If you have attended a yoga session, you will have noticed that the teacher asks you to pay attention to your breathingSometimes it even seems that the whole practice is focused on it. Today from Yoga synchrony We explain the importance of breathing in the practice of yoga.
Breathing in the practice of yoga: Your body breathes
Breath is a constant exchange with the environment that surrounds you. From the moment you are born and go outside where a first inhalation will open your lungs, until the moment you will leave your body with an exhalation. During all this time your body will not stop breathing.
This exchange, vital and necessary, has many more nuances when breathing becomes conscious and accompanies you both in your practice and in your daily life.
During your practice, on a physical level, breathing will help you both to get closer to the more complex postures and to relax in the closer ones. Breathing is a support to body movements.
For it you will learn that each posture favors a type of breathing, higher, lower, in the ribs, back or complete. Your body, accompanied by this rhythmic and measured movement, will be able to enter more deeply into the practice of yoga and above all into your internal listening.
You will also discover the power of your breath to give you strength and stability in high intensity postures. Focusing on your abdominal breathing in the zone of kanda, the center of your body: this point two fingers below your navel, you will see how your center reunites you with your personal power and your vital capacity, empowering you in practice and in life.
open spaces
Many times the stressful life evokes a survival breathing, with the rigid diaphragm allowing only minimal ventilation in the upper part of the lung.
In yoga practice, the breath is released. In an organic way, without haste, you will feel how new spaces are created in the body ready to receive the air.
The movements of the diaphragm, being attached to the fascia that surrounds different organs, are a massage for the heart, liver, spleen and intestines. A conscious yoga practice, with attention focused on breathing will help you release and unlock the diaphragm and that it can recover its natural function and help your body to recover its rhythm.
All this will favor your respiratory capacity, your voice, the circulatory system, the digestive system, as well as being a powerful hormonal regulator.
Breathing in the practice of yoga: The bridge between the mind and the body
"Yoga is the cessation of the activity of the mind. (I.2)»
Yoga-sūtra of Patanjali. Comments from Montserrat Serra i Fort, 2020
The purpose of yoga is the transformation of the mind. This change that occurs slowly, leaving behind a mind that is stressed and in a loop with the impacts of the world, to get closer to a mind where fluctuations disappear and only calm remains.
conscious breathing helps us return the mind to healthier levels, to recover their natural state of calm and peace. That state where our reactions are no longer immediate and hasty, but considered responses to the situations we find ourselves in.
Hence its importance throughout the practice of yoga. Breathing will bring you closer to this desired state of consciousness, the state of yoga.
It is a powerful tool that serves as a bridge between the physical body and the mind. You can use it like:
- spotlight. Focusing, for example, on the respiratory count, on the movement of air entering and leaving or on its sound.
- The anchorage to return you again and again to the present reality when the mind wanders.
- natural pain reliever. By consciously directing it towards the areas where there is discomfort or discomfort.
- mirror of your state. Breathing responds to your physical, mental and emotional state. You can dedicate listening to her to know how you feel and see how she responds when you make her more present.
- stress reliever. Through sighs and yawns.
Among many others. But there is still more, let's see what returns to breathing not only important but essential in yoga practices.
life energy
According to yoga, through breathing we obtain, modify and expand the prana or life energy. So the practice of yoga, meditation or pranayama (conscious breathing or regularization of breathing), must be focused on increasing said vital energy.
The prana It is defined as subtle vital energy, pure energy in its natural state. It is the life force that not only sustains the body, but also creation on all levels. Yogis identify the prana with life, vitality, they consider the cosmos to be alive and full of prana. It is a capital concept defined by the great yogis thanks to deep meditation and intuitive knowledge.
With a broader and calmer breath, the mind will be calmer and more serene, and with this you will obtain a greater absorption of energy. prana. As you progress in the practice of yoga, your lung capacity will gradually expand. and the quality of breathing will be refined.
So take your time during your yoga practice to live, listen and feel your breath. This will guide you towards you, your being, your center.
Enjoy your practice. visit our yoga center in the neighborhood of Gràcia.
Silvia Gallego
Yoga teacher, author and editor of breathing books
