Quit Smoking – Can Yoga Help You Kick the Habit?
Yoga is said to offer an entire host of benefits to practitioners including the improvement of long, lean muscles, increased strength and vitality, better circulation and brought down feelings of anxiety. However, yoga can also have some curative benefits as well including the potential to assist you with quitting smoking.
A smoking habit is an amazing addiction. Most smokers are a lot of aware of the dangers of smoking, and have tried to quit many times before. Individuals who want to quit yet are afraid to because they do not want to gain weight will be glad to realize that using yoga as a way to relinquish cigarettes will guarantee that you avoid this problematic side impact of quitting. The weight gain associated with quitting smoking is caused by replacing the habit of smoking with the habit of putting too much food in your mouth. With yoga, we will replace the habit of breathing in cigarette smoke with profound cleansing breaths of healing oxygen that will fill your lungs with clean air, clear your mind and rejuvenate your body.
Yoga works in several ways to assist you with quitting smoking:
o Helps you to cultivate enough willpower and discipline to quit smoking
o Gives you the tools to manage your body’s cravings for nicotine
o Puts you profoundly in touch with your body and breath; you will at this point do not want to dirty your recently healthy body with the deadly toxins from smoking.
Specific Yogic Techniques to quit smoking:
o Pranayma (profound, controlled breathing)
The profound breathing pranayma techniques actually heal your body as the nicotine is leaving the body and lungs. Profound breathing exercises also help at those when strong nicotine cravings happen. Practicing these exercises in addition to regular yoga asana practice eventually yoga quit smoking habit and the craving begins to diminish until they have vanished totally.
o Jala Neti
Jalaneti is the practice of using a small vessel called a neti pot filled with warm salted water to tenderly flush the nasal passages. Jala neti works to clean the nasal passages, yet it also serves to stimulate the pituitary gland in the brain, which awakens the Ajna Chakra located behind the forehead. Jalaneti, when performed before meditation assists with creating a space for clear and unhampered breathing.
o Meditation and visualization
The practice of meditation brings you to a place of relaxed awareness where you can access your inner strength and wisdom. While in meditation you can visualize all of the pressure, stress, tension and negative emotions are flowing away from your body. You can also visualize yourself as you intend to be, a healthy, happy, non-smoker.
Yoga causes you to cultivate another healthier lifestyle. It increases lung capacity and through practicing the asana, meditation, visualization, jala neti and profound, pranayma breathing the inclination to smoke and dirty the body eventually simply fades away.