Pranayama and life span

Pranayama and life span.

The theory in any religion is that life is number of breaths and not number of years. Eg. 1000000 breaths can be taken in 40 years or even 120 years. We know that everybody says “He breathed his last”.

Every cell in your body needs oxygen for its metabolic processes without which we die. We have to ensure that those blood cells carry it to every nook and cranny of your body. When your lungs fill, the air passes through all the branches of the bronchi into the tiniest air sacs, which are called alveoli. The alveoli are the structures where oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. This basic science that we all know happens while we breath. But Yoga has a different view of this breathing process. By breathing we do not exchange air or oxygen, we inhale life… Prana. The system of breathing in ancient science of Yoga is Prana ayama. Pranayama.

What can we derive from this table:

Animal	Breathing rate,  breaths/min	Average Life span,  years
Giant Tortoise	4	150
Whale	6	111
Elephant	4-5	70
Human being	12	75-80
Horse	10-15	50
Chimpanzee	14	40
Monkeys	32	18-23
Dogs	20-30	10-20
Shrew	140-170	1
House mouse	95-160	1.5-3

Now the picture will be clear. Slower the breathing, longer will be the life span.  The research estimated though that prehistoric humans who did lot of the manual work involving fast and shallow breathing lived about 25-30 years. As time passed by hunting food was not the main job of the human being and the life span slowly increased, aided with the invention of medicine and an intelligent way of living and resting.

Pranayama is the 4th limb of Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali which teaches us how to breath. This is specified after Yama, Niyama and Asana. Once the first three are practiced a person can enter this world of slow breathing i.e. Prana and ayama. Prana means life and ayama means stretch. There are many types of pranayama and the intention of this article is not to explain them, but importance of slow breathing explained in Pranayama.

Breathing frequency per minute comes down as tranquility grows. Around 30% of the blood that is pumped by the heart is carried to the brain to energise each and every cell and the neurons in the medulla oblongata. Breath and mental calmness are inter-linked. Pranayama which is also a system for conscious breathing where breathing does change of being involuntary to controlled voluntary action. Practicing this will reduced mental activity of the brain and vital organs of the body thereby requirement of blood pumped through the heart. Once heart slows down lungs relax and the breath slows down for maintenance of the minimal activity of the body.

It is known that breathing frequency of students, labourers are very high whereas that of teachers and of senior management are relatively low. The cortisol levels in the body once increased by stress and tension forces the adrenalin to release more hormones for the fight or flight response. Stress and anger is the first enemy which increases the brain activity for wasteful process. This invariably increases the heart rate and thereby breath rate. The number of breaths becomes more to ensure more oxygenated blood to the brain usedup in this process of agitated  and fast thinking.

When you notice your heart rate is increased, be conscious and focus on your breath. Try the various Pranayama techniques to decrease your breathing rate. The goal of Pranayama is to decrease your heart rate and stress levels by stabilizing CO2 levels in your blood, maximizing oxygen levels in your blood, increasing oxygen saturation in cells, and lowering your blood pressure. These processes in the body will lower the concentration of stress hormones in your body. By getting more oxygen into your lungs and then into your bloodstream, muscles will have more blue blood and heart will be slower and with less effort.  Nest the brain sends signals to hormone-producing organs to slow down release of stress hormones.

During meditation when the mind is comparatively focussed and relaxed, the breathing rate further goes down. By regular practice of Pranayama it is possible to bring down normal breathing rate. This directly ensures that health becomes the paramount concern thereby increasing the liufespan.