HOW'S YOUR BREATH?

One of the most important elements of a yoga practice is pranayama. By regulating the inhalation, the exhalation and the suspension of the breath, we learn to modulate our breathing and interrupt unconscious (and often unhelpful) breathing patterns.

The ancient yogis taught that we are each allocated 21,600 breaths per day in an intended life span of one hundred years. By these calculations, if we breathe 15 times a minute, we will live to be 75 years old but if we can slow down our breathing rate to ten times a minute we will clock up the full century.

Much like a bank account from which we can overdraw, through anxiety and agitation we deplete our most precious resource. In contrast, by learning to breath consciously with a smooth, even pattern (even in times of stress) we promote equanimity and might even lengthen our lives. Food for thought.

One quote…

A yogi measures the span of life by the number of breaths, not by the number of years.