Breathing Techniques For Stress Management, Work  & Life Balance and For Quality Sleep

Before practicing the Pranayama techniques written by Ebru Şinik in her book Health Breat and Life, you should especially pay attention to the list of contraindications. It is especially recommended that you watch the application video below before practicing.

I am starting my article series where I will share breathing techniques that you can use to  detoxing the mind, getting rid of the intense anger from the arguments with your spouse, manager, or somebody else, increasing concentration and memory, decreasing asthma, increasing self- confidence, and balancing the high blood pressure.

Anuloma Viloma (Alternate Nostril Breathing)

•             You can practice while you are sitting straight on a chair or the floor

•             It is a practice for children of 7 years and older

•             In one sitting; you can practice minimum of 3 minutes, maximum of 10 minutes

•             You can practice, as you need during the day

Contraindications (Definite Inadvisable Situation)

•             Chest pain

•             High blood pressure (>160>100: People who use high blood pressure medicine can practice)

•             Epileptic seizure (If you had it within the past 6 months)

Benefits

•             It is one of the most effective stress management exercises. It calms the nerves, and relaxes.

•             It is good for reducing the mental fluctuations related to sleeplessness, and anxiousness. I recommend this to the people who has sleeplessness, by sitting straight in bed and practicing it for

 4-5 minutes.

•             Good for shoulder, back, and neck ache. It releases the effects of stress in those areas.

•             It can be a deep detox within the sub consciousness, and conscious body.

•             It discharges motions like revenge, hatred, anger, pain, sorrow, fear out of the body, as to providing continuous peace and serenity.

•             It is an excellent exercise for development of memory. It stimulates right and the left brain lobes one by one, and increases the blood circulation in the brain. You can actually teach this technique to your children, who are older than 7 years old.

•             High healing effect for the asthma patients! It rejuvenates the lungs and increases the capacity. The breathing capacity increases drastically in time.

•             Good for reducing coughing.

•             Heals and improves relationships.

•             Increases awareness.

•             It calms binging.

How to Practice

•             Your mouth is closed, and the tip of the tongue should be touching the fire point. You are only going to use your nose to breathe.

•             Put your right index and middle finger in the middle of your brows, and close your right nostril with your thumb.

•             Exhale slowly through your left nostril.

•             When your exhalation is complete, inhale through your left nostril. At the end of your breath, close your left nostril with your pinky and your ring finger.

•             Release your thumb from the right nostril, and slowly exhale.

•             When your exhalation is complete, inhale through your right nostril, and close it with thumb again, at the end of your inhalation.

•             Lift your ring finger from your left nostril, and exhale.

•             If you are doing this alternating breathing technique for the first time, follow this procedure for 3 minutes: Exhale through your left nostril, inhale through your left nostril, exhale through your right nostril, inhale through your right nostril, exhale through your left nostril… change the closed nostril each time you inhale.

•             When we finish the breathing method, exhale through the left nostril, put your hand on your knee while your eyes are softly closed, and breathe with a normal rhythm to rest for a short while. We start with left, and end with left; why? We are predominantly aiming for the activation of the parasympathetic system.

Another point that we need to pay attention, when we are practicing this method is the time that it takes to exhale should be more than the time that we inhale. In other words, if we are inhaling in 1 period of time, we should exhale 2 periods of time. Yet, in the first exercises, it is okay to keep both time periods equal. In time, as you practice, this should become “1:2 as in inhale time: exhale time.” When you keep practicing, you are going to realize that the time in exhalation is twice as much as the time in inhalation. The healing secret of the Alternate Nostril Breathing is hidden in extending the time of exhalation. But I need to emphasize strongly that to the contrary to what we are aiming, you should not put yourself under stress by focusing on this. You should continue with the time as to however you start on your alternating breathing, where your respiratory system will regulate itself, and also by the help of your awareness the exhaling time will extend.

If you decide to practice this breathing technique, you should start with 3-minute practices, each day, during the first week. If you get nervous, angry, sad, worried, scared, or have the craving for binging, you can practice this for 3 minutes, as you need it during the day.

In the second week, you can increase your practice time to 5 minutes per practice, as many time as you need it during the day.

In the third and the fourth weeks, you can increase the time by 2 minutes, which you can practice for 7 minutes, and also 9 minutes per practice.

The maximum time per practice is restricted by 10 minutes.

 

You can go to this link to see the sample of a video for Alternate Nostril Breathing at our YouTube channel: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzuU1q0Lufk