Many people believe that performing yoga is much more beneficial then to spend hours hitting machines. Yoga not only keeps us healthy, it calms our mind, also cures many diseases that too without any application of medicines. Yoga also teaches us how to gain self-control. It builds our concentration power much stronger. Many yoga experts say that there are a few basic asanas which provide immense development benefits to the children as well as for adults. Yoga is also used to reduce facial wrinkles and enhances our beauty.

Among all the yoga exercises, the simplest form of yoga is pranayama. Pranayam (also spelled as Pranayama) may be defined as a process and technique which purifies our whole nervous system including the brain. It brings stability to stabilize our mind. These qualities, everyone desires to have, but very few do actually possess. Pranayam is done before starting any asanas. It can be said as a warm-up exercise before starting the asanas. It removes laziness and drowsiness of the body and gives a peaceful experience to our body. Further, yoga and Pranayam energises our mind with new vigour and peace.

The term Pranayam has been constituted by two words: Prana (energy) + Ayama (flow). Prana is the principle of development and sustenance both of the nervous and cellular tissues of the body and the mind. Pranayam is a similar process of natural breathing. It hardly offers any scope of artificiality. In this yoga exercise, we breathe, allowing the air to enter through the nose and depending on one’s general health and strength of the lungs; it is retained inside and then is exhaled. This natural intake and outflow of the breath go on continuously.

The difference between this natural process and the ‘Pranayam’ is that in the former, the inhalation and exhalation are not necessarily connected with the mind. Whereas in pranayama, the air continues owing to the natural functioning of the heart and lungs. The inhalation and the exhalation are not done with any set duration of time. In some people, the inhalation process takes a longer time than the exhalation, and even the opposite may occur in some other people.