Pranayama

“Pranayama has three movements: prolonged and fine inhalation, exhalation, and retention; all regulated with precision according to duration and place.” — Yoga Sutras

“What is required is not a new artificial way of breathing that lasts as long as our stunningly brief attention span, but to return to a way of breathing that can be calm and regular, flexible and spontaneous”. — Donna Farhi

One of the wonderful things that happens in yoga is you learn pranayama, or breath control. I suppose some people might think it’s silly to learn how to breathe, but there is a lot of strength to be gained from learning proper breath control. For me it comes pretty naturally since I trained as a singer, and learning to breathe deeply into your stomach and back is a big part of that. In fact, when I took some voice lessons recently, my teacher was quite pleased that I actually knew how to “back breathe” – she spent a lot of her time teaching singers to breathe properly.

When you think about it, your breath is really your life – you can go a few days without water and even longer without food, but not more than a few minutes without breathing. And when we become stressed or anxious, the breath is the first thing that goes – as our heart rate goes up, we also start breathing more shallowly, or we stop breathing, stressing us out even more. People often mention how calm I am and how relaxed I seem to be most of the time. A lot of that is simply because I breathe properly and pretty much automatically. Even when I am not “watching” myself breathe, I tend to do it correctly.

If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out, pranayama techniques can be very helpful to calm the mind and eliminate stress. It’s well worth learning from a good yoga teacher.