Pranayama breathing exercises plays the most important role in one’s body because we cannot live without breathing for more than 3 to 4 minutes at most, improvement of your breathing can be done by practicing pranayama breathing exercises that help the lungs inhale air and receive exercise using different technique which improve lung strength and improve the lungs capability to inhale air in different controlled situations that improve lung health.
Pranayama is one of the five principles of yoga where in this principle or science one learns how to control breath and extract the strengths that intern improve lung health. The word pranayama is derived from three different words namely:
- Prana — meaning the life force or source of life’s energy.
- Yama – discipline and control.
- Ayama – expansion or extension of something to its fullest potential.
Yogis realized in the same way that the body required external exercise to maintain good heath it also had internal body parts that required exercise to maintain good health in people thus developing and perfecting pranayama to serve this purpose. Ones health exterior body is of no use if his internal body parts are weak and under exercised.
There are four stages that one progresses through as they maintain the daily pranayama breathing exercises:
i. Arambha: this is the initial stage of the science where a person’s interest towards the science is either built or broken.
ii. Ghata: at this stage the person in shrouded by the three sariras otherwise described as gross, subtle and causal.
iii. Parichay: at this stage the person has graduated to being a yogi and can fully experience the knowledge of pranayama.
iv. Nispatti: this is the ultimate stage where the yogi in no longer constraint to his physical body thus uniting with the supreme and considering all worldly things as materialistic.
Pranayama breathing exercises teaches us several different things as mentioned below:
- The most important thing it teaching is the right way of breathing thus creating many different benefits. Most people take breathing for granted but don’t realize that the body slowly adapts to inhaling only a small amount of air compared to the lungs real capacity. This leaves large area of the lungs dormant overtime thus reducing over breathing capacity. Pranayama breathing exercises help maintain the whole lungs capacity by forced inhaling of excess air to expand lungs to their full capacity and opening the air ways more are time passes reducing nasal congestion that many people have today.
- Pranayama helps reduce toxins in the body as the breathing increasing oxygen levels in the blood thus improving resists to diseases or infection.
- The breathing exercise is also associated to improved digestion improving the body’s metabolism thus improving health in an individual.
- It is associated to improved concentration and focus towards tasks. People that have had poor concentration have been noted to improve over time with continued practice of pranayama
breathing exercises.
- Self control and relaxations are some of the many other aspects that are associated to the science and many people have realized and are moving towards pranayama breathing exercises.
Pranayanama breathing exercises must or
cannot be forced up on a person since the effect may turn from positive to negative. The practice of this science must be done voluntary by the person to be able to harness the full energy and power pranayama breathing exercises.