12 June 2014

2 More Tips for Deep Breathing

Third in a series of breathing videos. In this one, I offer two tips that can help you find more ease in the three-part, diaphragmatic breath. (2mins)



Transcript

So before we add sound to our long, deep, diaphragmatic breath, there's just a couple things I want to say.

The first is that if you find you have difficulty imagining the breath pouring in from the chest, and then moving down into the rib cage and down into the belly, you can try actually doing the opposite. The first way I learned was actually the opposite direction--so, sometimes it's easier to feel the belly rise and fall with the breath than it is to feel the chest--it might depend on how you breathe normally and naturally. So if you find that it's difficult to sort of imagine that top down, you can just reverse the direction and start feeling the breath from the belly then moving it up into the rib cage, up into the chest as you inhale, and then as you exhale you can imagine it flowing back down. So you can try both directions and see which one works for you. I'm all about experimenting so you can try them both and pick one that you think works better for you.

The second thing I want to say before we add sound to the breath is that you want to think about opening the chest and allowing room for the diaphragm to move. So one of the easier ways that you can play with posture is to just inhale and bring your arms up over your head, lift your chest, relax your shoulders down; imagine as though you're reaching up to the sky. You can look up if it's safe for your neck. And just open up as much as you can and really reach through your fingers. Make sure they're nice and active. And then round yourself forward, imagine as though you're hugging a beach ball. Just kind of rounding the shoulders down, drawing the belly in and up, and then inhale and lift and expand. And as you exhale, round. And do that a couple times and it will just help to open the chest and then you can try the deep breathing again and see if it improves.

Thank you so much!

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