I am reading a lot of yoga and pranayamas lately and it seems like slow breating is extremely important not just while doing yoga but also in your regular routines.
To what degree is the above true? Is yes, does that mean cardio is against yoga? Is so, how does a heavy person reduce weight without cardio?
Hi, yalgaar.
Here’s my take on it – the slow breathing gets your body to relax and access the ‘rest and digest’ processes which are necessary to healing and re-building. It’s a part of life that’s been neglected in the United States recently (and it leaks from here to other nations), so it’s one of the differences between a healthy life and a stressed out life that yoga can teach.
If a particular person (in a particular body) needs to reduce weight, losing that weight will also reduce stressors on the body. Cardio is great for that (if the person is healthy enough to start there.) It’s a different technique (and different breathing) because the body is coming from a different way of being not healthy.
Both can contribute to the same goal – a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Inversions and halasana manipulate Blood Pressure and exercise the heart and circulatory systems without heavy breathing. Breathing correctly constantly refreshes the lungs, as with Ujayi. Correct posture with its ample chest cavity gives the heart more room to relax it more. Uddiyana Bandha does something awfully good for the heart and lungs which takes more medical expertise to understand than I have. I know the results though. I’m 56 and do no aerobics and have a 62 pulse and 100/58 BP. Traditional Eastern Medicine, I’ve read, believes you should conserve heartbeats and though aerobics does that by making a heart stronger like with weight-lifting, the above does it with less stress. Namaste