The reason that yoga can help with your asthma is that by using yoga, you will get your body back to a more natural state. Both your body and your mind will be less stressed.

Relaxation and deep breathing were made for each other. Both of them help you to calm down, clear your mind and re-energize your body. By spending a few minutes taking slow, controlled breaths and paying attention to your breathing rather than taking it for granted, you will notice that your breathing automatically becomes calmer. Rather than it’s “normal”, hyper-active state. In turn, this will bring more energy into your body and calm you down.

Try out this simple breathing relaxation exercise. Read the instructions through a couple of times and then start.

1. Sit down, making sure that your posture is good and your spine is straight as possible.

Place your feet flat on the floor and check that your knees are directly over your feet. Place your hands on top of your legs.

2. Gently close your eyes.

3. Concentrate your thoughts on your ribs and your lungs. Inhale slowly and deeply. Notice your lungs filling up and your ribs expanding outwards and upwards. Then slowly exhale, again noticing your lungs slowly releasing the air you’ve just breathed in and your ribs gradually going back in and down.

4. Repeat this routine once a day for up to 3 minutes when you first start out. Over the coming days, gradually increase up to 5 and then 10 minutes throughout the day as necessary.

Yoga breathing exercises have been shown to help sufferers of mild asthma. You may still need your medication and any other health devices, although you should notice that you need them less and less as you practice these techniques.

Researchers from the Respiratory Medicine Unit, City University, Nottingham, call for more studies of ways of improving breathing control which they say have been largely ignored by Western medicine.

While yoga practitioners have long believed in the benefits of pranayama breathing exercises for asthmatics, this has been hard to study formally. But, using a Pink City lung – a device that imposes slow breathing on the user and can mimic pranayama breathing exercises – it was possible to measure the effects of controlled breathing in a hospital trial.

Two simulated pranayama exercises were tested: slow deep breathing and breathing out for twice as long as breathing in.

In asthma, the airways become restricted making breathing difficult. It is increasing in the UK, with more than three million children and adults affected, and are responsible for 2,000 deaths annually.

The doctors used standard clinical tests to measure the volume of air patients were able to blow out in a second and to test the irritability of their airways. After yoga, their airways were two times less irritable,

Though asthma patients should not stop their medication, they should experiment with breathing exercises.