Being a yoga-tarian: Want to be happy?

The need of every individual is to be happy.

What is happiness? A healthy body, peaceful mind and spiritual wisdom together gives happiness. Happiness is every living organism’s birthright.

So, how to achieve this? Is there a way to achieve a healthy body, peaceful mind and spiritual wisdom?

There are various fitness regimes that many follow to attain a healthy body. Tough but possible with dedication and focus.

Experts say, for a peaceful mind, be positive and remain cheerful. Easier said than done. Is it always possible to remain positive in our daily stressful lives, where we need to meet deadlines at our work place and meet the demands of our spouse, children, pets (not necessarily in that particular order though)?

Then there’s is the question of spiritual wisdom. The mere mention will have people think of those wearing saffron robes and retiring to the Himalayas!

Not feasible. So what should we do?

According to me the answer lies in the ancient Indian scientific practice called yoga.

What’s yoga? It literally means “to join” or “to unite” with your inner self.

Yoga is essentially an inward journey. It’s about self realisation. Once you realise your mental and physical capabilities, your journey to unite with the divine begins.

And once you are on this journey, you will see the change. You will be disciplined, focused, and in control of yourself. On a physical level, you will sleep better, be more agile, and lose extra fat.

The practice has two main aspects – one is the actual postures.

But, the most important is breathing. Your breath is your best companion through life. But, as it happens involuntarily, we don’t give it much attention.

The day it leaves us we become just a "body" that begins to decay. That’s why our breath is our ‘prana’ or vital force. All of us know this, but we still we don’t pay attention to it.

So, the first step - give conscious attention to your breath for at least a few minutes in a day. It’s the quality of breath that matters, as it is vital for smooth body function.

Seventy per cent of our body wastes (toxins), which are produced by physical, mental, emotional metabolism are expelled through breath. The remaining thirty per cent gets divided between sweat (20 per cent), urine (7 per cent) and faecal matter (3 per cent). And we are usually most concerned about the 3 per cent!

God has blessed us all with our own detox specialist – our breath. It’s time to better utilise this tool. And one of the ways is – deep abdominal breathing or yogic breathing wherein the abdomen fills up with air like a balloon during inhalation and deflates at exhalation.

The right technique:

Start inhaling slowly from your nose on a count from one to five, filling up your abdomen and then exhale slowly from your nose, deflating the abdomen on a count of 10.

Your exhalation should be longer than your inhalation. Why? Once you exhale air completely out of the lungs, they will automatically inhale more oxygen from the air to fill itself up. This is a natural mechanism we are not making use of fully.

Deep abdominal breathing improves the quality of oxygen that we are inhaling. This oxygen then reaches every cell of our body and helps them function at optimal level. And this is reflected through your skin – it gets smoother, shinier and healthier.

Deep abdominal breathing not only helps the lungs to empty out and fill up with oxygen more efficiently but it also massages our internal organs as this happens, which helps them functions better, too.

So, let’s get breathing better and living healthier. Let me know how you got on with this breathing technique. If you have questions, post them below and I will do my best to answer them.

Next week we will focus on what I believe is a key part of this lifestyle - vegetarianism. Happy living…

The blogger is a homeopath, lifelong vegetarian and high level yoga practitioner.