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Navratri ends today. Your practice doesn’t have to: same time of day, same short sitting, 4 in, 8 out.
Today is Dussehra, Vijayadashami, on 20 October 2026 (Drik Panchang). Calendars differ by a day on exactly when the ninth night fell, but they agree on this: the nine nights are done. If you used them to sit down each evening for a few rounds of alternate nostril breathing, you have something most people who start a breath practice never get. You have nine days in a row behind you.
This piece is about the tenth day, and the one after that.
Why the festival worked
A festival is a ready-made habit. It gives you a start date, an end date, a reason to show up and, often, a fixed time of day, because the evening lamp or the evening meal happens at the same time each night. For nine days you didn’t have to decide when to practise. The calendar decided for you.
That’s also why the practice is fragile today. The thing that decided for you is gone. Tomorrow evening there will be no lamp to light, no reason to stop at that hour, and the default will be whatever you did before Navratri.
The fix isn’t more willpower. It’s to keep the parts the festival gave you and drop only the festival.
Keep three things the same
1. The time of day. Whatever hour you sat during Navratri, keep it. If it was just after sunset, sit just after sunset. If it was before the evening meal, sit before the evening meal. The time is the cue, and a cue you already have beats a new one you have to invent. Traditional instruction puts pranayama on an empty stomach, before a meal or a couple of hours after one, so if your Navratri sitting fell before dinner, you already have the right slot.
2. The length of the sitting. Don’t make it longer to celebrate. The nine days worked because the sitting was short enough to never feel like a decision. Five minutes, or ten rounds, or whatever you did, do the same again. You can lengthen it later, once it’s automatic, and you’ll know it’s automatic when skipping it feels odd rather than skipping it feeling normal.
3. The count. On 17 October we suggested the 1:2 ratio for the last nights of the festival: in for 4, out for 8. Keep it. The longer exhale is the part most people rush, and it is the part the practice is built around. If 4 and 8 has stayed easy for a week, you can try 5 and 10. If it ever feels like strain, go back to 4 and 8. A slow, quiet breath is the target, not a big number.
That’s the whole plan. No new technique, no new time, no new goal.
What to drop
Drop anything that only existed because of the festival: the extra length you might have added on the last night, the sense that it has to be done “properly” or not at all, any idea that the practice belongs to a particular nine days of the year. It doesn’t. Alternate nostril breathing is taught in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika as a daily practice, morning and evening, built up gradually. The festival was a doorway, not the room.
Also drop the breath hold if you added one. A pause between the inhale and exhale (kumbhaka) is a later step, and the old manuals are blunt that it should be built slowly. For now, in and out is enough.
If you miss a day
You will. The question is only what happens on the day after. Miss one day, sit the next at the usual time, and the habit survives. Miss two and it starts to dissolve, not because two days matter physically but because the cue stops firing. So the rule is simple: never miss twice.
If the usual time is impossible, sit at any time rather than none. A short sitting at the wrong hour keeps the thread. A perfect sitting you planned for tomorrow doesn’t.
A few cautions
Keep the breathing soft and slow. Stop if you feel dizzy or breathless, and come back to normal breathing for a minute before you try again. If your nose is blocked from a cold, wait until it clears rather than forcing air through one side. On Thursday we’ll put all the cautions in one place, including who should skip breath holds entirely.
The quiet win
Nine nights of practice isn’t a transformation, and it isn’t meant to be. It’s a start that you’ve already paid for. Most people stop at day three. You’re past day nine. The only job left is to make tomorrow look exactly like yesterday, at the same hour, for the same few minutes, with the same count.
Same time tomorrow.
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