YA- CE Workshop | Pranayama (Zoom) (USYACE2701B)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
YA- CE Workshop | Pranayama (Zoom) (USYACE2701B) Closed Captioning/ Transcript Disclaimer Closed captioning and/or transcription is being provided solely for the convenience of our viewers. Yoga Alliance does not review for accuracy any information that appears in a closed caption or transcript. Yoga Alliance makes no representations or warranties, and expressly disclaims any responsibility or liability with respect to, any errors or omissions in, or the accuracy, reliability, timeliness or completeness of, any information that appears in a closed caption or transcript. MANJU CHRISTINE MARCELLA: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ever you are joining us from. I want to welcome you for anatomy week. There are a couple housekeeping items we will get to really quickly here. First of all, you will see a pop-up in the screen so you can tell us where you are joining from today. Also, as we go through this the chat feature will be turned off for you, but we will have the Q&A open. So please post your questions in the Q&A and let us know what you would like to ask Manju. We will relay those questions to her. If you see that somebody else is asking the same question as you, give it a thumbs up so we know we really want to answer that one live. We will get to as many questions as possible. Go ahead, Patricia. Did you have something to say? For today, I want to tell you my name is Christine Marcella. I am the corporate accounts manager at Yoga Alliance. I am a EY RT 500. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I am so happy you are joining us today for Anatomy Week. Today's workshop is Enhance Your Immunity Through Pranayama Practice. We are joined by the amazing Manju Joshi. She has been the founder and research director of (unknown term) Yoga for I don't know how many years. She is a yoga practitioner, teacher, and therapist for more than 20 years. She serves communities around the globe and is a published author and reiki master. I want to mention to all of you today that this practice and workshop is heavy in pranayama. I advise all of you to be mindful of your individual circumstances and practice with mindfulness. Don't push yourself over the edge. Do what is right for you. Thank you for joining us today. MANJU JOSHI: Namaste. Good morning. Good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. Thank you for joining this session. I would like to start with our centering prayers to our gurus and our ancestors. So let's set nice and tall. Keep your eyes closed. Just listen to the singing bowl sound. Allow your breath to follow the sound, maybe get a little bit more relaxed with each sound. So let's begin. Just bring yourself back into your mind, into your body. (Chanting) So thank you again for joining this session. We will have a lot of fun in this session. The main reason I want to have This session because of what is going on in the world, COVID-19 is still going everywhere and one of my cousins had it. One thing he mentioned helped him a lot was the breath, the breathing. He said, "Sister, you must ask everybody and and tell my story and experience that this breath really works." That is why we are here sharing this with you. As yoga teachers, I really, really hope and trust that you will spread this around in your community and everywhere. YA- CE Workshop | Pranayama (Zoom) (USYACE2701B) So let's begin. Let's go for the slides. We will start with some agenda. Our agenda today is very simple. We will see what pranayama is. You all know it, so we will just go very briefly into it. We will see the benefits of it, what is immunity, how we enhance immunity, and going to the actual practice. Like Christine said, we need to use our own judgment while practicing it and keep it as simple as possible. As many people can practice it. Please use your own judgment. I will give some alternatives for certain poses or practices not being done by everybody. So let's go to the next one. So what is Prana? If you have joined other sessions with me on chakras and all, we have gone through this. Prana is the vital energy. It is not oxygen, but the vital energy that we breathe in from various things. We get the Prana from various things. And mostly we are going to focus today on our breath. That is the way we will get the Prana today and of course we always get it that way, but that is the vital energy that we get. Prana is the vital energy. It has been known and all the other cultures by various names like ki or chi or Asian cultures have this concept of Prana. This product moves through the channels in the body. So Nadis is any hollow structure. So any hollow structure is called Nadis. According to yoga, we have about 72,000 Nadis and so it is given a lot of importance in yoga and a lot of Asian cultures. According to yoga there are three main Nadis that we use for our breath practice, and that is why we are going to explain it a little bit here. The main Nadis is called (unknown term), which is actually our spinal column. Then there are two side-by-side. One flows from the left nostril, this is my left side, and it is cooling, it is feminine, it involves the infusion power and so on. The other is called pngala, which is masculine flows through the right nostril and gives energy. If you have fever you can activate so you can cool down. The alternate nostril breathing uses both the nostrils to balance it out. The goal is to come back to the center. We can do it through the left or right nostril and activating with the nostrils depending on what we need to achieve. I don't want to spend too much time on this. Let's go to the next one. Now, we need some ancient wisdom as well as modern science. So as long as the breath moves, so does the mind. When the breath is steady, the mind is steady. If we steady then we can steady the mind and body. How do we use this breath? How should we do the pranayama? Prana is again the vital energy, and the regulation or elongation so we can retain the Prana. Sustain that prana. Send it where it is needed through the channels, through the Nadis. That is called pranayama. It potentially has not given (inaudible) but he has given certain aspects like inhalation, exhalation, retention, and how many times you are supposed to do. The light on our soul is being lifted. That is what potentially says by doing this pranayama a certain way you start removing the veil on the light within. You are ready to go to the meditative state. We are going to see that in our practice as well later on. So this Prana, how should we use it? There is a lot of caution given in this one particular Sutra and it says the way tame the animals with -- wild animals slowly and patiently. That is the way we should use this pranayama or do this pranayama. Slowly and with patience. If we don't do that, the Sutra is not here on the slide, but it also gives the warning if you don't do it properly. If you don't use your judgment. If you hurry and try to achieve something. It will backfire, just the way the wild animals will backfire and destroy us. You will have a lot of problems with your body. Like tremors. You will have hiccups. You will have some breathing Page 2 of 11 Downloaded on: 29 Jan 2021 2:01 PM YA- CE Workshop | Pranayama (Zoom) (USYACE2701B) problems, asthma, and those kind of things can arise from doing the pranayama in a long way or in a rush. So please use your judgment. Please tell your students also use their judgment. Go slow. Keep practicing. It gets better. OK, let's go to the next one. So now, what is immunity? It is a beautiful picture there that whatever foreign objects that we don't want we can fight with this response. The ability to fight the foreign objects, those are harmful, is our immunity. How do we boost it? Through food, thoughts, and doing the yoga practices like pranayama. Those kind of things. Again, under supervision and doing it properly. Then we can enhance our immunity. Something that we don't talk much about in our classes is the vagus nerve. You may have done it before also. The vagus nerve and the lymphatic system. Those are the two main things for immunity boosting according to the science and according to the yogis. The vagus nerve, it starts from the brain and runs around in the body towards the lower abdomen. It is really a wandering nerve. It goes everywhere. It boosts your immunity and enhances your digestion. It enhances your breathing. A lot of functions are therefore this vagus nerve. It is everywhere, the guy said. We will do a posture and breathing technique to boost the vagus nerve, to stimulate the vagus nerve. The main thing is it also brings the relaxation response.