🌟Breathing🌟

by Kalyani Yoga

In class we looked at the way our body moves when we breathe. The movement of our abdominal area, ribcage and collar bones. By bringing awareness to all these areas we can develop the Full Yogic Breath. The Full Yogic breath combines breath in all three sections. Breathing-in in one slow continuous flow and breathing-out smoothly from all three sections.

When we breathe with awareness in this way we can rediscover areas of our lungs we may have forgotten and this helps to create a deeper fuller breath. We do not need to breathe in this way all the time but by bringing awareness we can utilise the lungs in a more efficient way.

The Mechanics of Breathing: When you breathe in air is drawn into the body through the nostrils (or mouth) and travels down the wind pipe into your lungs.  The large muscle below your lungs, the diaphragm, relaxes and moves out and down to give your lungs space to expand as it fills with your inhalation.  As you breathe out, the diaphragm contracts and rises up, forcing the lungs to compress and expel the air out back through the windpipe and out through your nose (or mouth).

Sectional Breathing 

This is an investigation of the breathing movements in the diaphragmatic, thoracic and clavicular regions of the lungs.

Method

  1. Lie in semi supine or another comfortable position allow your breath to be natural
  2. Place your hands by your navel. Without altering the breath notice the breath coming in and out of your body. – stay here for a few breaths. On the inhalation the diaphragm moves down and gently pushes the abdominal contents down and out, which causes a rise and fall of the navel. This is known as the diaphragmatic breath.  This breath is also referred to as “belly breathing”.  Whilst hands are placed on the navel they you notice your hands rise on the inhalation and fall on the exhalation.
  3. Now place your hands by the sides of your ribcage. Again, without altering the breath notice whether you can feel the breath coming in and out. You may feel that on the inhalation the rib cage moves up and out and on the exhalation the ribcage moves in and down.  You can enhance this feeling by applying gentle pressure with your hands.  Breath in this area is known as the thoracic breath.
  4. Now place your fingers on your collar bones. Without altering the breath see whether you can feel the breath coming in and out of this area.  You may feel the collar bones move up and down with your breath. The movement may be very subtle.  The breath here is in the upper section of the lungs and is known as the clavicular breath.
  5. Now place your hands where you felt your breath was at its strongest.
  6. Now place your hands where you felt your breath the least.

Let me know how you get on with this technique. Can you identify the different sections?

To help you, here is a short video I have done on sectional breathing.

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