Pranayam Enhances Other Beneficial Activities
Practicing Pranayam for the enjoyment and benefits that come with it is great, but you can also use special breathing exercises to supercharge the time you spend practicing things like yoga and meditation. That’s because certain Pranayam breathing patterns can get you in the zone faster and drastically improve focus, concentration and energy.
Yossi has spent years developing his special approach to Pranayam, including his own special patterns and variations on traditional teachings. Indeed, Pranayam breathing has long been practiced to enhance both yoga and meditation.
In an article The Yoga Journal, Claudia Cummins profiled six different styles of yoga to learn more about how Pranayam fits into the different traditions. What she found was that breathing patterns and techniques were included in every kind of yoga, but not all in the same way.
Some classes focused on beginning and ending the class with different series of breathing exercises, while others put the emphasis on using different pranayams while doing asanas (poses). Breathe-work was used to help focus students, give them energy at the beginning of classes and calm them at the end. Cummins also saw some instructors teaching yoga poses that could be used to enhance Pranayam as well.
Being aware of the breath and mastering the breath is not limited to any one activity. It literally runs through every single thing we do in our lives and it plays a huge role in how our bodies and minds perform. As Yossi says, “Breath is life. Therefore the quality of the breath will be the quality of your life.”