Useful Tips for Yoga

How to Practice Yoga Poses or Asanas

Yoga helps us to remove the garbage out of our mind and body and works to heal the mind and the body, helps to concentrate better so that you can easily practice pranayama and meditation without distraction. Among plenty of health benefits some are:

• Improved flexibility, enhanced stamina, better mind and body coordination.
• Enhanced efficiency of your nervous and endocrine systems and internal organ.
• Control of your breathing and improved breathe quality.

Tips to follow when practicing yoga poses:

• Though most of the yoga poses are designed for each and everyone but it is recommended to select poses according to your body endurance, mood and energy level.
• Start with easy to handle poses and work up to stronger ones.
• Breathe evenly through the nose throughout the postures.
• Get relaxed before and after yoga to avoid immediate rush into and out of a pose.
• Carefully notice if you feel any strain in a pose and stop immediately if it hurts.
• It is not recommended to practice in front of a mirror. Rather concentrate on how the pose feels, not what it looks like.
• The postures should be focused on getting relaxed without any strain to body.

How to Practice Yoga Breathing or Pranayama
Yoga assumes breath as a connecting link between the physical body and the mind. Controlled breathing practice has tremendous effect on state of mind and changes it positively. A breathing practice can last anything from two minutes to half an hour or more.

Tips to follow when practicing Breathing or Pranayama:

• The place selected for yoga must be free from distractions. While practicing yoga indoors, keep the windows open to allow plenty of fresh air into the room.
• Begin with trying pranayama lying down and then slowly concentrate to sit upright with your spine straight.
• Breathe evenly through the nose throughout the postures.
• Breathing must be free and in natural rhythm without any strain while doing pranayama.
• Take deep breathes gradually.
• Control breathing slowly and carefully.
• If you feel dizzy or light-headed, return to normal breathing.
• Make sure someone is near you when experimenting a new technique.
• Keep patience and do not expect immediate results and practice all exercises as slowly as you can.

How to Practice Mudras
Mudras are positions (mostly of the hands) channelize the body's energetic system and synchronize the flow of prana (life energy) within it. Mudras are easy and generally do not have any ill effects when used. The best time to practise Mudras is during the sitting phase after a posture and breathing session.

Tips to follow when practicing Mudras:

• Don't try hard – gently let your fingers to touch as guided.
• Get relaxed and let your mind and body to be in peace.

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Yoga Breathing or Pranayama

Whenever we think of the term Pranayama, the only thing appears in our mind is that it is a breathing exercise. But Pranayama means a lot more than just breathing for relaxation.

Different Yoga experts have defined Pranayama in different ways having a broad range of meanings. It also stands for cosmic power, or power of the whole entire universe that reveals itself as a conscious living entity in us through the miracle of breathing.

As defined in the Yoga Sutras, by Vivekanand Needam, Pranayama is “regulation of incoming and outgoing breath coupled with retention.

In Sanskrit, the word Pranayama is a combination of two parts having different meanings, viz. Prana and Ayama.

While Ayama means control; means the act which is done in Pranayama. Prana – as most of us know – is vital energy. It is that energy that is represented naturally as the self-energizing force driving our body in daily course of life. When our body is dominated and controlled by this vital force, it is called Pranayama.

Pranayama does not emphasize on to bring the inhalation and exhalation into synchronization with each other. Nor the aim is to make our body habitual of a particular length of breath. The different pranayama practices pose variety of opportunities for following the breath, as well. When you focus on breath, your mind is concentrated only on the breathing activities. Pranayama prepares us, in this manner for the stillness of meditation to come.

Yoga Breathing or Pranayama - A Broad Overview
Pranayama, the breathe control technique in yoga is an indispensable part of the Yoga science. It is an essential step of most of the asanas or poses. As described in the Vivekanand Needam Yoga Sutras, asana and pranayama play a vital role to help us control ourselves mentally and physically, attaining purification of body, soul and mind.

While practicing yoga one can feel heat sensations internally, which is nothing but the inner fire of purification. As per yoga experts this heat is the byproduct of the purification process of the Nadis. These are subtle nerve channels in the subtle body. The result is healthy mind and body to it’s high.

Pranayama emphasizes to concentrate on your breath. Hence, make sure that while practicing Pranayama the mind is alert and focused. This is because the processes being observed are extremely subtle. Unlike asanas, body movements are almost nil in Pranayama. In the beginning of Pranayama the inhalations and exhalations are felt within your respiratory tract, and later, the sensations of breath movements are felt throughout your body. The only animated process will be breathing. Vivekanand Needam, in his Yoga sutras, has given tips and practical suggestions so that one can concentrate on breath movements.

To begin with Pranayama, you must start paying attention on a part of your body, where you feel or hear your breath. Alternatively, you could try following the movement of breath in your body. Try to sense the inhale extend from the center of your collarbone, down through your rib cage to your diaphragm. Then follow your exhalation upwards from your abdomen.

One more trick to concentrate on your breath is by feeling where it enters and leaves your body around the region of your nostrils. If you want to hear your breath, then try to make a noise by gently tightening your vocal chords. This is a Pranayama technique called Ujjayi.

Benefits of Pranayama

Pranayama meaning literally the “breath of life”.

In other words Pranayama can be described as a technique of breath control using sequential deep inhalations and gentle exhalations. An indispensable part of ancient Indian yoga, Pranayama can be carried out using different techniques, all of them involving step by step deep inhalations and gentle exhalations.

Pranayama poses lots of benefits to our body, soul and the mind, if practiced regularly and in proper way.


Pranayama benefits:

• We all know that breathing is an indispensable part of life, but ironically most of us are not even aware of the fact that we are not breathing properly, despite continuous breathing. Pranayama is the only technique that teaches how to breathe properly so that the body gets maximum benefits of breathing. Instead of slow and deep breathing we have got habitual of taking quick, shallow breaths and that too from the stomach instead of chest.
  
  
• By practicing Pranayama regularly, we can change our breathing habits and start breathing deeply from the belly.
  
  
• We do not even know that one third of our lungs is always deprived of the air (or oxygen in other words) that we inhale because shallow breathing does not allow the air to spread fully in the lungs. By following the deep breathing techniques taught in Pranayama, we can give a chance to the lungs to breathe effectively because the lungs spread fully as the air flows in, hence making more oxygen available to parts of the body that were previously deprived of it and as a result, the body gets energized many more times than it used to get earlier.
  
  
• With the increasing oxygen supply to the body, the efficiency of various organs and systems also increases and body works more efficiently. This helps to increase the metabolic rate. As a result, the accumulated fat in the body burns faster and digestion is also improved.
  
  
• Pranayama also increases the body immunity as the enhanced oxygen and blood supply gives strength to the body.
  
  
• Pranayama is a boon for those who suffer from lung based diseases especially asthma or bronchitis as the lung capacity is many times increased if Pranayama is practiced regularly. Pranayama can also retard and reverse the effects of lung damage in smokers.

Pranayama Techniques
Pranayama has many techniques that result in lowering or increasing the blood pressure depending on the technique of Pranayama that is used. Other Pranayama benefits include improved abdominal tone. Not only the energy blockages in the body get opened but the congestion of nasal passages is also removed. There can be no other convenient way rather than practicing Pranayama to flush out toxins from the body. Patients suffering from ailments such as allergies, heart conditions, insomnia, chronic pain and imbalances in the endocrine system also get benefits to cure these diseases with the help of Pranayama.

Last but not the least, Pranayama also helps to control the mind. In a world full of stress and only stress, Pranayama helps us to get relaxed and De-stress not only the mind but the body also. We can concentrate in a better way and improve our focus. Regular practice of Pranayama, can also help to balance and center the mind.