Power Posture of the Month

1. Pranayama

Also known as Standing Deep Breathing

Spread the breath all over your body, creating energy for the rest of the class.

Benefits

• Opens cervical vertebrae
• Stretches nervous system
• Relaxes the mind
• Quadruples lung capacity
• Counteracts emphysema, asthma, and other breathing problems
• Helps regulate blood pressure
• Helps detoxify the body
• Exercises the nervous, respiratory and circulatory systems
• You are inhaling six pounds of oxygen in six seconds. This pranayama creates heat in the body. By doing this posture you build your lung capacity to four times that of the average person.

Tips

• Do not close your eyes at any point in this posture to prevent falling over.
• Breathe with your throat. This means that on the intake, if you feel your breath in your nostrils and make a sniffing sound, you are not using your throat. To get the air where it belongs, you must pull it in steadily through the nose, until the pressure of it forces a snoring sound int he back of your throat.
• Pranayama should be done before any kind of physical activity. It expands the lungs to their full capacity, it increases circulation to the whole body, and it wakes everything up and prepares the muscles for action.