Last weekend Energy Arts participated in the NYC Yoga Journal Conference and I was surprised by the number of yoga students that vocalized how much tension they had in their lives and were actively seeking out something to lessen it.  Whether or not their current yoga practice is addressing that issue for them is unknown, but what we students and instructors at Energy Arts know is that Taoist practices, including Longevity Breathing yoga, do offer a direct way to deal with the tension in your life.  

“Stress is a fancy word for tension”, Taoist Lineage holder Bruce Frantzis is often heard saying.  And practicing yoga, depending on your approach, may not lessen stress in the body but can actually increase it.  At Longevity Breathing yoga & meditation trainings and retreats, Frantzis will often have the most flexible person in the group demonstrate their level of physical flexibility by having them drop into full splits.  He’ll then have this person attempt that same posture from the Taoist approach; only allowing an external stretch to result from an internal release.  The student usually doesn’t make it into a full split when it’s approached internally.  It could actually take weeks, months or even years to reach that same level of flexibility when working from the inside out.  So rather than just having stretched muscle fibers, Longevity Breathing yoga allows you to fully relax, release tension and open your body to the energy flows within it.

Often times yoga students become fixated on the external physical aspect of their practice; what the postures look like and how far they can stretch or push into a posture.   I’ve heard many students (and instructors) tell me how they don’t feel like “real” yoga students or instructors because they haven’t mastered the more difficult hatha yoga asanas.   One thing I’ve learned from years of practice is that mastering those difficult asanas doesn’t always equate to a better or more authentic yoga practice.  The flexibility of your body and ability to perform advanced yoga postures is not always an indication of what’s happening internally.   You may spend years attempting to master difficult hatha yoga postures such as padmasana (lotus pose) or urdhva dhanurasana (full back bend) and still be an extremely tense person.  Even though you may be able to contort your body into difficult shapes, the energy running through your body may not flow freely.  When you focus all of your effort on mastering these difficult postures or on forcing the muscles to stretch, the nervous system will react by shutting down the energy channels; you may actually be creating a negative feedback loop in your body causing it to be tense and closed down.   What students can learn from the internal relaxation techniques of Longevity Breathing yoga is how to naturally begin to stretch and move further over time while progressively relaxing without the straining or pushing that may accompany their other practices.   Learn to relax and flow from the inside out.

~Ellen Pucciarelli 
Do you have a question about Longevity Breathing yoga or a topic you’d like to see addressed?  Contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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