Breathing Yoga

photograph courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawnzlea/

Breathing yoga is an amazing healing practice that everyone can learn and make use of in their everyday lives. In breathing yoga, you will literally breathe out suppressed emotions, fears, negative thoughts, painful memories, traumas, as well as belief systems and programming that hinder you from becoming the person you truly want to be. Stress, depression, anger, traumas , anxiety and panic attacks can likewise be addressed by the practice of breathing yoga.

Breathing yoga techniques originated from the ancient Hindu discipline of pranayama, a breathing exercise that controls the prana or the life force which is also known as the breath of life. By taking control of the prana, the power that your mind and your emotions have over you is released and directed towards the spirit, transferring all the power now to your higher consciousness or what others call your connection to the divine power. This ability to connect to the divine energy is what makes breathing yoga a very powerful healing tool.

When you regularly experience being in a higher state of consciousness brought about by your breathing yoga practice, you will find that you now possess a healthy detachment from your feelings and your thoughts, giving you a greater sense of wisdom, objectivity and clarity about your life and the world around you. This also means that your emotions and your thoughts are now in union with your spirit, giving you a sense of oneness and wholeness -- of unity -- which is why the practice is called breathing yoga because yoga means "union with God".

There are many types of breathing yoga methods one of which is called Conscious Rebirthing. Conscious Rebirthing is a breathing exercise done initially with a coach who guides you through a series of breath variations that help cleanse your body of toxic emotions, calm your mind and bring you to a higher level of awareness. The exercise is done in a quiet and dimly lit room with only the coach and the person doing the breath-work present. A session can take from an hour and a half to two hours, sometimes more, and is done on a regular basis until you gain mastery of the technique to do it on your own.

I recommend breathing yoga to:

• people who are tired of being slaves to their emotions
• people who feel paralyzed by the thoughts they create in their minds
• people who find themselves trapped in recurring life patterns and are prepared to break the cycle permanently
• people who feel manipulated and oppressed by guilt, insecurities, self-doubt, phobias and belief systems instilled in them since childhood
  
• people suffering from diseases and believe they could win the battle by acquiring a new attitude and more positive outlook in life but don't know how to go about it
  

And lastly, if you believe that only you, and you alone, should be the master of your own life, if you are committed to break through your own fears and go beyond the limits your mind and life experiences have built against you, then the first step to freedom begins with breathing yoga.