The subtitle “Good Health and Vitality Through Essential Breathwork” sums this book up very well.
Anyone who has been to my classes over recent months will know breathwork – Breathing well, and using the breath to improve our wellbeing – is something which I’m becoming increasing enthused about. A consistent breath practice has worked wonders for my health over the last year, and I feel breathwork, more correctly known as Pranayama in the yoga tradition, is yogas hidden gem.
This book isn’t new – 1996 in fact – but it’s wisdom is enduring. Within its 220 or so pages we learn about experiencing the breath, understand our own breathing pattern and it’s features, and liberating the breath.
There is a little about optimal breathing of course, and it’s quite appropriate, but here, and no criticism of the author, there is a need for caution – in many ways the optimal breath for you is the one you are taking. To put this another way messages of “you should” in the context of breathwork can, I feel, lead to negative feelings and an undue haste to force change. Change should be an evolution not an edict.
Being a slightly older book some of the current neurobiological context for breathwork is omitted; in many ways that’s refreshing as it takes the reader back to experience rather than science.
In all a useful book for anyone – professional or student – interested in how wellbeing can be influenced by the breath, and how breath can be experienced, nurtured, and optimised.
You can purchase the book on Amazon, and using this link earns Yinspire a small referral fee
https://amzn.to/2PYvKHL
