into winter can bring stronger emotions. Sadness, grief, irritability, loneliness. It is common to want to shut these down or to get lost in the stories around them.
Spanda gives us another option. We can tune into the energetic quality of the emotion rather than only the narrative. For example:
Anger might feel hot, sharp, or fast.
Sadness might feel heavy, liquid, or slow.
Anxiety might feel jittery, buzzing or fluttery.
If it feels possible and safe enough, you might try staying with the felt vibration of the emotion for a few breaths, rather than following every thought it brings. You are not denying the story. You are simply widening your attention to include how it lives in the body.
This can create a little more space around the experience. The emotion becomes something that is moving through you, not the whole of who you are. It becomes part of the larger pulsing field of your life, which is always shifting.
Practising Spanda in November
You don’t need a long, elaborate practice to work with Spanda, in November or at any other time of year. Small, regular gestures can be potent, especially when life feels full or energy is low. You might like to try:
Three-breath pauses
A few times a day, pause for three conscious breaths. Feel the lift of the inhale and the softening of the exhale. Notice what moves inside you without needing to alter or fix anything.A softer, pulsing asana practice
Choose a short sequence of familiar postures. Practise them more slowly than usual, and allow your body to subtly move with the breath. Perhaps bend the knees and elbows a little on each inhale, and lengthen again on the exhale, exaggerating the natural pulse. Over time you might reduce the visible movement, while staying deeply attuned to the inner vibration.A daily moment with the season
Step outside, even briefly. Notice the colour of the sky, the shape of the bare branches, the smell of damp leaves underfoot. Let yourself belong to this landscape, rather than observing it from the outside.Chanting as seasonal medicine
Experiment with a simple Kali mantra, or listen to a recording if chanting aloud feels new. Feel the vibration in your body as you chant or listen, and imagine offering into that sound anything you are ready to release into the compost of winter.Compassionate rest
When you feel the pull to rest more, experiment with honouring it where you can. Lying down for ten minutes, turning off a screen, softening the pace slightly. Rest is not an absence of life. It is part of the rhythm that allows new life to emerge.
Beginning again
Just as the leaves returning to the ground nourish the earth, the quieter months can nourish parts of us that don’t always get attention in the brighter seasons.
Spanda reminds us that nothing is wasted. Every contraction has the possibility of a new expansion. Every ending holds the seed of a beginning. Even when life feels dark or slow, something is quietly pulsing inside you, reorganising and preparing for what comes next.
Yoga, in this sense, is not about becoming someone different. It is about coming into deeper connection with the living consciousness that is already here, breathing you, moving you, and cycling through your life in waves.
As we move through November, you might like to ask yourself:
How is Spanda moving in me today?
Not as an idea to figure out, but as a sensation to feel. A warmth, a stirring, a subtle throb of aliveness, no matter how small, even in the midst of fatigue or difficulty.
Let me know how you get on.
With Love
Clair x