The Breath
The Breath
The Breath is innate, involuntary, and life sustaining. It marks the beginning and the end. The breath regulates blood pH, allows our immune system to fight off pathogens, illness and disease while playing a critical role in our emotional and mental well being. Breathing brings in oxygen which enables our cells to function, metabolize and transfigure energy until it is released as a waste product from the body.
Although breathing is innate and involuntary during most of our lives, it can become dysregulated due to internal and external stressors. These stressors may induce illness and disease such as high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and the promotion of cancer cells.
Breathing with good form, pure intention, and a purpose can significantly contribute to improved athletic performance, memory, learning, digestion and so much more! Learning that the breath is more than taking air in, letting it out and repeating it 25,000 times a day, the breath can help transform one's physical, cognitive and emotional well-being by unblocking, cleansing, harmonizing and energizing the systems within.
Breathwork
Breathwork is the art of various breathing practices in which the conscious control of breathing can influence one's mental, emotional and physical state of being with a therapeutic effect.
Human beings are more than flesh and bones. We are bodies of energies. We are comprised of electrical energy, gravitational energy, chemical energy, emotional energy and so on! When healthy, these energies flow continuously throughout the body. As we experience this life, our energy channels can become blocked by life events such as past traumas or worries about an uncertain future, creating havoc within the body. If the blocked energy channels never clear, the body begins to compensate. When the compensation becomes chronic an imbalance within the energy systems begins to surface allowing disease or illness to proliferate.
Clearing blockages is imperative to good health and can be accomplished by learning how to breathe, why we breathe and the ways in which we breathe can influence us emotionally, energetically, physically and even spiritually.
Breathwork is simply a breathing practice.
Pranayama: The yogic practice of breathing
Pranayama is the ancient yogic practice of breath control. The Sanskrit word combines prana, meaning "life-force, the breath of life, or vitality," and ayama, which means "to control, lengthen, restrain, or extend." Fundamentally, pranayama is the practice of extending, controlling or expanding the breath to increase our energy, health and vitality through a series of breathing practices that affect both the physical and energetic bodies.
Pranayama is a specific breathing practice.
Breathwork and Pranayama Connection
The involuntary nature of respiration often allows the breath to go unnoticed. When we gain awareness and harness the power of the breath, we harness the power of conscious control breathing and can influence the subconscious: mind, emotional and being.
The breath speaks to our every state:
- Breathing fast and heavy: we are upset
- Sigh deeply: we are sad
- Shallow and short: we are panicking
- Slow and steady: we are calm.