Breathing Through The Pain

Hi Guys!
I have been lucky enough that the pain clinic in my hometown have paid for me to have one-on-one yoga sessions. The yoga teacher is so amazing and she has traveled all around the world learning and teaching! She knows lots of different techniques from lots of different countries. One of them was an Indian breathing technique that she showed me, it was called Anulom Vilom Pranayama and I find that it does a great job. Whenever I am stressed or I bump my CRPS foot I do it, and it helps calm me down.It slows down my breathing because when I am in a lot of pain I find it hard to control. The pain doesn’t go away when I do it, it just relaxes my muscles and my mind. I think it could really help anyone when they are stressed or hurt.
I found a really interesting website that explains this technique well called The Power of Kundalini. I took the information and image below from there. This is how you do it:

• Sit in a comfortable sitting position. Make sure spine is erect and body is relaxed. Make the body completely still. Relax the body and close your eyes.
• After some minutes, begin to develop the awareness of breath in the nostrils. With inhalation you whole awareness should move from tip of nose to eyebrow center and with exhalation, move your awareness from eyebrow center to tip of nose.
• Become aware of the triangular form of the breath. The base of the triangle is the upper lip, its sidea are the left and the right nasal passages and the tip is the eyebrow centre.
• Firstly, feel the breath moving in and out of the left nostril, then the right nostril. Then be aware of the flow thorugh both nostrils simultaneously.
• Try to feel that you are breathing in and out through left nostril only. Some imagination may be neccesary for this condition. Your imagination will help to bring about this state in reality. Continue this practice for a minute or two. Then repeat the same thing for the right nostril. Continue this also for few minutes.
• Now, try to control the breath flow mentally by moving the breath alternately through each nostril. Imagine breath going in with the left nostril and then coming out through right nostril. Then feel the breath inhaled via right nostril and exhaled by left nostril. This completes one round of anulom vilom pranayama. Do 4 rounds.
• After this, you have to do one round of prana shuddhi. Imagine breath going in via both nostrils and meeting at the eyebrow center, and then starting from center it comes out through both the nostrils. This completes one round of Prana Shuddhi. Both imagination and awareness are required.
• After this you do 4 more rounds of anulom vilom pranayama followed by one round of prana shuddhi. Continue practising in this manner.

I have had great results from this and I think you should give it a go too!

Happy breathing!

FZ out!! 🙂