Difficulties when practicing Pranayama

10.12.2011

Crisis does happen;

Over the past few weeks, the energy around me has been so hectic and I have felt like my Pranayama has come to a crisis point. I am tired in the morning, I do not feel like practising Pranayama everything is hectic around me, the energy around me is fast and everyone is stressed and feel like this stress is coming on to me and is taking over.

It is the Christmas time around here where everyone is planning, organising, partying, drinking and overindulging. Somehow I feel it has nothing to do with this spiritual time that Christmas suppose to be. In our street all the holidaymakers are coming, kids are running and cycling up and down the road, stressing out my dogs.

Dogs roam early in the mornings around the streets and it is hard work when  I want to walk my big dogs before anyone is up. I feel stressed and to top it all I had a fall and banged my head quite badly, realising a few days later that I may have had a concussion as I have been feeling bad and the head hurts.
I have been doing Pranayama for quite a while now and wondering when the road would become a bit smoother, I can see how easy it is to just quit and go back to the old ways. But then I take a good look at what is happening around me. I see how far I have come, so much less pain in all my joints and I do recover from falls so much better. I feel not tempted as much to eat negative foods, in fact, I always feel really good when I can resist it so easy.
I can see what's going on and I can pull myself back and practice my Pranayama and feel so much better in the end. A crisis is part of life and I feel I get through it so much easier now. I do have my moments and have had days where I may only do twenty minutes of Pranayama, but I always feel like I need to do some as I just do not want to fall back into old habits. And often it is only one or two days where I feel a bit low and then I pick up and automatically my Pranayama sessions become longer again. Hang in there through any crisis look back and see how far you come, then you realise it is worth the effort, practising Pranayama does heal the body, mind and soul.  And it is a great tool that carries you through any challenges you may encounter.
We will always face challenges, but when we do a pranayama practice or focus on the breathing throughout the day we can easily get through all our challenges.

22.09.2011

Making Time;

I often hear people say to me they have difficulties to make time to do the pranayama. My response to this is, that we all make time to have a shower, to brush our teeth to washing our hair, to eat, to sleep., to exercise. This means we make time to care for our teeth, for cleanliness, we care and make time to fuel our bodies with food, we make time to sleep, to rest our bodies, but we do not make time to breathe!!

When a child is born the first thing it does is taking an independent breath, the most important thing, without breathing we can not live. Without breathing our body cannot function, yet we do not want to make time to work with our breath, the one thing that we need the most, the one thing that helps to restore the body to health, the one thing that keeps the body healthy the one thing we call life.

In the beginning, it was hard to make that time, I know and what I did, was telling myself how important breathing is! When I woke up in the early hours of the morning and just wanted to turn around and go back to sleep, I told myself that breathing is so important and I asked myself what it was I wanted to achieve. This made it easy for me to get up and practice my pranayama.
Now I can not wait to get up in the early morning to practice my pranayama, as it gives me such a boost. It fuels my body with oxygen, with energy, with strength with calm and with focus. If we can make time for all these other things it should not be hard to make time for our most important tool our breath. You gain so much more from practising pranayama then from that extra hour of sleep. The benefits from working with pranayama are far more than you would ever get from sleeping that extra hour. Make time for your breath for the most important part of your being alive. If the early mornings are so difficult, then why not practise Pranayama at the end of the day or make short breaks during the day to breath.

02/07/2011

Pranayama a journey not always a quick fix

Pranayama can give instant relief, but the true healing comes with time. When I first learned pranayama I was on a high, I was motivated by my teacher and felt great. The deep breathing gave me a "fix," it felt like an adrenal shot, I felt on top of the world. But when my lessons finished and I had learned what I needed to learn I dropped like a hot potato, it was back to reality.
No one there that motivated me no one that wanted to hear about the struggles no one that wanted to hear about healing crisis etc. I was on my own and this is a reality.
We have to walk our journey alone. There may be friends around us that will listen and support us. But what I have found is that I could not get any answers on how long it would take to heal, I could not get answers on how to deal with difficulties, with struggles, or with healing crises.

What I have observed as a healer, as a Homeopath over the past 20 years is that healers, teachers, therapists often cannot answer these questions, and often have not the time to guide you along the way unless one can spend large amounts of money for the time of these people.
My experience is that we all are different, we all heal differently and it takes each one of us a different amount of time to heal. It all depends on how long we have suffered from an illness, how deep the suffering is, where does the suffering come from etc. I have always been fascinated about the journey of healing, because I have learned that nothing really is a quick fix, nothing comes easy nothing changes unless we do the work.

I believe that most of our physical symptoms are an expression of our mental and emotional state. Unfortunate most of us are unaware or dispute or refuse to accept, or just do not know ourselves and what makes us stressed, emotional, happy or unhappy etc. We often do not know ourselves, we do not know our hang-ups our negative personality patterns.  When practising Pranayama these things all come to light. Awareness happens and you have to learn to deal with what you find out about your self.
When your mind your emotions start to heal your physical body can heal too. Often you start feeling a relieve in your physical body when your mind and emotions calm. But then the Journey begins and we have to acknowledge and work through our negative personality patterns, sometimes the physical ailments can get worse before getting better, and sometimes they get better but hit us again with a vengeance a few months later. It is a Journey to work through and not to give up.
We will feel like quitting or even quit for a while and then take it up again, we want to feel better sooner than later, and when do we really know that we are healed? I believe that we need to be free of symptoms for at least 12 months before we can say we are healed. Pranayama is a Journey and you should practice it for life, It should become part of your life it should fit into your lifestyle. That is the hard part. Hold in front of you the goal you like to achieve, the reason why you chose to practice Pranayama and remembering that the most important part of life is the Journey.
When starting practising Pranayama you can feel dizziness, vertigo, lightheadedness, tingling sensations, coldness, heat, hunger, thirst and energetic or exhausted. You may feel emotional, old grief, hurt sadness can surface. You may get discharges, runny nose, weepy eyes, smelly pooh, dark urine, all depending on your physical ailments.
Pranayama works on a deep level it heals on a deep level, therefore, you can experience all these things. Your body will detox so it needs to get rid of the toxins somehow. Therefore it is important to start making changes on your diet so you stop loading your body with toxins again. The good thing about Pranayama is it does work it will get you there if you really want to get there. This is one of the reasons I have been blogging about my experiences, to share what it is like when we practise pranayama on a daily base. It has been my experience that many teachers may not practise what they teach on a regular base and therefore often have no answers to the questions. This is my reason for publishing my two eBooks to help you the reader to get more understanding and help when you take up a daily practice.

20/05 2011

The challenges when practising pranayama

Since practising Pranayama, I have not met anyone else who practices Pranayama regularly and who has also made all the diet changes that I have made. It is often difficult when going out with friends, who drink and overindulge and who do not look after themselves.
When I pop in at friends places, they like to tempt me with coffee or with foods I do not have any more they try to tell me oh once in a while you should be allowed to have it. It is hard to get the message across to people that I am allowed to have whatever I like, but that I have made these changes consciously and do not want to have all these junk foods.
People can not understand that one can have fun without alcohol, without coffee, without junk food. But since practising Pranayama I have no desire for these things and I often feel sad for all my friends that they still need all these things to make them feel better. I find it hard to watch people being so careless about their health. They happy to go on drugs, they do not worry that diabetes is just around the corner for them even when they have been told by the doctor they do not care.

People find it easier to pop a pill than to practice Pranayama. My friends tell me they would not want to get up so early to practice Pranayama. Yes at first its hard to get up at 5 am, but now it's easy. I tell myself I can have one sleep in a week and do the Pranayama a bit later, but every time I do have the sleep in I feel heavy and tired all day. I now prefer to get up at 5 am and feel fresh and a life. I find it sad that people do not take responsibility for their health and well being when it is so easy.

It is hard to be the only one in a big community, but when I feel all the benefits its worth it and I guess people have a choice. Because I feel all the benefits that practising Pranayama gives I would love to motivate others to do the same, but this is such a hard challenge, people are so ignorant to it, they come up with all the excuses in the world, but no excuse is good enough, when it concerns your health and well being. Practising Pranayama is easier then to pop a pill for the rest of your life with all its side effects. Practising Pranayama is easier than waking in the morning with a hangover or heavy and tired. Practising Pranayama and changing your diet is easier than living a life with aches and pains and stress and tension, anger and frustrations. Practising Pranayama has become a way of life for me and it is no harder then brushing my teeth every morning. I wish others could find their way to practising Pranayama and feel the amazing benefits.

When first starting to practice Pranayama, one will have many excuses why one can not do it today, it is easy to put it off, its easy to feel, not wanting to get up in the morning to practice Pranayama. During practising the mind wonders its hard at first to focus on the breathing. I had problems with yawning at first I just had to yawn all the time. My body had to get used to all the oxygen. Then it became so relaxing that I had difficulties with falling asleep during practising but not giving up helped overcome all these obstacles and having in my mind that I wanted to get healthy and feel better. The healing process is a journey and it does not happen overnight. When I studied Homeopathy we were taught that for each year we had an ailment it would take one month to heal providing we have the correct remedy, but we were not taught that it could take month or years to find the correct remedy that would have such a deep healing effect. But with Pranayama if you do them right you will feel better pretty quickly and then for the ailments one had for a long time or since birth, it will take its time. I wrote the following after practising Pranayama for 3 weeks. In these 3 weeks, we had an earthquake and a storm.

Carry On; September 2010

Doing Pranayamas now for 3 weeks on a regular base 2 hours a day, getting up at 4 am and making changes in my diet has been a challenge. In the morning at 4 am I wake to get up and do my practice of Pranayamas a voice in my head tells me; “you need your sleep close your eyes you can start tomorrow” I ignore the voice and carry on.

I get ready and sit down to start my practising a voice in my head tells me; “you do not need to do them all just a few and then go back to bed.” I ignore and carry on.

The next morning the same happens and I ignore and carry on.

Then one morning I get ready to do my Pranayamas and the house starts to shake. The voice in my head tells me; “an earthquake surely

you do not need to do your practice now!""get over the fear its only a small shake and sit down!"The other voice said.

 I ignore and carry on.

The next day I hear the wind howling and I fear the roof of my

house will be ripped off and the voice tells me; “no you do not need to

practice today give it a miss once will not matter.”I ignore and carry on.

Pranayamas give me the strength to carry on no matter what, but it is not easy to go against the voice, the negative thoughts, my personality, my old habits, my weaknesses and I realise how my old lifestyle is like an addiction, it will try to hold me back from moving into a new lifestyle. I take one step at the time and working on “carry

on” with the changes I have put in place. I turn my back on my old lifestyle on my addiction and it feels like I am going through withdrawal symptoms the voice is finding every excuse why not to do Pranayamas, I struggle and I fight it, and I do not give in as at the end of the struggle ...

Today I feel more grounded a stillness has come over me, I feel more centred, I feel the end of the struggle is near. Patience now is needed for the healing that is starting to take place.

Hope and Determination are getting stronger, the knowledge that I am

on the right path helps me to carry on. And Faith that the healing is starting on all levels is stronger.

I take a deep Breath and know I am coming home to a place of peace

and contentment. OM

Some points;

You can practise Pranayama in the evening if early morning is just not possible.

You can take a break during the day and practise some Pranayama if this helps

Check out my other blogs, as I progressed with my practice I have become aware of how to make my daily practice easier and more fitting to my lifestyle and my daily routine.