Yoga for Life

In the last few blogs on #benefits of #Yoga, I talked about #Pranayama and #physical benefits. As the benefits of Yoga are numerous, and I’ve experienced them more on a #psychological level, here the article #continues. Yoga encourages you and helps you #relax, slows your #breath, and increases your #focus on the #present, shifting the #balance from the #sympathetic #nervous #system (or the #fight-or-flight response) to the #parasympathetic nervous system which is calming and #restorative. It also lowers #cortisol levels (chronically high levels may lead to #permanent #changes in the #brain and #memory and are linked with #depression, #osteoporosis, #highbloodpressure, and #insulin resistance). In my previous blog on physical benefits of yoga   https://headandheartchild.blogspot.com/2018/11/benefits-of-yoga-holistic-connection-to.html I talked about the research done on #rats and #food-seeking behaviours. These are all linked to #mental behaviours and depression. What I ...

In the last blog on #benefits of yoga, I outlined some of the numerous physical #benefits of #yoga practice. This one deals with #Pranayama or the #breath awareness or #breath #control. Although I have been practicing yoga for over 20 years, it’s only in the last three that I really found my #breath. Which is weird – because if I wasn’t #breathing, I would have been dead. Well, there’s breathing and there’s breathing properly. Prana in Sanskrit means ‘vital energy’ or ‘life force’. Prana is the force that exist in all things. It is more than air that we breath. Pranayama is therefore explained as breathing exercises aimed at introducing extra oxygen into the lungs – which in everyday western terms means breathing properly and deeper.   ‘yana’ means control. But in #pranayama the word ‘#ayama’ is used which means ‘extension’ or ‘#expansion’. Therefore, the yogic breathing techniques or pranayama are used to extend the life force and go: ‘beyond one’s normal boundaries or li...