What exactly is Pranayama ?

The word pranayama is derived from the Sanskrit words prana + ayama, prana means life force inside every living being which vanishes when a living being dies and ayama means to expand or enlarge, ultimately the full word Pranayama means to extend the life force inside us.

Now after knowing the meaning of pranayama, we should stop for a second and question ourselves that why we are reading about pranayama when we all know that yoga is better than this or some other random question.

But there are very less people know that pranayama is itself forms the part of yoga, in other words yoga is the asanas (postures), meditation and breath control (pranayama) all of these combined together.

True Purpose of Pranayama

Today, most people allure to yoga keeping in mind their physical health issues and that’s why most people do yoga, they thought that they can attain killer body or lower their diabetes or any other health related issue by doing yoga poses, but that’s not the aim of yoga. Its aim is to achieve liberation (moksha) with the help of yoga and we all should respect this reason.

We should explore yoga for the sake of our better lifestyle in any environment (good, bad, etc) because yoga doesn’t take anything from us but give us all the good we can get. Yoga doesn’t only help in attaining complete physical health but also the mental and spiritual health as well and these two aspects are often ignored by yoga aspirants or learners, it is their duty to gain as much knowledge as possible about ALL aspects of yoga and it is not hard to reach these information because that’s what internet is for- to provide information about anything you want.

Further exploration

Now after motivating you all a little bit, let’s explore pranayama further, after all that’s what the topic of this post is.

As you all have read above pranayama is the technique of controlling breath and this practice has several benefits from physical health to mental and spiritual health as well, pranayama is not a single technique but it is the pool of many techniques combined together, for e.g.- Anulom-Vilom helps in cleansing and achieving mental piece, bhastrika helps in releasing toxins and purifies blood, ujjayi helps in curing throat and lungs diseases and the list goes on but these are just some pranayama’s names and only some benefits, there are so many benefits whose main aim is to balance mind and spirituality within us.

So, it is advisable to say that people who are yoga enthusiasts should gain as well as spread correct knowledge about yoga, in ancient times, yogis do the yoga for the purpose of achieving liberation but as time changed, world too and the purpose of doing yoga as well.

Today 300 hour YTTC is the permanent way of living a better life and it means a lot because there is nothing except for yoga which can change your life completely in a totally good way.

Pranayama balance the energy in our chakras and nadis, these are not medical terms but they are present in our body, when the energy continuously flows through these chakras and nadis, we feel as if we are new person and can connect to god to a certain level, this is the main reason why pranayama helps in balancing spiritual health. A person with balanced nadis and chakras is the person who is healthy from the inside and is devoid of committing sins and falsehood, that’s why yogis are good people who always tries to help others and serve the humanity in the best way they can.

A Little Note

Yoga teacher training in India is pure science meaning ancient yogis have formulated complete yoga through science so it is strong advice to avoid experimenting with pranayama or even poses and meditation and last but not the least, people feel motivated to do something by seeing other or reading about others but that motivation doesn’t last long, not even for the period of couple days, so always try to find motivation continuously, not to just do yoga but also continue it for long time.