| It is a long-standing belief amongst yoga practitioners | | | | user , which can mimic the pranayama breathing |
| that yoga breathing exercises can definitely help those | | | | exercises - it has been possible to measure the |
| people suffering from mild asthma and similar | | | | effects of controlled breathing in a hospital trial. Two |
| symptoms. It is further maintained that these exercises | | | | simulated pranayama exercises were tested during |
| may improve their capabilities of breathing without the | | | | this trial, the slow , deep breathing technique and the |
| aid of low-dose drug inhalers, used by sufferers in | | | | breathing out for twice as long as breathing in |
| wheezing attacks. If they don't totally remove the use | | | | technique. |
| of inhalers, then the systematic practice of the | | | | Generally speaking, as an asthma sufferer your |
| breathing exercises will reduce their usage greatly. | | | | airways become restricted making it difficult for you to |
| Scientific research carried out at the Respiratory | | | | breathe. The condition is increasing rapidly in the |
| Medicine Unit, City University, Nottingham, England has | | | | Western world, where in the UK more than |
| called for more studies based on ways and techniques | | | | three-and-a-half million children and adults are affected. |
| of improving breathing control. Their social studies have | | | | The condition is also responsible for over 2,000 deaths |
| indicated that the types of studies mentioned earlier | | | | annually. Recent medical studies involving the amount |
| have been largely ignored by Western medicine and | | | | of air a patient could blow out in a second, and the |
| medical researchers. If this is indeed the case then a | | | | testing of the general irritability of the patient's airways |
| more natural, Eastern alternative such as yoga is a | | | | showed that after practising yoga breathing exercises, |
| ready and able alternative. | | | | their affected airways were two times less irritable! |
| Yoga practitioners have long believed in the benefits of | | | | Though it is not the intention of this piece to advise |
| pranayama breathing exercises to aid people suffering | | | | asthma sufferers to stop using their medication, its |
| from breathing difficulties, especially asthmatics. | | | | purpose is to educate them to the benefits they will |
| Although this may be the case, it has been hard to | | | | receive from trying the breathing exercises and |
| study formally under laboratory or test conditions. | | | | discovering the freedom they will receive from doing |
| However, by using a device known as a Pink City lung | | | | so. |
| - this device imposes slow, artificial breathing on the | | | | |