Pranayama and Nursing

The importance of complementary and supportive applications is increasing. Pranayama, which is one of these methods, has a positive effect on health with its philosophy and discipline that are specific to it. It is also an important step in yoga, which is an ancient Indian science and lifestyle, and is translated as "breath science, breath control, and willful breathing." In Sanskrit, pranayama consists of the words prana, which means "life force, vital energy, vitality," and yama, which means "control." According to the science of yoga, if humans can learn to control prana, they can also control their body, emotions, and mind. The fact that pranayama is a simple self-control technique that increases the awareness of breathing and shows that it is an influential and cost-effective practice for the patient in the management of symptoms, which is a responsibility of nurses. In this respect, the purpose of the present study was to provide information to health care professionals to be able to use pranayama types in symptom management, to provide evidence-based information to health care professions concerning concepts and philosophy of pranayama to guide nurses in clinical practice. For this purpose, the results of the studies searched in the PubMed database using the key words "pranayama" and "nursing" are shared.