Nowadays, stress is like a pandemic, no one is spared. In many cases we don’t feel it intruded in us. The good news is that it’s in our control. If allowed, it’ll work. One of the effective controlling devices is yoga, especially pranayama.

Pranayama is a form of yoga, a breathing exercise. It’s a first aid to act as yoga for stress relief. Yoga helps you to reinstate your natural potential that your body and mind can regulate itself. Relaxation through pranayama can keep this stressful evil out of our reach.

You don’t need to be an expert or a yogi to practice pranayama. It’s just breathing as we do regularly anyway. The only difference is that this is a conscious practice with a rhythm and some regulations.

Deep breathing can energize and calm you at the same time. It is not any hyper energy, but a steady and slow flow of energy which can signal your nervous system to be calm and relax.

A whole lot yogic scripts are there with respect to breathing practices, many schools of practices as well. It doesn’t matter which school you follow, as long as you do consistently. I’m here giving you a 5 minutes pranayama breakup in 5 steps. Understand clearly before you start. If needed, read it many times.

1. Sit in a comfortable position in any one of the styles in the given pictures. The most preferred way is in padmasana (pic.1). If you feel strain, then use any other style. Even you can use some cushions to support your knees to stay comfortable. Hands on top of your legs.
2. Close your eyes slowly and stay for 1 – 2 minutes without any thoughts (possibly) as your eyes closed.
3. Take a deep inhale filling your lungs (maybe you can count the timing you took for inhaling) Hold the breath for the same counting you took for filling your lungs. Eg., let us say you took 5 counting for inhaling (filling) then 5 counting of the same timing has to hold the breath. (stomach must expand)
4. Then, exhale to a count of two times that of inhaling (as in the above example 10 counting), not necessarily two times, but must be slower than the inhaling speed (stomach must shrink). While exhaling, please focus on your throat either internally or externally. This will give you a dual benefit, not only as pranayama but also as a powerful meditation. This is my unique personally developed technique where I got my first aha moment after trying many many methods and in a very short time duration compared to other methods.
5. Ideal recommended time for the whole process is 6 to 7 minutes. Initial few days (a week) even a lesser time to finish is also okay. Do it at least once a day until you master it. But twice a day is strongly recommended.

Relaxing through this short-time exercise just by sitting for a while can shoo away the stress and energize your mind with new dimensional expansion for positive activities in your day to day life, gradually transforms your personality to manifest your dream life. To multiply the benefits, what I do is to listen some brainwave musics set to some particular frequency for a particular brainwave activation, like ‘Stress Relief’, Anxiety or Depression Relief, etc.  Here is the link to some of them I regularly use. [CLICK HRER]

You don’t need spend any money for learning these yoga and meditation, so many authentic tutorials are out there for you to grab freely. Choose the right, practice and stay healthy