In recent years it has become normal to see exercise as a great regulator of health and even an aid, if not improver, to cognition, how well your brain works. There are numerous studies that now quite conclusively show this. (1) This is great news. Only 100-150 years ago physical activity was considered to leave one dull-minded and it was actually a raised objection by the educated groups, at least in India, to not engage in activities like yoga asanas and other physical force.
From 1920 on Swami Kuvalayananda took it upon himself to bring physical education, with the addition of yoga asanas, into the Indian school curriculum. This was an incredible feat for an ardent nationalist to have been selected by the Britisher government of the day to appoint him to this role in 1932.
Ironically in today’s active, over-worked world we have almost swung the other way, needing to be reminded to literally relax, slow down, learn how to breathe, for not just physical health but to actually realize the best return from your physical activity. In current times of required isolation how many are actually finding the balance between enough activity to stimulate the body and brain and adequate rest to relax the musculature, restore the nervous function, regulate the breath and bring relief, even lightness to the inner emotional world? With so many experiencing a load of stress, even anxiety in these times, it takes its load on brain function and how well you can emotionally process all that’s coming at you in life. One outcome of that stress load alters synapses leading to a disruption in communication between neurons (2).
You need a breathwork plan and a relaxation strategy
Relaxation:
A wonderful pose from the world of yoga that features often as people’s favorite is “savasana”. Strangely it translates as “corpse”, thankfully only as metaphor and an indication of the degree to let go of the body. But not just the body – the mind also. A similarly styled technique became popular and studied in the late 1960s leading researcher and scientist, Dr. Herbert Benson, to name it the “Relaxation Response”, culminating in a book in 1975 (3). In a sense he renamed and repackaged certain meditational techniques and called it by this more popularly acceptable term. Yet it is still not the full practice of savasana. Interestingly in a 2013 study on post-exercise recovery with or without music the researchers found no difference between these conditions and concluded “Relaxing music unaccompanied by meditation techniques or other such interventions may not have a major role in reducing anxiety in certain experimental settings” (4) The point to note here is “unaccompanied by meditation techniques”. Recovery, rest, music, etc. are limited if the mind is not engaged in the equation. We (at Samahita) emphasize this in our effective Brain Health Upgrade program.
This leads us then to:
Relaxation with breath regulation as both meditation technique and body and mind restoration
Earlier than Benson, what is most likely the first validated medical journal publication on “savasana”, was by Dr. Datey M.D, head of Cardiology at K.E.M. Hospital Bombay, and Dr. Vinekar of the Kaivalyadham, the chief researcher under Swami Kuvalayananda, published in the journal Angiology (5) in 1969 (but presented at The Joint Annual Meeting of the American College of Angiology and International College of Angiology, Las Vegas, 1967). It detailed empirical results to show the positive effects of this real level of relaxation on reducing hypertension. Yet Swami Kuvalayananda himself was the first to write about and detail savasana and breath regulation in his journal Yoga Mimamsa back in 1926. Some of his great work inspires the information in this article.
Our informed approach follows these two arms:
A. Savasana: complete relaxation of the entire body – a constructive effort to allow the different bodily tissues to relax coupled with a continued concentration on the same relaxed bodily tissues B. Breath Regulation: exclusive attention to the breath – while maintaining the degree of bodily relaxation achieved in A above, a rhythm to the flow of breath is developed through a combined focus on the breath while remaining in this relaxed bodily positionThe exercise is then developed across a few steps over time:
A final note from Swami Kuvalayananda on these exercises as he wrote in 1926:
“The practice of rhythmical breathing is not as easy as it looks to be at the first sight. The most difficult part of it is concentration. Patient work, however, must enable a student to achieve success. There should be no hurry in going through the successive stages. The second stage should not be begun unless and until one has mastered the first . The same is true about the third and the second stage.”
May you enjoy tremendous well-being through mastering the art of relaxation and regulating your breath in the process – one cannot be had without the other.
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