Yoga for Psoriasis: Deep breathing

Breath = Life

Our energy level depends heavily on our breathing efficiency. Regular practice of deep breathing can give you pleasantly surprising results in healing your psoriasis. Inhaling pure and fresh oxygen from the environment, retained for a short duration and exhaled gradually- this exercise can improve the physical and mental health significantly.

Deep breathing is a very simple and effective yoga for psoriasis. People having psoriasis arthritis can also perform this exercise easily without troubling the body muscles and get benefited.

Deep breathing is utterly simple yoga exercise

Deep breathing is considered a yoga exercise when practiced in morning (and evening).  Deep breathing is one of the most simple and primary yoga exercises which can provide you almost all the benefits related to yoga, but the good news is that it is not as complicated as any specialized yoga exercise.

To learn and practice any specialized yoga technique is a little complex thing to do and most of us (despite of knowing about their immense benefits), prefer giving them a skip.

In that case, deep breathing can be a perfect alternative for you. You necessarily doesn’t need a yoga teacher to learn and practice this utterly simple yoga exercise.

During deep breathing exercise, we inhale fresh oxygen from the atmosphere and exhale carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide is a natural waste of our body’s metabolism that has been passed into our lungs through our blood stream. We inhale fresh oxygen from the environment and this fresh oxygen infuses fresh energy to all your internal body organs and fixes all the internal body issues in a natural way.

Deep breathing is good for Psoriasis

Yoga can help in healing psoriasis. Numerous resources on internet validate this claim. But I never tried yoga because I used to consider yoga something very complex, boring and time consuming. If your perception towards yoga coincides with mine, then deep breathing is the answer for you. Deep breathing is a good yoga for psoriasis. Let us know the health benefits of deep breathing exercise:

• Detoxification of body

Lungs are one of the eliminatory organs of your body involved in elimination of toxins from your. Other eliminatory organs are: Liver, kidney and skin.

About 70% of the toxins accumulated in your body (by the food we eat and other lifestyle related habits) are released through breathing. Proper breathing is very essential to facilitate this body detoxification process. Deep breathing exercise in early morning and/or in the evening is perfect to remove (more efficiently) the accumulated toxins from inside your body and to prevent any further toxin retention in your body.

• Stress buster

We have discussed enough in our previous posts that stress management is very crucial to keep psoriasis in check. Heather J Ferris, in her book- Psoriasis healing from Inside Out– has given a lot of importance to stress management techniques, including deep breathing. Deep breathing exercise improves your body’s energy levels which in turn reduces stress.

I have read (and experienced) that whenever you feel stressed and immensely tensed, taking a few deep breaths surely make you calm down and handle the situation wisely.

Take this example: Some day you are having a bad psoriasis flare up and you have experienced enough bad moments throughout the day related to psoriasis. In such a scenario, there are high chances that you may do something unhealthy which can hinder your progress in healing psoriasis. Excessive smoking, drinking or excessive consumption of junk food to name a few.

Deep breathing can really help you get through such a stressful day.

Next time, you feel stressed (which is very obvious for a person with psoriasis), try to be alert enough and focus on the breath. You will find your breath very shallow. So, instead of getting carried away with those shallow breathing, take a few deep breaths and you will feel calm and relaxed.

Deep breathing makes you calm, relaxed and promotes a positive attitude towards life. It brings clarity of thoughts and helps you in making right decisions keeping aside the over emotionalism. Relaxes anxiety related problems and heal sleeping disorders.

Read more: Stress and Psoriasis

• Immunity booster

Deep breathing infuses fresh oxygen inside your body and improves body immunity against the attack of diseases and foreign particles. Research on the relation between oxygen deficiency in the body and disease is going on for a long time. Now, it is scientifically proven that oxygen deficiency in your body can lead to reduced body immunity. Nobel laureate, Mr. Otto Warburg who worked in the field of Cancer treatment had found that deficiency of oxygen in the body was one of the reasons for development of Cancer cells in the body.

Any exercise or activity, which can increase the intake of oxygen and its circulation in your body, can help in enhancing your body immunity and make you healthy. Yoga, aerobics, running, brisk walking, outdoor games- numerous examples are there. Do you know that the meaning of aerobics is- exercise with oxygen.

• Maintaining body pH

Deep breathing reduces internal body toxins. Most of the these body toxins are acidic in nature. Hence, deep breathing reduces the acidity level of your body and helps in maintaining optimum body pH (slightly alkaline).

Read more: Benefits of alkaline diet for Psoriasis

• Blood purification

Exhaling carbon dioxide and inhaling fresh oxygen will purify your blood and hence, problems related to imperfection in blood will go away with time.

• Aids in digestion

Owing to the improved functioning of digestion related organs as they receive more oxygen, problems like indigestion diminishes slowly.

• Promotes weight loss

Fresh intake of oxygen will burn the excess fat and helps you in maintaining your body weight.

• Natural pain killer

Deep breathing exercise releases endorphins (sort of brain chemicals) which are feel good type natural pain killers produced by your body itself. Hence, this attribute of deep breathing can help people with psoriasis arthritis particularly by soothing the joint pains.

Good to know

• Deep breathing is a starter for various meditation techniques. The basic principle of almost all the medication techniques lies in observing your breath; breath-in…breath-out. Hence, regular practice of deep breathing will help you get benefits similar to meditation as well.
• Deep breathing is particularly beneficial for people having psoriasis arthritis because due to joint pain, any physical exercise involving a lot of body movement can be painful for them. Deep breathing is perfect for them because you can do deep breathing exercise by just sitting in a comfortable position without giving any unnecessary strain on your body muscles.

How to perform deep breathing exercise

Best time to do this exercise is early morning. Wake up early in the morning before the sun rises and enjoy a smooth bowel movement (after drinking warm lemon water). Then sit in a relaxed position in an open environment so that you can inhale fresh oxygen present abundantly in the early morning environment. No need to sit in any complex strained posture. Just sit in normal posture without torturing your body at all. If you find sitting on ground/floor is difficult, then you can sit on a chair as well, but sitting on the ground will help you inhale and exhale more efficiently. Don’t sit in direct contact with the ground/floor. Better to sit on a yoga mat or just any simple think cloth piece.

Now inhale fresh oxygen through your nose and fill your stomach and then your chest with fresh oxygen. It will take almost 5 seconds.

Hold the breath for 2-3 seconds as per your comfort and then exhale slowly in another 2-3 seconds.

That’s it!!

Nothing special in it… Isn’t it?

Don’t worry too much if you are doing it perfectly right or not. Just start doing it regularly. Sometimes, we spend too much time seeking perfection in our act and ultimately we end up not doing that activity at all. Deep breathing is a very simple and effective exercise with almost no side effects at all. So, start doing it regularly and even if you have some imperfections during the initial days, you will gradually master this exercise with time and will enjoy ample benefits out of it. By the way, you can prove your smartness by checking few online videos demonstrating this yoga exercise; there are plenty available on YouTube.

One such cycle of exhaling and inhaling may take 10-12 seconds. So, start with 80-100 such cycles a day (10-15 minutes a day) and gradually increase the number of cycles. Generally, specialized yoga exercises are not recommended beyond a specific time limit. But deep breathing doesn’t fall in that category and there is no such maximum time limit for it. Do it as much as you feel comfortable in doing. I am pretty sure you will enjoy doing it and you will feel positive changes from the very first day itself.

Don’t expect highly remarkable results quickly. Deep breathing exercise will work in cohesion to other diet and lifestyle change and speed up the positive outcome of overall efforts.

Happy healing!!