How Yoga Breathing And Stretching Can Relieve Stress
Yoga exercises can bring many benefits. In this article two yoga breathing exercises, Dynamic Breathing and the Cleansing Breath as well as some simple stretching exercises are explained. All these exercises will enhance relaxation.
Try this first experiment in Dynamic Breathing: stand straight but relaxed. Breathing as smoothly and rhythmically as possible, with the mouth closed, inhale slowly and deeply while expanding the diaphragm, then exhale by pushing the diaphragm in and up. Take as long to inhale as to exhale, although normally inhalation involves a shorter movement than exhalation. While striving to equalize and slow down your normal tempo, visualize your limbs as hollow tubes through which the life-giving prana is being drawn into your body.
Picture this energy flowing into your organs, bathing your entire body and cleansing it. As you exhale, visualize fatigue and exhaustion passing out of your system along with the poisonous wastes you breathe out.
Finish with what we call the “Cleansing Breath:” Inhale deeply, then, when your lungs are fully extended, expel the breath suddenly and energetically, using a quick inward jerk of the abdomen to drain the lungs of all air. Repeat the cleansing breath two or three times, and you will be amazed at its bracing effect. After you have become expert at Dynamic Breathing, you can practice it at odd times during the day.
Conscious stretching, together with conscious relaxation, are the best possible preliminaries to the practice of asanas or yoga positions. Try a few simple routines:
After you have completed your yoga breathing exercises, stand straight but relaxed and slowly start to bend over so that your fingers touch your toes. Begin by relaxing your neck so that your chin touches your chest, let the chest cave in while the shoulders move forward and your arms hang loose and limp. Arch your spine and try to bend, vertebra by vertebra in a rolling motion until your whole torso feels limp like the body of a rag doll.
If you cannot touch your toes the first time, do not strain to do it; instead, try to bend lower by pushing the body from the waist down in a few easy, jerking motions. Now straighten up by reversing the process — tense each vertebra in turn, this time from the waist up. Now do a thorough stretch, breathing deeply and luxuriously. Repeat once or twice. You will be astonished at the elasticity your spine acquires if you do this regularly every day for a week.
Another excellent preliminary relaxation routine is stretching on waking up. Make it a habit never to jump out of bed in the morning. Instead, give yourself a minute or two to wake your body thoroughly. Lie flat on your back, preferably without a pillow. Breathing deeply but easily, start by consciously stretching one leg from the hip down, toes pointing so that you can feel the muscles of the calf, and the leg itself feels about an inch longer than the other.
Relax, then repeat with the other leg. Now stretch your arms hard sideways, then over your head, tensing shoulder and neck and muscles, and arching your back like a cat. Now get up slowly, avoiding jerky motions. You have never seen a dog or cat jump up from a nap, unless it has been startled and alerted as if to danger, in which case its adrenalin is probably pouring through its body.
It is precisely such harmful purposeless over-stimulation that you must teach yourself to avoid. Incidentally, this getting-up routine is worth an extra half hour’s sleep. The more completely you learn to control the body the more of its various functions become controllable. For instance, with the mind at peace the great Western bugaboo of insomnia quickly vanishes. Not only does sleep begin to come easily to the person who practices yoga - its very quality is different - sleep that is deep, calm, profoundly dreamless and restful.
Yoga breathing exercises and stretching will lead to many benefits.
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