ORIGIN OF YOGA

            Yoga has been originated from ancient Indian saints. In ancient India, saint used to mediate for days together without any movement in their bodies. Saints thought, if there is no movement in the body for long days, definitely it will not be good for health. So they have invented yoga asanas for healthy living.  Though there will not be any movement, yoga has tremendous results in curing ailments and in achieving peace of mind.

            Yoga can be done in a calm place for achieving peace and tranquillity and spirituality. But without movement in the body, we cannot send prana-vayu(air) completely till the lungs, just by sitting idle.   However, ancient Indian priests have invented pranayama techniques to send air completely to the lungs without any movement in the body. The best and complex example in pranayama is floating on water. They have invented this technique based on the simple logic on lungs. The only organ in the body can float on water is lungs! With this technique, they fill lungs completely with air, which make them to float on water. This is just an example to explain about the origin of yoga and the power of pranayama. We need lot of practice to perform such techniques in yoga.

            Pranayam not only gives good breathing system, but also can cure various ailments and gives mental peace.  It has the power of freeing the mind from untruthfulness, ignorance, and all other painful and unpleasant experiences of the body and mind. It is for this reason; the importance of pranayama has been recognised world wide. There are different types of pranayama. We only need few of these types for better and healthy lifestyle. I will explain here about the most important pranayama called deep breathing to improve lung capacity.

Deep Breathing: In this technique, we deeply and slowly inhale air, until the lungs completely can be filled. And exhale slowly, until lungs freed completely. At one breathe we can inhale about 1000-1300ml air. But in normal day to day breathing we inhale about 300ml only. This can be practiced daily for about 10 minutes. This can be increased gradually. Please note that, whoever practice this daily, for them the count of breathing in a minute will 12-15 only, which is a good sign of health.  For others it is about 50-60 per minute.

Benefits of Deep Breathing: By doing this pranayam we sweat a lot and our body produces lot of heat. All segments and muscles in the respiratory system get good exercise. Practice this pranayama everyday, to improve the lung capacity.