The Yoga Tutor

The Importance of the Breath
[ Excerpt from The Science of Yoga, page 38 ]

How long can you go without taking a breath? Go ahead, give it a try. I?ll wait right here! That's right, not more than a mere handful of seconds for most of us and then we're finished!

Of course, clean, healthy food and pure water are also necessities of life, but we can still go on a while without them. The breath really is the chief sustainer of life itself. Knowing this, does our ability to breathe adequately not seem an important part of health?

If we breathe into only 25% of our capacity, with each breath we take, which most of us unfortunately do, then we are breathing in only a quarter the potential life-giving, life-sustaining, vital energy each and every moment!

If we want to be truly healthy, energetically infused beings, then that simply will not do!

Breathing, as well as being the vehicle for delivery of the vital, life-giving energy to our being, is the flywheel of our biological mechanism. It regulates, controls and affects many of our body functions.

Therefore, when we breathe properly and fully, we have the opportunity to manipulate these functions (i.e., control body temperature, heart rate, etc.), and hence, greatly affect our state of health on many levels.

[Continued...]


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NOTE: This yoga article is an excerpt from The Science of Yoga, an online yoga training program with streaming yoga videos and 600 pages of step-by-step yoga instruction.


"The Science of Yoga is a course worthy of
leather binding and an honored place in the
finest libraries in the world 
... It is indeed a masterful work."
 

Dr. John Michael Christian
AwakeningWithYoga.com

 

Learn More About
The Science of Yoga Course

Foreword
About Yoga Home Study
Section 1 - Getting Started
Section 2 - Foundations of Yoga (1)
Section 3 - Foundations of Yoga (2)
Section 4 - Classical Ashtanga Yoga
Section 5 - Modern Yoga
Section 6 - The History of Yoga
Section 7 - Yama Niyama Introduction
Section 8 - Awareness
Section 9 - The Yoga Diet
Section 10 - Yoga Philosophy
Section 11 - The Yoga of Perception
Section 12 - The Yoga Path
Section 13 - The Virtue of Restraint
Section 14 - The Classical Yoga Texts
Section 15 - Yoga Cleansing
Section 16 - The Law of Cause and Effect
Section 17 - The Yoga of Digestion
Section 18 - Yoga Psychology
Section 19 - Yoga Psychology (Part 2)
Section 20 - Yoga Psychology (Part 3)
Section 21 - Yoga Psychology (Part 4)
Section 22 - Controlling The Senses
Section 23 - The Higher Stages of Yoga
Section 24 - Higher Stages of Yoga (Part 2)