Pranayama before or after strenuous exercise?
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Since I have not done Pranayama in a while I am going to start purifying the nerves whenever I do Resh, but around noon and sunset I do strenuous exercise every day. In the past I have found light exercise before Pranayama to be beneficial. However, my concern is that strenuous exercise (such as running, weight training, or martial arts) directly beforehand, through muscular and cardiovascular fatigue, may impede my efforts and progress at Pranayama.
Does anyone here have experience doing Pranayama before or after strenuous exercise that they could share? Did you find it more or less beneficial to do it one way or the other?
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Agreed. After it, breathing is often in a more accelerated survival, "catching up" mode.
The real idea of pranayama isn't control of breath or breathing, it's control of prana; but one of the most effective ways to do this is to control breathing. For most people, most of the time, actual control of prana is likely to be harder after strenuous exercise.