Tobacco smoking
Smoking has become fashionable these days. Over one billion people across the world are taking drugs in the form of smoking. A large section from teenagers to aged people is taking this recreational drug undermining its ill-impact on health. The most common substance used in smoking is tobacco while cannabis, opium, and heroin are also used as rare drugs. The main important method of smoking is through cigarettes yet pipes, cigars, bidis, hookahs, vaporizers, and bongs are also used on a large scale. All the cigarette packets have a common line “Cigarette smoking is injurious to health”, yet the number of smokers increases day by day. Smoking cigarettes causes death 10 years sooner.
Smoking causes
There are many reasons for smoking. Some of the important causes of smoking are given below
- Easing the feeling of anxiety
- People smoke on being upset or angry.
- Restless
- Experiencing pseudo relaxation
- Socialization with other smokers
- Feeling depressed
- During taking alcohol like beer, wine, and liquor
- During leisure time or whenever one feels aloof.
- To celebrate something
- While driving car
- While thinking about some difficult situations
- While taking beverages like tea, coffee, etc.
- People also get fascinated by it after sex and meal
How to quit smoking with the help of Yoga?
There are many ways to quit smoking. But here we will explain how yoga helps to smoking cessation. Doing regular yoga comprising Suksha Vyayam, Asanas, Pranayama and Mediation helps a lot to quit smoking. However, yoga Nidra, the very important components play a vital role in smoke-free life.
Yoga is a spiritual heritage. Yoga is the science and art of healthy living also. As a spiritual discipline, its purpose is inner transformation. For inner transformation, the discipline of Yoga emphasizes the purification of mind, body, and soul. Thus, purification of the body through psychological and mental therapy is one of yoga’s most important achievements. According to yogic philosophy, the mind is the most important component in the cause of disease. To be healthy, one should be fit socially, physically, emotionally, mentally, culturally, and spiritually. To know all these dimensions well, one should be aware of the psycho-physiological mechanism of the body-mind and soul complex.
Yoga Nidra is an integral part of Yoga. Yoga Nidra concerns mainly with Pratyahara (withdrawing senses from sense-objects) and Dharana (concentration). Yoga Nidra is the amalgamation of Yoga-relaxation and meditation. It also comprises a particular form of Yogic exercises usually known as “Exercise without Movement”. The result is a process of traveling deeply within, to a place of extraordinary rest and self-awareness. Yoga Nidra can be applied as both the primary therapeutic tool and as an adjunctive treatment for many acute and chronic physical and psychological disease conditions.
In recent times, Yoga Nidra is the brainchild of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, which is based upon principles like tantric, especially Nyasa. In the authentic traditional tantric practice of Nyasa, consciousness and energy are injected into parts of the body systematically using mantras. Nyasa is performed to protect the body during powerful tantric rituals that invoke vast energies from the deep unconscious.
Nyasa may inject defensive power into the body that can be used for healing, rejuvenation, and as preparation for higher meditative processes. When used scientifically, using rhythm, helps to induce deep relaxation, stimulation of the brain along the sensory and motor cortex, as well as powerful principles for psychological growth.
Yoga Nidra enables the creation of introversion (pratyahara). Pratyahara induces deep relaxation starting in the gross physical body followed by systematically moving awareness and relaxation to the more subtle levels of being. It means, initially relaxing the physical body along with breath, then the mind and psyche. As each part relaxes another part opens up to our awareness liberating energy that may have been trapped and connecting us to our dormant abilities and strength.
The process takes our awareness deep into parts of ourselves that we normally cannot access because of tensions. Tensions block awareness and energy. Deep relaxation liberates tensions from each layer allowing energy to be released for healing and positive growth. It also unveils deeper layers of being and allows our inner potential to unfold, to be revealed and realized.
A recent study has shown that smokers are more extraverts, tense, anxious, depressive, and impulsive than non-smokers or ex-smokers. In Yoga Nidra, the consciousness directs the unconscious to relax. Yoga Nidra is a ‘sleep’ where all the burdens, stress, strain, anxiety are thrown off to attain a more blissful state of awareness, a relaxation much more intense than ordinary sleep.
What is yoga Nidra (yogi sleep)?
Yoga Nidra consists of two words yoga means ‘union’ and Nidra means ‘sleep’. In a simplified form, we can say it is a ‘Yogic Sleep’. Yoga sleep is also known as psychic sleep, which comprises half-sleep and half-waking state. It is a state of inner awareness and contact with the subconscious and higher consciousness. In Yoga Nidra, we have a chance to experience all the facets of the mind, all the nooks and crannies of the mind, without the constraints of the physical body.
Yoga Nidra Stages
Yoga Nidra is divided into the following stages.
Preparation: Yoga Nidra is performed by practicing Shavasana by closing your eyes. The yogic features like stillness, comfort posture, breath, and listening to soothing sounds help to relax the body and mind.
Resolve or Sankalp: The secret of transformation to quit smoking: Yoga Nidra has the power of the overall transformation of personality. Each and every session of Yoga Nidra burns out our old habits in order to be born a new. In Yoga Nidra, the sowing of seeds of change is found in Sankalpa, which you make for yourself during each practice. Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word, which can be translated as resolve or resolution. It is the most powerful method for reshaping your personality. When the body and mind are relaxed, the practitioner is instructed to take a resolve according to his or her own wish. The Sankalpa should be short, clear, and positive. Sankalpa should be mentally, with full determination, conviction, and confidence.
Rotation of consciousness: In Yoga Nidra, the practitioner is instructed to remain aware, to listen to the instructions, and to move the mind very rapidly according to the instructions without making any physical movements. The rotation of awareness in yoga Nidra follows a definite sequence: right side of the body, beginning with the right-hand thumb and ending with the little toe of the right foot; left side of the body, from the left-hand thumb to the little toe of the left foot; back of the body, from the heels to the back of the head; and lastly the front of the body, from the forehead and individual facial features to the legs.
Breath awareness: In this case, one becomes aware of the breath by watching it in the nostrils, chest, and abdomen, or in the passage between the navel and the throat. The practitioner becomes aware of each incoming and outgoing breath by counting them mentally and visualizing the breath which cleansing their lungs.
Opposite feelings and sensations: In this stage, the physical or emotional sensations are recalled, intensified, and experienced fully. Usually, this is practiced with pairs of opposite feelings or sensations like heat and cold, heaviness and lightness, pain and pleasure, love and hate, and so on.
Visualization: This is the final stage of yoga Nidra relates to mental relaxation. Generally, such images and symbols are chosen for the visualization that has universal significance. In the stage of visualization, the awareness is taken to the dark space in front of the closed eyes, referred to as chidakasha in yogic terminology. The practitioner is then instructed to visualize some objects, stories, or situations in the chidakasha.
Sankalpa: Once again the resolve or Sankalpa is intently thought of or even visualized repeat the affirmation mentally 3 times with full dedication, faith, optimism, feeling, and emphasis.
Ending the practice: Before ending the session of Yoga Nidra, slowly the awareness is externalized by asking the practitioner to become aware of the external sounds, objects, and persons. They are asked to slowly move the body parts and to stretch the body
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