Śivasaṃhitā 4.48

This verse introduces Uḍḍīyānabandha with an anatomical description emphasizing its lateral action: the abdominal viscera are displaced toward the left (toward the idā nāḍī, the lunar channel). This lateral specificity differentiates the Uḍḍīyāna of the Śivasaṃhitā from the more frontal descriptions in the Haṭhapradīpikā, suggesting a school of practice with its own technical details.

Uḍḍīyāna — ‘the upward flight’ — derives from uḍ-ḍi- (to fly upward, to rise). The term describes the effect it produces: the diaphragm and abdominal organs ‘fly’ upward and backward when complete exhalation and retention are performed. Prayatnena (with effort, with care) signals that this is not a brute force technique but one of conscious precision.

Caturvāraṃ — ‘four times’ — establishes the minimum frequency for the mahāmudrā-mahābandha-mahāvedha triad. The fourfold practice corresponds to the four yāmas of the day: dawn, midday, dusk, and midnight, the four temporal junctions (sandhyā) considered in the Hindu tradition as moments of greatest permeability between the worlds and of greatest energetic receptivity of the subtle body.