Hatha Yoga du Soir - 50 min (Doux) - Utiliser le Souffle pour calmer le Mental et Relâcher le Corps

🔆 Hello Yogis! 🔆 Throughout this yoga session, we will use Pranayama (breathing) to calm the mind and soothe the body at the end of the day. We will begin by practicing Vissama Vrtti Pranayama, seated on a prop. This breathing helps calm the mind. We will then move on to gentle asanas (postures): shoulder rotation, Cat/Cow variation, gentle variation of Malasana, Prasaritta Padottanasana, Parvottananasana. We will then return to the floor to soothe the legs, back, and nervous system with a variation of Shalabasana (Locust) and Viparita Karani (Standing). We will end the session with a relaxation session where I will sing a mantra in honor of Shiva, the god of yoga, who symbolizes the transmission of yoga but also pure consciousness. Here are the words of the mantra in Sanskrit and English: “Om Namah Shivāya Gurave I celebrate Shiva, in the form of the teacher Sat Citt Ānanda Mūrtaye In the form of Knowledge, Consciousness, and pure Joy Nishprapanchāya Shāntāya Ever present and full of peace Niralambāya Tejase Completely free, resplendent” Credits: Music by Josh WoodWard - https://www.joshwoodward.com/ 🔸🔶 Why does breathing help calm the mind? 🔶🔸 Our body is governed by two nervous systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The former is responsible for our ability to respond to stress. Stress is understood here not as something necessarily negative, but as a stimulus that can be very varied (physical activity, cognitive effort, fear, etc.). When the sympathetic nervous system, also sometimes called the fear/flight response, is activated, hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline are released into the body. These hormones increase heart rate, slow digestion, increase sweating and visual acuity, etc. The parasympathetic nervous system is more or less antagonistic to the sympathetic nervous system (it activates when the other is on standby), although things are not as simple as that! The parasympathetic nervous system governs the "everything is fine, I can relax" response of our body. When "stimulated," a hormone called acetylcholine is released in different parts of the body. This hormone helps trigger digestion but also plays an important role in sexuality. Stress, or external stimuli, is completely normal and natural. Indeed, a long time ago, these stimuli occurred from time to time (during mammoth hunting, for example) but were short-lived. However, with our current lifestyle, stress has become a daily occurrence. Our bodies are not designed to function under constant stress! This is why we can sometimes experience gastric or sexual problems when we suffer from chronic stress. Breathing plays a major role in this process. When our breathing is jerky, short, or shallow, we send our body the message: I'm stressed. When, on the other hand, breathing is deep and calm, when we use abdominal breathing while thoroughly massaging the abdomen and internal organs with the diaphragm, we send the message to the body that "everything is fine," and that the parasympathetic nervous system can be activated. That said, it's not about constantly activating the latter! Action is also a part of life, and as I wrote above, the two nervous systems sometimes work together (particularly in sexual activity). It's therefore beneficial to alternately activate these two nervous systems! This is what I call the "kiss/cool" effect of Yoga: with postures, we create stress in the body; with pranayama, meditation, and relaxation, we induce relaxation. And this is one of the reasons why we feel so good after a Yoga class! It's also possible to "play" with these last two. Indeed, when we focus on inhaling, we bring more oxygen to the body and stimulate the heart, which gently stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and therefore gives us a little energy! When we focus more on exhaling, the opposite happens: we encourage the heart to beat more slowly and therefore the nervous system to "calm down." We can thus use these subtleties with our pranayama by slightly emphasizing one or the other depending on the desired effect. This is a little trick you can use during your meditations: if you feel like you're about to fall asleep, focus slightly on inhaling; if you're too nervous, focus instead on exhaling! Namaste!