Life on the front line in Accident and Emergency as a nurse
Having been a nurse for 10 years ish, I had really started to get fed up with seeing the short sighted way patients were treated within the hospital/general practice. I had spent half my career in coronary care and half in accident and emergency and I always felt as if we were trying to shut the gate after the horse had bolted (or what ever the saying is.)
Now I understand that by the time people get into hospital teaching people to understand their health and physiology is too late, but it inspired me to want to help prevent people having to get to the stage of being in hospital. There are a whole bunch of things that we can’t do a whole bunch about with our health (environment toxins, genetic variability etc), but there is also so so so so much that can be done to improve your chances of living a happy and healthy life.
One of the biggest things I notice is the amount of people who come into hospital chronically, overly mouth breathing. It is now seen as normal for people to have a respiratory rate (amount of times breathing in and out a minute) of 20.
Yoga teaches us, through the practice of pranayama, to be able to slow our breathing and find self awareness. When we slow our breathing and use our noses in particular, there is/should be a knock on effect which slows our heart rates and lowers our blood pressure (and can even help control blood sugars for you diabetics too) Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer in the western world these days and having higher bloody pressure and heart rates will play a major part in this (hence why you get prescribed medication to help lower both)
A slower life of stillness in yoga
Pranayama teaches us to become far more aware of being present and in the moment which helps to alleviate feelings of stress and anxiety which also increase our risk of cardiovascular disease. In todays modern busy go go go society, stress and anxiety have become ubiquitous and something that many actually look on like a badge of honour. In my eyes this really really needs to change. Stress causing anxiety and panic attacks can play havoc with mental health and is becoming increasingly common, especially among teens and younger adults. There is a physiological reason stress can cause people to panic and cause anxiety which if understood can be leveraged to bring back a sense of calm and inner peace
Yoga isn’t exactly a panacea for all lifestyle conditions, I have realised many things in yoga miss out a lot on an understanding of modern physiology but there is so much that we as health professionals could learn from the world of yoga .
So if you are someone who is worrying about there health or have been told they need to start looking after themselves, finding a decent yoga teacher that has a decent understanding of movement, breathing and the physiology behind them, can be a great place to start. I have tried to just highlight a little bit about how the breathing side of yoga can play a crucial roll in taking control of your own lifestyle and health, there is another essay that can be written about the joy that can come from the physical aspect of asana (yoga poses) but I will save that for another day.
If you are interested in learning more about yoga/breath work and health why not sign up for our news letter and our online membership at https://www.mandukyayoga.com/become-a-member (the news letter sign up will appear as a pop up) where you can have access to 11 weekly classes of movement, yoga, Breathwork and meditation all for £15 a month with both myself and my beautiful wife Jenny, who is also a long standing nurse with backgrounds in vascular care, accident and emergency and much more
