Yoga Health and Fitness

Posts Tagged ‘visualization’

Yoga is said to offer a whole host of benefits to practitioners including the development of long, lean muscles, increased strength and vitality, better circulation and lowered stress levels. But yoga can also have some curative benefits as well including the potential to help you to quit smoking.

A smoking habit is a powerful addiction. Most smokers are very much aware of the dangers of smoking, and have tried to quit many times before. People who want to quit but are afraid to because they don’t want to gain weight will be glad to know that using yoga as a way to let go of cigarettes will ensure that you avoid this troublesome side effect of quitting. The weight gain associated with quitting smoking is caused by replacing the habit of smoking with the habit of putting too much food in your mouth. With yoga, we will be replacing the habit of breathing in cigarette smoke with deep cleansing breaths of healing oxygen that will fill your lungs with clean air, clear your mind and rejuvenate your body.

Yoga works in several ways to help you to quit smoking:

•    Helps you to cultivate enough willpower and discipline to quit smoking

•    Gives you the tools to manage your body’s cravings for nicotine

•    Puts you deeply in touch with your body and breath; you will no longer want to pollute your newly healthy body with the deadly toxins from smoking.

Specific Yogic Techniques to quit smoking:

•    Pranayma (deep, controlled breathing)
The deep breathing pranayma techniques actually heal your body as the nicotine is leaving the body and lungs. Deep breathing exercises also help at those when strong nicotine cravings occur. Practicing these exercises in addition to regular yoga asana practice eventually replaces the smoking habit and the craving begins to diminish until they have vanished completely.

•    Jala Neti
Jalaneti is the practice of using a small vessel called a neti pot filled with warm salted water to gently flush the nasal passages. Jala neti works to clean the nasal passages, but it also serves to stimulate the pituitary gland in the brain, which awakens the Ajna Chakra located behind the forehead. Jalaneti, when performed before meditation helps to create a space for clear and unobstructed breathing.

•    Meditation and visualization
The practice of meditation brings you to a place of relaxed awareness where you can access your inner strength and wisdom.  While in meditation you can visualize all of the stress, worry, tension and negative emotions are flowing away from your body. You can also visualize yourself as you intend to be–a healthy, happy, non-smoker.

Yoga helps you to cultivate a new healthier lifestyle. It increases lung capacity and through practicing the asana, meditation, visualization, jala neti and deep, pranayma breathing the urge to smoke and pollute the body eventually simply fades away.

Kundalini yoga is one of several major approaches to yoga that dates back to the Upanishads in ancient India. The practice evolved from within the monasteries in Tibet and India over the course of centuries through systematically studying precise movements and breathing techniques to bring about certain results.

By placing the focus on the Chakras, or energy centers of the body, participants learn to generate spiritual power or Kundalini energy. This energy is often described as being held in dormancy in the spine—not unlike a sleeping snake coiled up at the base of the spine. (Sakti) When you engage in the practice of Kundalini yoga, you awaken and release that once latent spiritual force.

Kundalini Yoga has been defined by the Divine Life Society of India, as the “. . . coiled up, dormant, cosmic power that underlies all organic and inorganic matter within us. . .”

Participants learn special techniques in order to focus on the life force energy and rouse the dormant Kundalini energy bringing it up throughout all of the seven chakras. The first chakra lives at the base of the spine, the second at the lower abdomen between belly button and pubic bone, the third can be found at the solar plexus (between the belly button and the base of the rib cage). The heart chakra is the fourth chakra found in the center of the chest, the fifth is the throat chakra, the sixth between the eyebrows, and the seventh Chakra—the crown Chakra lives on the top of your head. Students learn to raise this sacred force all the way up the body through the use of asana and pranayama techniques.

There are many books and DVDs available to help students learn Kundalini yoga at home. Some of these DVDs contain both lectures and asana practice sequences, which students can follow along with and practice whenever they want to.

You will find several web sites on the Internet that offer free Kundalini yoga asana sequences.  Many of these asanas are focused on building and maintaining a flexible spine and core body strength. Sequences begin with specific pranayama (controlled breathing) exercises, which allow the student to relax, get centered and let go of the stress and cares of the day. This is then followed by some chanting before the asana practice begins. A closing chant and a period of meditation typically ends the routine.

The ultimate goal of practicing Kundalini yoga is to achieve an awakening experience, or sahaja enlightenment experience. This phenomena occurs quite spontaneously and is not in the participant’s control. Sometimes there can be a shaking of the body, spinal rocking, or other ecstatic experiences that can be pleasurable.

The Kundalini approach takes the study and practice of yoga to a deeper, more profound level. Students learn to embrace the powerful spiritual forces within themselves to bring about great changes, healing and profound personal transformations.