Let’s talk about the breath!

( picture of sitting and breathing )

Deep breathing is one of the best ways to lower stress in the body. This is because when you breathe deeply, it sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax, the way you breathe affects your whole body. Breathing exercises are a good way to relax, reduce tension, and relieve stress.

In Yoga Breathing or Pranayama, is the foundation of your yoga practice. Pranayama is the practice of breath control, during yoga practice, it consists of synchronising the breath with movements between asana but it also a different breathing exercise on its own, usually practised before or after asanas.

Daily Pranayama trains the lungs and improves the capacity of the respiratory system immensely. Pranayama directly works on the nervous system. Daily Pranayama positively affects the autonomic nervous system, which controls and governs essential functions of the body like the heart rate, respiration and blood pressure etc.

When we work on freeing the breath through Pranayama (breathing exercises), we are also working on letting the life energy flow through the body. It has the effect of energising, relaxing and healing the body, letting everything fall into place. It increases and balances the life energy in your system.

How should I sit?

Proper sitting is vital to practising Pranayama. You can either sit on your knees in Vajrasana, cross-legged in Lotuse pose or sit on the chair. The goal is to have a nice long spine and keep the crown of the head elevated.

How long should I practice breathing for?

The best way is to take baby steps. If you are trying out a new breathing technique, practice for 1 minute and see how you feel. Once you feel comfortable with this amount of time, you can increase slowly.

But really, there is no right or wrong amount of time. It is your own experience!

So follow the blog, check it out for different breathing exercises and breathing technique. All of them got different impact and different way of practising it, some of them got some contradictions too, so just read through and see what works for you better.