Yoga and pranayama for our health

Yoga and pranayama for our health

 

The first question we have – what is Yoga and what is Pranayama? People often associate the concept of yoga with “physical practice” and pranayama with “breathing practice.” This is not true. The concept of Hatha yoga can be translated from Sanskrit as “the union of the sun and the moon”, because hatha has two roots HA - “hakaram”, which means the sun and THA - “thakaram”, which means the moon, and yoga is “connection” or “unity” . Thus, Hatha yoga is a science that allows a person to balance and harmonize the active and passive, positive and negative, mental and physical.

 

Pranayama consists of 2 different words: “prana” - translated as energy for life and “ayama” - stretching, increasing and distribution. It turns out that Pranayama is a technique that allows a person to control the vital energy of the body. Pranayama uses a person’s exceptional ability to control his breath, hold it, stretch inhalation and exhalation.

 

Imagine what you have car. A car, a means of transportation in space from point A to point B. And of course, you have rights, i.e. knowledge and experience of driving and operating it. That's why you fill it with good fuel and do annual maintenance.

 

Life on earth is almost endless, it was there before we arrived and will continue after we leave. Our body is like a machine - our means of transportation through life, a tool that allows us to experience life from birth to death. Every culture and religion has a set of rules on how to live, a kind of “rules of driving and operation.” Yoga is one of the systems for life, an ancient teaching from India, which can be roughly compared with the “rules for operating and driving” the body through its life. According to yoga, we have three bodies: the physical and two subtler bodies - the mind and spirit. Diseases arise in any of them. Athletes in excellent physical shape, with a baggage of sporting achievements, can often experience depression, or positive, happy people, always ready to help others, and who consume a lot of sweets eventually come to a physical imbalance. Therefore, yoga views life not just as physical life, but much more broadly.

 

Modern people often understand the state of “ I’m healthy” as everything is fine, nothing needs to be done, and the state “I’m sick” - I need a doctor and a pill that will relieve the symptoms. Yoga believes that the state of “I am sick” requires treatment and therapy, and the state of “I am healthy” requires discipline.

 

Imagine that you have only one white T-shirt and you play football in it every day. Of course, it gets dirty every day, but if you wash it every day, it will remain white, and if not, then little by little, little by little, it will turn black over time. From the state of “I am healthy” to the state of “I am sick”. When we work on ourselves every day, we renew, cleanse, harmonize our bodies and remain healthy, and if we do nothing, then health disappears over time. The first symptoms, a feeling of illness, appear when the body’s resource is already 80% exhausted. Until this moment there are no obvious sensations. This is why “unexpected” diagnoses with a poor prognosis are so common. The practice of yoga allows you to daily correct the slightest, outwardly not noticeable, problems in any body, maintain resource and full functionality.

 

A person gets into stressful situations almost every day There is a huge variety of situations: emergency at work, credit, family, children, friends, car - it doesn’t matter... Every stress triggers a chemical reaction again and again. Immunity decreases, oxidation occurs. The result is nervousness, lack of energy, negative thinking, possibly a runny nose, sore throat, etc. Do you want to change the pace of life, slow down? You can work your body until you sweat, you can use aromatherapy, or you can use some Pranayama techniques - a quick and effective way to calm the mind, relieve stress, and increase vital energy.