Yoga for Computer Users: Healthy Necks, Shoulders, Wrists, and Hands in the Postmodern Age (Rodmell Press Yoga Shorts) by Blaine Sandy

Author:Blaine, Sandy [Blaine, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodmell Press
Published: 2008-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

BREATHING AWARENESS IN SEATED POSTURE

BREATHING AWARENESS IN BOUND ANGLE POSE

As you become more practiced at observing your breath, a helpful tool is to place the hands on the body to direct the breath into different areas. This helps to open the lungs for increased breath capacity and also gives the mind a specific task to focus on, increasing the concentration aspect of the exercise. As you place your hands on your belly, you can send the breath down into the lower portion of the lungs and feel the abdomen gently expand and release for a few breaths. Then place your hands on your low back. The back body often doesn’t receive as much breath, and the sensations and movements may feel unfamiliar as you send the breath there. Then move your hands to your side rib cage, and feel the lungs broaden outward from the spine, as the breath moves into the side body and the middle portion of the lungs. See if you can sense your diaphragm, just behind the solar plexus (where the floating ribs come together below the chest), receiving breath as well. Next fold your arms across your chest and place the hands on the sides of your chest, inside your upper arms. As you move the breath into your hands, you will feel the breath moving higher into the lungs, continuing to open into the side body but also expanding into the upper back, behind and between your shoulder blades. Finally, rest your fingertips on your upper chest, just below the collarbones, and feel the breath come into the highest area of the lungs, sensing where they connect at the clavicles, as you gently direct the breath into your touch.

Stay with each stage for at least 1 or 2 minutes, and observe which areas your breath flows to easily and naturally and which places feel more constricted or resistant to receiving the breath—which paths, in other words, are less traveled by the respiratory system. According to Dennis Lewis, author of The Tao of Natural Breathing, the human lung capacity is approximately 5,000 milliliters, but the average amount of air in each breath we take is just 500! So for most of us, many areas of the lungs, and the corresponding muscles that support them, are underused. It is quite typical to breathe habitually into either the belly or the chest, neglecting the other portions of the lungs, and those with voice or musical training may have been taught diaphragmatic breathing techniques. One of the benefits of asana is to open up the underused areas and naturally increase the amount of breath capacity we use. This is one of the fundamental reasons that practicing yoga is energizing: Physiologically yoga actually increases the amount of oxygen our cells receive with each breath. While it is healthful to increase our oxygen intake, this should happen gradually, over time, because the body can integrate only so much change at one time. As new areas of the lungs open more

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.