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The Importance of Correct Breathing
Ablution (Half Bath)
Tips for Meditation
Sentient Yogic Diet
Better Food Choices
Yogic Fasting
Yogic Ethics -Yama and Niyama
The Importance of Correct Breathing
Correct breathing has a close relationship to both physical and mental health. Here are a few points to keep in mind:
- Agitated breathing creates tension anxiety while steady slow breathing promotes relaxation and calmness.
- Controlling and lengthening the breath increases the power of perception and concentration.
- Every thought and action uses up vital energy. Our primary means of restoring this energy is through breathing.
- The lungs draw in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Incomplete breathing allows carbon dioxide to remain in the lungs, preventing the effective absorption of oxygen and allowing the accumulation of stale air, weakening the lungs and inviting disease.
Some Simple Breathing Exercises
The Full Yogic Breath:
Keep the back straight with the rib cage held in a relaxed position.
Breath through the nose.
First fill the abdomen with air using the diaphragm as a sucking pump.
Then feel the rib-cage filling with air.
Lastly feel the top of the lungs filling with air.
Then feel the top of the lungs emptying (slowly)
Feel the rib-cage emptying (slowly).
Feel the abdomen emptying (again slowly, using mostly the diaphragm as a squeezing pump).
Allow a natural pause after completing exhalation.
Increase duration gradually. Stop immediately if you feel dizzy or strange.
Walking breathing exercise
The best time to perform this exercise is in the early morning when the air is fresh. If done after drinking a litre of water it helps to clear the bowels.
While walking count your steps from 1 to 10.
From 1 to 4 inhale.
From 5 to 10 exhale.
Continue up to half and hour.
Stop immediately if you feel dizzy or strange.
After some time you can increase the length of inhalation and exhalation proportionately, e.g. inhale from 1 to 6, exhale from 7 to 16.
Do not hold the breath.
This exercise can also be done in a sitting position to quickly calm the mind.
You may also repeat the Mantra, “Baba Nam Kevalam” (Love is all there is), instead of counting.
Note: Try to breathe correctly throughout the day. Advanced breathing exercises should only be practiced on the recommendation of an experienced instructor
Ablution (Half Bath)
Before we do meditation, asanas, eat or sleep, we do what's called a
"half-bath." a yogic way of balancing the body temperature and calming and refreshing the mind. It works by cooling the body, especially the organs, which usually get heated in daily activity.
The half-bath also stimulates what's known as the "dive reflex" -the same one that enables dolphins and other marine mammals to conserve oxygen when they dive, - lowering the heart rate, respiration and blood pressure.
It also cools the brain directly through the optic nerves when you splash water in your eyes, and it strengthens the eyes too.
How to do it:
- Use cold water or lukewarm water in cold weather.
- First go to the toilet, use cold water to clean the urinary organ.
- Then pour water on your arms up to the elbows, and your legs up to the knees.
- Take a mouthful of water to keep your eyes wide open, and while holding the water in your mouth, splash water in your at least 12 times, so the water hitting the surface can directly cool the retina and optic nerve.
- Wet the ears and the back of the neck.
- Flush the nose with water by letting water gently flow from your palm into your nostrils by tilting the head backward and then spit it out through the mouth.
Tips for Meditation
- turn off your mobile
- keep the same place, mat or pillow for meditating
- do it every day at the same time
- do it on empty stomach
- do it after a shower or half-bath
- best time for meditation is around sunrise and sunset
- fix the time for your meditation and keep it, even if it is difficult, still there is a lot of benefit from your very effort to focus the mind
Sentient Yogic Diet
The aim of the yogi is to acquire self-knowledge, tranquility and self control. This requires the body and mind to be calm, clear and strong. Certain foods promote this and certain foods work against it. The yogis divide food into 3 categories and prefer to take only sentient food:
1. SENTIENT FOOD - These foods are good for body and mind:
Fruits, vegetables, gains, nuts/seeds, organic dairy products
2. MUTATIVE FOOD - These foods over-stimulate the body and mind, making calmness difficult to attain, and stressing the nerves:
Coffee, tea, chocolate, hot spices and other stimulants
3. STATIC FOOD - These foods dull the mind and decay the body, making meditation difficult, and increasing the body's susceptibility to disease:
Meat, fish, eggs, mushrooms, onions, garlic, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, decaying or burned food
Better Food Choices:
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From
Cow’s milk
Beef, chicken, pork, shellfish
Cold cereal, oatmeal, pancakes
Baked potato with butter
Coffee, soda, alcohol, fruit juice
1 litre/quart of water per day
Pizza, hamburger, fried chicken
Iceberg lettuce salad
Vinegar/cream-based dressing juice
Pasta with oil/tomato sauce
Potato chips and ranch dip
Candy, gum, cake, pie, donuts
Meat and starch meals
Cooked or micro-waved meals
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To
Almond, soy or rice milk
Tofu or soy products
Millet, buckwheat, quinoa
Basmati rice with olive or flax oil
Water with a pinch of salt and lemon
3 litres of water per day
Sprouted wheat tortilla with vegetables
Spinach/red leaf lettuce with avocado
Olive oil-based dressing with lemon
Buckwheat soy noodles with olive oil
Brown rice cake with almond butter
Wheat tortilla chips with hummus Almonds, pumpkin seeds, raw vegetables
Vegetables and low-carbohydrate meals
Raw, steamed or low-temperature meals
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Yogic Fasting
Fasting is one of the secrets of long life. Your body and your digestive organs in particular, need a rest from time to time.
Periodic fasting provides an opportunity to eliminate many toxins from your body. It also allows your digestive system to recuperate from the rough treatment that you may have given it by overeating or eating the wrong foods or eating at the wrong time.
Fasting also helps you to keep a balanced mind in spite of the gravitational pull of the moon on the fluids of your body. That is why our fasting system is timed in relation to the moon. The eleventh day after the new and full moons is the time when this attraction is very strong. If you fast during this period, then the emptiness of the stomach pulls down liquids that would otherwise rise up in your body under the attraction of the moon.
This system of yogic fasting has a duration from sunrise to sunrise. You begin at sunrise on the fasting day and eat nothing. If your body is strong you can also refrain from drinking anything. On the next day, you can break the fast with lemon water with a bit of salt. This drink helps to flush the digestive system, eliminating waste material. And then you take fruit and other suitable food.
All in all, fasting is one of the best practices for maintaining physical, mental and spiritual health.
Yogic Ethics - Yama and Niyama
In ancient days students would have to spend many years following and perfecting ethical principles before their teachers would teach more advanced yoga or meditation lessons.
The word “Yama” means to control. The spirit is that an effort to maintain control over our natural human tendencies and direct them in a positive way is necessary in order to lead a happy life.
These practices develop the body mind and Self in an integrated and progressive way. They begin with the environment, proceed towards the body and then inwards through the successive levels of mind culminating in the Self.
The Five Yamas:
1. Ahimsa: Not to harm any living being by thought, word or action.
2. Satya: To be guided by the spirit of welfare in ones speech and action.
3. Asteya: Not to neither take what belongs to others nor deprive them of their due in thought or deed.
4. Brahmacarya: To endeavour to deal with all people and all things as manifestations of Divine Consciousness.
5. Aparigraha: To make do with the simple necessities of life in order that others may also have enough to live.
The Five Niyamas:
1. Shaoca: Keeping body, mind and environment clean. Actively resisting degrading thoughts by replacing them with positive ones.
2. Santosha: Maintaining mental calm and balance. Restraining emotional extremes and treating all people equally.
3. Tapah: Availing opportunities to make personal sacrifices on behalf of disadvantaged persons.
4. Svadhyaya: Studying spiritual books and keeping spiritual company.
5. Iishvara Pranidhana: Always being conscious of the goal of one’s life and guiding all ones actions by that goal.
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