Benefits of Kapalbhati Pranayama: Breathe Your Way to Wellness

We all know how vital it is to practise physical activities every day. In this modern life, there’s often very less time to keep ourselves physically active. In addition, gyms and other physical activity classes like swimming can be heavy on your wallet.

What you need to know:

What is kapalbhati?
How do you perform kapalbhati?
The health benefits of kapalbhati

What is kapalbhati?

Kapalbhati yoga is a prevalent breathing technique focusing on your breathing patterns and various muscles while inhaling. One of the major kapalbhati benefits is that it can help you improve mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. In addition, kapalbhati yoga can also be done anywhere in a sitting pose. Incorporating kapalbhati pranayama in your daily life can help you go on with your daily life without any worry!

Types of kapalbhati exercises

Types of kapalbhati exercises_activ living community Here are the types of kapalbhati pranayama that you can master individually.

Vatakrama:

This form of Kapalbhati yoga requires you to sit with your legs crossed on the ground. While performing this form of kapalbhati pranayama, you must be aware of your breathing while exhaling.

Sheetkrama:

This Kapalbhati technique involves you sniffing water through your mouth and expelling it through the nose.

Vyutkrama:

This technique is just the opposite of Sheetkrama, where you have to sniff water through your nose and spit it out through your mouth.

How do you perform kapalbhati?

Here are the steps that you can follow to perform the kapalbhati yoga exercise:

Sit on the ground with a straight spine. Put your hands on your knees.
Keep your palms open.
Take a long breath.
While exhaling, pull back your belly towards your spine. Do it as long as it feels comfortable.
Relax your belly and go back to the initial position.
Repeat this for 20 minutes every day to complete a kapalbhati yoga session.
After finishing, close your eyes, relax, and try to feel your body.

The health benefits of kapalbhati

Let’s understand some of the kapalbhati benefits you can reap in the long term below:

Helps control blood pressure:

BP check_activ living community In an experiment, a group of people performed kapalbhati and after they finished, their blood pressure levels were measured. It was found that the BP levels increased initially, but they gradually decreased by a lot after 3 minutes of finishing a kapalbhati set.

As you can understand, people suffering from high blood pressure levels can reap the kapalbhati benefits for better BP health. However, if you experience high blood pressure symptoms often, you should consider performing this yoga with the help of an experienced yoga mentor.

Helps manage weight:

Kapalbhati can also help you in fighting obesity. Practising this technique can help you reduce excess body fat. This is because abdominal contractions can aid in increasing metabolism rate and hormone levels. A high metabolic rate can make you lose excess fat very easily.

Benefits mental health:

Another way by which practising kapalbhati benefits us is that it allows us to relax our body and mind. Kapalbhati can help people with mood swings and severe anxiety. Practising this technique can also help you improve concentration.

Remember, listening to yourself is essential. If you’re new to yoga, consider attending a beginner’s class or following along with a reputable online video or tutorial to ensure proper alignment and technique. Regularly practising kapalbhati benefits your strength, flexibility, and overall well-being.

Stay tuned to the Activ Living Community. Keep up to date with the latest health tips and trends through expert videos, podcasts, articles, and much more in nutrition, fitness, mindfulness, and lifestyle conditions like Asthma, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Diabetes.

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