Nervous System Health: Increase Oxygen While Lowering Heart Rate

Good circulation is a paramount state of good health. To really get supreme health, we want to keep the blood circulating. While the heart rate can stay very low, as much as possible you don’t want your heart rate to go up too often. It’s good if it varies, maybe from 45 beats to 75 beats up and down every minute; a healthy heart should do that. It’s called good heart rate variability. But the idea that you should get your heart rate up to 120 or 160 beats 45 minutes three times a week, is outdated.

The yogi has been said to count their life, not by the number of years they live, but by the number of beats their heart makes and the number of breaths they take. So let’s consider therefore that the aim is not to get your heart rate up, but rather to get the blood vessels, the vascular system to work very effectively at moving blood through the body without the heart racing.

I want you to feel that you’re getting strong while focusing on being relaxed and not feeling tense. Whenever the body feels tension, it retards blood flow and increases the stress response which depletes your immune system. I want you to enhance blood flow, get good circulation with the heart rate low. I want you to get energy in your body without having to breathe so much.

3 CPD points will be automatically allocated to your dashboard on completion of this course.

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Yoga Australia · 13 September 2023

About the Teacher

Simon Borg-Olivier, MSc BAppSc (Physiotherapy) APAM c-IAYT, has been practicing traditional forms of posture, movement, breathing, and mental control for 50 years. He has been teaching for 38 years and has been a registered physiotherapist for 23 years.

Simon works as a research scientist and a University lecturer. He has been regularly invited to teach about lifestyle, posture, movement, breathing, and meditation at conferences, festivals, and intensive teacher training courses internationally since 1990.

He is also co-director of YogaSynergy, one of Australia’s oldest and most respected yoga schools, which has a style based on a deep understanding of modern medical science and traditional forms of exercise and therapy from all over the world.