Conscious Breathing: Have you ever noticed how you breathe? 🆙

A sigh for no reason? Pay attention: you may have stopped breathing for a few seconds without realizing it. The hectic pace of life ends up dispersing our focus and generating moments of stress or anxiety. The result? We disconnect from the most basic functioning of our body. Breathing is an important exercise for emotional and energetic balance. In the philosophy of yoga, the Sanskrit word “pranayama” means the “expanding of energy” or “conscious breathing” and describes different breathing exercises, from the most calming to the most energetic. It is conscious breathing that captures and directs prana (energy) to the different body parts of our subtle body.

When we breathe consciously, we facilitate the channeling of oxygen, so in pranayama the idea is respiratory reeducation, increasing lung capacity, blood flow, toning the nervous system and brain. Another positive thing about conscious breathing is that as you pay attention to the breathing process, you are developing your focus and improving your concentration. These benefits treat our emotional and mental aspect. It is in the concentration of the respiratory flow, for example, that we begin the meditation process.

breathing exercises

Breathing is divided into four phases: breathing in (puraka), holding the lungs full (kumbhaka), breathing out (rechaka), and holding the lungs empty (shúnyaka). Among the breathing exercises of yoga is square breathing, in which you mentally count to four in each of the four phases. There is also polarized breathing, in which you inhale through one nostril, hold for a few seconds, and exhale through the other, then inhale through the same nostril that you exhaled, hold, and exhale through the other. This is a way of balancing the body's calming and stimulating energies. Always try to visualize your lungs working, the swelling of the abdomen and the lower, middle and upper parts of the lungs.

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