Looking for a new approach to better breathing? Try facing East. Yoga, the traditional breathing technique of India, has become almost as common as aerobics at U.S. health clubs. More Americans are exploring complementary care (40% have tried some form of it, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association), and a lot of them are focusing on breathing as the key to better health. Breathing exercises may even help manage asthma. Here’s why everyone from Madonna to your mother is breathing like a yogi.

The basics of Eastern breathing

Eastern medical tradition holds that our vital energy, or life force - called prana in India and qi (pronounced CHEE) in China - is the key to internal balance and health. Breathing sustains this vital energy. When your life force flows continuously and freely, you enjoy good health. If the life force becomes blocked, it pools and stagnates, setting the stage for disease. In the Eastern tradition, by improving the way you breathe, you maintain the constant flow of life force. Proper breathing helps reduce stress, improve organ function, and promote a sense of overall well-being.

Breathing: the essence of yoga

Yoga may be relatively new to the West, but it’s been practiced in its native India for more than 5,000 years. Yoga means “union,” and yogis (people who practice yoga) desired to attain union with the deity Brahman. As practiced in the West, yoga usually focuses on more down-to-earth benefits, such as physical fitness, mental clarity, stress control, and general well-being. Modern yoga involves meditation, physical postures (asanas), and breathing exercises (pranayama).

In yoga as a spiritual practice, yogis originally focused only on breath control - pranayama breathing. “Breathing is the essence of yoga,” says Benson O. M. Scott, co-owner of Yoga Haven, a studio in San Francisco. “Our life force exists all around us. We can help draw this energy into the body through proper breathing.”

Over time, yogis developed the various postures, called asanas, to improve their breathing technique. These asanas are designed to help align the spine so that the lungs can expand to their maximum. “Asanas keep the spine and body healthy in order for the life force to properly flow throughout the body,” Scott explains. In fact, he considers breathing - proper breathing - to be as essential as fresh water for life and good health.

Yoga emphasizes physical relaxation as a necessary component of better breathing. When you’re stressed out, your neck and chest muscles tighten, and your posture suffers. Since poor posture inhibits proper breathing, that careless slump of the shoulders can actually increase your stress level. “When you’re not breathing well, your life force will become constricted, and you’ll have fear and anxiety,” Scott explains.

Paul Jones, a yoga devotee from San Francisco, has experienced firsthand the soothing effects of yoga. “Yogic breathing helps me relax,” he says. “When I’m under stress, I use pranayama to calm down.”

Yoga as complementary care

Yoga isn’t just a stress reliever, however. The combination of breathing techniques and physical postures can benefit certain medical conditions, including asthma. For example, a 1998 study in the medical journal Allergy Asthma Proceedings found that after a 16-week yoga program, people with asthma reported feeling more relaxed and hopeful about their health. The researchers noted that practicing asanas improves breathing and relaxes the chest muscles, and pranayama breathing promotes deeper breathing and increases lung capacity.

Breathe like a yogi

The exercise called nadi shodhana, or “the sweet breath,” can help clear the head and soothe the mind. Take a moment to breathe like a yogi, with a simple breathing exercise that can benefit both beginners and more advanced students of yoga.

1. Hold your right hand up, palm toward your face. Position the thumb next to your right nostril and the ring finger and pinky next to your left nostril. Keep your hand loose and relaxed.

2. Close the left nostril by pressing gently against it with your ring finger and pinky. Inhale slowly and steadily through your right nostril.

3. At the top of your breath (when your lungs are full), release your left nostril and close your right nostril with your thumb. Exhale slowly and steadily through your left nostril.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to complete one round of nadi shodhana. Start with 5 to 10 rounds in a single session. Add more rounds as you become more comfortable with the exercise.

Breathing better already?

Whether you practice yoga for stress relief or as a complementary treatment for a medical condition, the breathing benefits and the health benefits tend to reinforce each other. “You practice yoga, you let go of stress and anxiety,” says Scott. “Let go of stress, and you begin to breathe properly again.” Due to the wide variations in yoga practice in the United States, you can pursue physical, psychological, and spiritual goals, or any combination of the three.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Healthy Breathing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.