Pranayama and your breath - essential for your vitality

When most people think about yoga they think about the asana, which means the movements/poses. But pranayama is the fourth limb of the yoga sutras and comes before Patanjali mentions asana, so pranayama will have been the precursor to the movement. In fact, in yogic history the poses are a relatively new introduction to the whole practice. The original yogis were practicing the pranayama and the journey into meditation, then a few hundred years later the movement was added in.

Pranayama is powerful in terms of what it can do and the biology behind your breath is important. We know we breathe and because of that we are alive, but actually there's quite a bit to it. So let’s begin by understanding what pranayama is. In Sanskrit as well as yoga tradition, prana means “life force,” and describes the vital energy that sustains the life of the body. The word pranayama is a combination of prana and ayama. Ayama translates as “to extend, expand or draw out.” Some also say that the word is the combination of prana and yama, or “control.” With either translation, you arrive at the same concept: pranayama is a practice that involves the management or control of the breath. As implied by the literal translation of pranayama, yogis believe that this practice not only rejuvenates the body but actually extends life itself.

So we are really talking about your life force and your vitality. The flow of your breath helps move your vitality, improve your energy and quality of life. The flow of your breath helps you to harness this and this is where the two parts of the word pranayama come together, the prana is the life force and the yama are the practices, rituals that you can do to increase and harness your life force.

If you are a big yoga geek you can read a lot of stories about yogis who have used their prana and breath to do things like stay warm in sub-zero temperatures for very long times. Nowadays people like Wim Hoff are using breathing techniques to achieve incredible feats that seem unachievable. How he does it? He has done a serious amount of breathing practice to set the physiology of his body and set the state of his mind to enable him to do what most would consider impossible.

The breathing practices Wim Hoff is doing are traditional yogic breathing practices. He has taken the pranayama practice into a completely different context.

 When we first start doing yoga we are taught to breath in and out of our noses.  When you first start you might not realise you are a mostly a mouth breather and you might also think you are breathing equally through your left nostril and right nostril. But actually as you begin to become more aware of your breathing and breath you will notice that during the day your breath takes on different qualities and we use our nostrils differently depending on the time of day.

One of the pranayama practices is Nadi Shodhana, alternate nostril breathing. This breathing technique helps to balance the breath between both nostrils. If take a moment now to sit and listen to your own breath, you will notice there's one nostril that's being used more now than the other correct. The nostrils are linked to nadis and there's three main nadis that run up your spine, but many, many more running through your body. The right nostril is more about activation and being active so you'll notice that it will be when it’s 10 o'clock in the morning and you're most full of life and energy and then the left nostril is about slowing and winding down, so it's more active around sleeping time. Alternate nostril breathing helps balance both sides of the breathing and helps calm and soothe the mind. Visit our YouTube channel to see how to do Nadi Shodhana and some other pranayama practices - Yoga To Transform - YouTube

 There's a lot of research around breathing practice being used to calm anxiety, better support mental health, alleviate depression symptoms, slow heart rate, improve your metabolism, reduce your blood pressure, help in weight loss, or improve your recovery if you've been doing exercise or had an injury.

Learning to improve your breathing using pranayama (breathing control and breathing techniques) can have a significant positive impact on your daily life. Pranayama is about improving your life force; you can harness the power of your breath and increase your lung capacity - most of us only use 10 percent of our lung capacity.

If you want to be more vital and have more life force, be brighter in the eyes, shinier in the hair, wider in the smile just remember to breathe well.