Pranayama is one of the 8 limbs, stages or elements of Yoga. It includes proper breathing, breathing exercises, control of breathing, and control of Prana (life force or vital energy). When practiced regularly, it greatly enhances our energy and detoxifies our body. You will learn / review the basics of proper breathing.
Pranayama is useful for everyone, but especially useful for professional athletes as it improves endurance and increases lung capacity. It is also useful for professionals who use their voice such as singers, reporters, radio jockeys, etc. as it enhances voice quality.
One of the greatest Masters of Yoga, Sri BKS Iyengar, describes pranayama as follows: "Prana means the breath, the air and life itself. But in Yoga, prana is the very essence of the energising principle of the animate and inanimate world. It pervades the whole universe. And pranayama means the full control of that energising principle in one's own being by a certain discipline. This discipline aims not only at good health, an equilibrium in the physical and vital energies, but also the purification of the whole nervous system in order to make it more capable of responding to the will of the Yogi in controlling the sense-urges, and in making the mental powers more subtle and sensitive to the call of the evolutionary urge, the higher divine nature in man."