Harnessing the power of breath for mental health & physical well-being
Team L&M
Anu Lall, author, certified Yoga coach, meditation teacher, and the founder of YogaSmith whose teachings are rooted in Yoga, Tibetan, and Thai forest traditions, blended with neuro-linguistic programming is back with her fourth book Breath WorkOUT for Life: For a Fitter, Stronger and Happier YOU, a transformative book that combines traditional yoga techniques with scientific evidence to harness the power of breath for mental and physical well-being. Following is an excerpt from the book:
Chapter 3 – Train Your Dragon, Know Your Why (Pg 24-27)
Find your unique breathing rhythm
Whenever the body suffers from a chronic disorder, it forgets its natural rhythm of breathing. The primary task of conscious breathing is to restore rhythm and balance to the breathing apparatus and build capacity. With breathing practice we are guiding and training breath and enhancing the body’s life force to flow naturally in the manner it was originally designed to flow. In this way we are breaking older breathing patterns and enabling newer breathing patterns to take shape.
Train Your Dragon. Know Your Why.
Do you want to tone the parasympathetic nervous system and would you like to increase your lung capacity? Do you want to clear your sinus? Do you want better digestion? Maybe you would like to work a bit with the mind, meditate deeply, sharpen your focus and build awareness. The benefits are endless.
Improve exercise capacity and ‘efficiency’
Breath WorkOUT helps you unleash the champion in you – making you the best version of yourself. It helps you to improve the capacity you may have for running, swimming, cycling or any other exercise.
Every athlete or sports person knows the importance of the even pace of breath and the depth of breathing.
When your body exerts itself just to breathe, it gets tired easily. When you optimize your breath, every part of the body works with ease and you experience more energy. With regular practice, you will observe a marked improvement in this parameter which is clinically measured as exercise tolerance.
Many studies have linked improved exercise tolerance
with regular practice of yoga breathing.
A study compared the impact of yoga breathing versus swimming on lung capacity and exercise tolerance. Surprisingly, breathing exercises fared equally well on
most parameters of exercise tolerance when compared with high-intensity swimming training.
Breath WorkOUT also improves your exercise efficiency by optimizing the productivity of your personal vehicle – your body.
Scientist call this parameter the running economy – the body’s efficiency in converting oxygen into forward running motion. It is like fuel economy for a vehicle.
