Performing the Complete Breath with the goal of calming your mind and eliminating your worries and the frustrations you find in everyday life.

Performing the Complete Breath with the goal of calming your mind and eliminating your worries and the frustrations you find in everyday life.

Because mind and breathing are intertwined you must learn proper breathing techniques to clear and free your mind.When performing the Complete Breath I want you to be conscious of the slow filling up of your lungs, from the abdomen to the shoulders, and the ensuing slow exhalation should produce a feeling of calmness and relaxation in your body and in your mind. The exercise should never be undertaken too hastily. Rather than taking ten hurried breathes, it is much better to take two controlled and correct ones.

When performing Yoga exercises, it is always quality, not quantity, that counts.
Tense people will particularly benefit from this exercise if they perform it just before bedtime as it promotes healthy, natural and refreshing sleep. When you can perform it correctly, try to practise it whenever you can during the day, especially when you feel tired, depressed or upset. Try the deep breathing at other times such as walking to the bus by matching your breathing to your steps with an inhale for 6 and an exhale for 6. If you are lucky enough to be anywhere near the sea draw in that wonderful, sweet-smelling air for all you are worth.
Maybe some people are just naturally tense. False. They are tense by sheer bad habit, and these so-called natural-tension-merchants unconsciously allow all kinds of lurking tensions to accumulate until, hey presto! a beautiful, full-blown peptic ulcer, a chronic heart condition or worse. The breaking up of tension is going to be, for most people, the breaking of the habit of a lifetime. I have been advised certain times very seriously, 'But, Miss Richmond, I have to increase nervousness as I am working or else . . .' Otherwise what? Otherwise, I would add, you would have so much more energy that you wouldn't know what to do with it, so you feel you must squander a little by becoming tense!

Let us consider this problem in its proper perspective. You can't do your best if you are experiencing tension. You may think you need it, that you could not do without it, nevertheless you wonder sometimes why you are unable to sleep and that your nerves are often 'worn to shreds', and you suffer from nameless fears. Can you imagine what it would be like to be free forever of these distressing symptoms, to feel relaxed and cheerful and full of energy? I can show you the way, through Yoga, but there is a price.
You will have to part with those precious tensions of yours.
My intention in this story is to show you the way to better health through Yoga and not to moralize in any way, but may I tell you just one story which I hope might stick in your mind for the rest of your life? It is aimed particularly at those readers who feel they cannot live without a burden of tension on their shoulders.
There was a gentleman up in years who noticed a homeless person on the street below carrying some very heavy packages. 'What is that you carry?' called the elderly gentleman. Before opening the bulky sack he carried, the pauper glance at the window above him. There was a bunch of junk inside.

'But it is nothing but a lot of rubbish,' protested the old man, 'tell me, why do you burden yourself with it?The beggars answer was he had to, he had nothing else.