Stay Fit, Live Healthy, & Feel Young Series 22

Role of Pranayama in modern life style.

🍑Health benefits of Yoga are even greater as we get older. Learning and practicing of Yoga is safe, effective, and enjoyable even for 'Mature' and 'Senior' people too, since it keeps you active and stay physically fit. Physical fitness is a collection of several attributes such as Aerobic fitness, anaerobic fitness, and muscle strength etc.,

🍑 Pranayama brings aerobic fitness as a result heart function improves. Blood pressure is reduced, which helps those with mild hypertension and reduces the 'normal' age related raise in blood pressure. Helps in some forms of asthma through proper breathing.

🍑 Practicing of all yoga asanas, pranayama and meditation requires good posture. A good posture needs most of the following:

• The neck and head lengthened upwards.

• Chin parallel to the floor.

• Eyes looking straight ahead.

• Shoulders down and away from the ears.

• Ribs lifted up away from the hips.

• Breathing is easy and regular.

• Lower back lengthened and abdominals tightened.

• Pelvis correctly tilted to allow natural curves in the back.

• Knees soft and over the ankles.

🍑Breathing is unconscious activity, in general, but it becomes conscious through the techniques of Pranayama. The way you breathe has a direct impact on your state of mind, on your emotions, and on your behavior. The better you breathe , the easier you will find it to concentrate, relax and learn. Proper breathing also ensures that you have more energy, and less susceptible to tiredness and when it comes to bedtime, you sleep more deeply.

Pranayama exercises are:

🍑Wave breathing this technique is also known as diaphragmatic breathing because it uses your diaphragm alone to draw air into your body. It provides your body with optimum amount of oxygen for the least amount of effort, and it calms entire nervous system.

🍑Balloon Breathing teaches you to use your diaphragm to breath deeply and fully. Imagine that you really do have a balloon inflating and deflating inside your belly. You can practice it all the time whenever you are at rest.

🍑Up and down the mountain is also known as ' alternative nostril breathining', helps to bring the right and left sides of the brain into balance. It is extremely beneficial in the treatment of Attention Disorder (ADD) and Attention deficit hyper activity disorder (ADHD).

🍑 Straw breathing focus on lengthening your inhalation, which has a soothing and calming effect on your central nervous system.

🍑 Bee breathing or Bramari nadha focus your attention on lengthening your out breath. It is very effective when you are feeling stressed or over tired, and good when you have trouble in sleeping.

🍑 It paves the way to practice, 'sthithapragnatha' by cultivating inner silence and stillness about noticing what is going on around you without reacting it. Further it encourages to withdraw our projections, so that we can see the things as they really are, and respond to them appropriately with meditative mind.