What is Pranayama | How it works | Benefits & Types of Pranayama

hello namaste hola well first of all i want to say you are so lucky that you know the word pranayama many people come into existence and goes without even knowing what is it and you're super lucky that you're watching this video and in next few minutes you would get a better understanding of what pranayama is so we'll start with the word pranayama this is a sanskrit word which describes a yoga breathing exercise that have the ability to increase your energy release your stress improve your mental clarity and improve physical health as well this word invest

is known as a breath walk it's getting very popular now and time health has said that this is the fastest way to calm down now for better understanding of pranayama the very first thing that we need to understand is what is prana what does prana means right so prana is universal life force it's the energy which distinguishes the living from the dead a dead person is a body without prana and the living person is a body with the prana so that life force which exists is known as prana or in another words it's a vital

energy that is needed by our physical and subtle layers you must be very familiar with the physical layers and i'll talk about the subtle layers in a while so that life force that prana that energy is called as qi and that energy moves in our body through different channels and different centers those energy centers are known as chakras we have seven main chakras in our body you would have seen this picture a lot of time so what those seven chakras or centers are showing the energy centers the subtle layer of energy that flows in our

body and then there are thousands and thousands of nadis channels so the channels through which this energy flows this vital energy flows is known as energy channel which is known as nadis so the next thing we want to understand is we understand prana is this life force and it flows through these energy channels and there are energy centers but how do we get this prana how do we get this energy so there are primarily four main sources that we can get prana from is first one is food so we get our prana from the food

and in food the vegetarian and the fresh food has a higher prana in comparison to the stale food stale food doesn't have as much prana as a fresh food and in the meat because since meat is a dead animals and as we talked earlier that the only force that distinguishes dead and alive is the prana so in dead animals we don't have prana and somewhere i've read even the prana is negative in meat so that's why in spirituality vegetarian food is encouraged to have a higher prana higher energy the second one is sleep you would

have noticed that before going to bed we feel so tired and after just waking up or taking a quick nap we get energized that's how we get a prana that's another way of getting the energy the third way is just the state of mind so sometimes we are very tired and not in the mood to do anything and then someone crack a joke or we watch a nice movie and our mood gets really bright and we smile and a better mood is also a source of prana the fourth source is breath and the breath is

direct and instant source of prana if we don't breathe we die and no more prana so breath is a direct an instant source and pranayama is really about this source of energy that's where uh we would go into little bit more detail like what can we do with the breath to increase our prana so we understand what prana is what the source of energy the next thing we want to understand is what's the effect of prana so as you have seen that in our body we have different channels so channels you can think of like

as you can see here two green channels of energy so uh in in a one state where this blue ball is a prana so prana is flowing through the energy channels continuously smooth and steady and that's when we have the mind of a calm mind happy mind a positive mind state and enthusiastic mind state but sometimes we have some blockages in these channels in these nadis and they gets blocked and because of those blockage what happens is or due to lack of attention the energy channels gets blocked and doesn't flow properly there's a broken or

jerky moment and because of that we have the worry fear uncertainty conflicts negative emotions depression and doubts about us so that's all because of the prana and the blockages and channels so now that we have understand what the prana is how do we get it and what's the effect of it what we want to do is we want to have a high level of prana right we want to keep a good prana a constant flow of prana so how do we do that in order to do that we have pranayama this is from patanjali yoga

sutra and what it means is this mean means in the state of a posture or asana sati means being swash means inspiratory health inspiratory breath and praswas is expiratory breath getty is speed and which is broken so what it means is when you are being in a state or a posture the inhalation and exhalation speed is broken that is pranayama so when you are in a posture and you are breaking the speed of inhalation and exhalation that is pranayama pranayamas the universal life force is regulated or we lengthen it when we lend them or regulate

the vital force that is pranayama so this can be done by different techniques out there which try to break the normal flow of our breath and that is because our normal flow is not really the normal flow the normal flow we have lost our normal flow and we are breathing in a really non-normal flow so by breaking the non-normal flow we allow ourselves to breathe in a normal way now in the ancient times what yogis have done is they've observed the power of breath to increase one's prana and they have developed special breathing techniques to

increase this life energy and maintain this life energy and this pranayama is not just breath control as you know most of the people think of it but it is essentially a way to control the prana through the breath so we are focusing on breath regulating the breath and we are doing all of this to increase the prana in our body now if we talk about benefits of prana definitely if we are focusing on our breath then we are being in the moment we are increasing our awareness and we it gets a sense of calmness to

us but apart from that we get a calm mind it reduces our worries and anxiety it improves our focus and attention boosts our immune system energizes body and mind and it sometimes also slows down the aging process and that's why if you read some of the yogic books you would see there are saints in india who have lived for 300 years and 400 years so how do how do they do this well this is one of the techniques they use for doing it and if if if i tell you that there's a link between our

emotion and breath so for every emotion there's a particular rhythm in the breath and because we cannot control our emotions directly what we are doing here is we are controlling our breath and that is going to control our emotions so if you see when you're calm and relaxed your breath is nice and easy and long but when you're angry it's really short breath and you're not really breathing deep breaths it's very shallow breath and most of the time we take a breath from our chest reason it's not really from our abdomen so if you look

at a baby then baby uh takes a you know deep breath and their tummy is moving up and down so babies are taking this natural breath from the tummy deep breath in and deep breath out and while listening to me you might have already tried it you know taking a deeper breath and releasing it in longer duration calms your mind down so that's these are the benefits of pranayam these are general benefits of pranayama but there are specific benefits you can get out of specific pranayams so here's a few of those specific benefits there's a

brahmari pranayama that calms your mind down instantly there's a kapalbhati pranayam that is very you know really helps in detoxifying body and clearing the energy channels bhastrika is a pranayama that gives you instant energy and i i try this a lot so anytime you're tired it just takes three minutes and you get instant energy it's really magical like from where am i getting this energy you know i so please please look into these techniques try it you would see the differences yourself you don't need to believe in me what i'm saying just try it you'll

see by yourself then there's a nadi shodhan and anulom alone which is to get instant focus if you're if you are doing a task and you're not really able to do it you're getting distracted with so many things that can distract us today do these techniques it's going to give you instant focus and there there are many other i won't be able to cover all of them but the idea in this video is to give you the theory the underlying principle of pranayam why do we do it how it works what's the function how can

we use it how does it work and how can you take it to the next level where you can live for hundreds of years i mean that must be a rigorous problem so maybe we we don't reach there but maybe we can use these techniques to you know live our day-to-day life in a better way it's more of a customized way throughout the day none of these techniques takes more time all of them are like two three four minutes techniques so depending upon situation in the day you are how you feel you just use these

techniques to adjust your product prana levels and perform the best you can during the day so that's all for this video i hope you like this video and if you want to learn more about the individual pranayams comment below which one would you like to learn more about and maybe i prepare a video about those pranayam but until i prepare video i'm sure there are thousands of videos out there you can specifically look for any of these pranayama and learn those pranayama try it for yourself and enjoy the benefits of out