Awaken the power of your breath

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When we are born our life starts with it and our life ends with it. What an incredibly powerful function is the breath!

In today’s sedentary and stressful lifestyle, we maintain a relatively shallow and quick breath, using only a fraction of our lung capacity providing just enough of energy supply for the body to function. This way of breathing reduces our vitality, our resistance to diseases and starves our brain of essential oxygen creating tiredness, irritability, disturbed sleep cycles and so on.

Pranayama is not only a deep form of breathing exercise, but a discipline of yoga, which prepares individuals for self-realization at an astral level and maintains the mind-body equilibrium at a physical level. The practice of pranayama decreases the respiration rate and elongates the breath and therefore interpreted as elongated life as well. It is therefore a powerful tool to eradicate diseases at the root cause.

Much research has been and is being carried out on the powerful health benefits of breath control used in yogic practice and needless to say you only have to sit for a few minutes and try these techniques to benefit from the instant feeling of calmness, peace and well-being

This research has demonstrated the positive effects on medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, migraines, obesity, asthma, high blood pressure, as well as many stress related conditions such as depression, anxiety and insomnia.

Here are some reasons why the practice of pranayama can be so valuable:

  • Increases the capacity of our lungs with a fresh supply of oxygen to energise the body
  • Massages the all the abdominal organs including the heart and the stomach
  • Reduces the breathing rate which can control blood pressure and increase longevity
  • Expels toxic waste such as carbon dioxide from the respiratory system
  • Improves health of the heart and can reduce hypertension.
  • Oxygen travels via bloodstream by attaching to haemoglobin in your red blood cells.
  • Strengthen respiratory and nervous system.
  • Helps increase metabolic activity and digestion of food.
  • Reduces stress and calms the mind and nervous activity by increasing oxygenation to the brain at the same time increasing awareness and concentration
  • Muscles tighten, the breath becomes shallow and there is reduced oxygen levels when negative emotions such as anger, irritability, depression, greed, arrogance, jealousy are present, pranayama can reduce this.

Consult a yoga or ayurvedic practitioner for more guidance on pranayama techniques. http://www.geetavara.co.uk