Most of us today are shallow breathers and have forgotten how to use our lungs fully. Yogic breathing is a simple technique that can help one do deep breathing and increase the capacity of the lungs. Lungs have a capacity of approximately 5.2 liters of air. Most people today are breathing about 500 ml of air and if you are smoking/living in a high pollution city/lung issues then it is about 250 ml of air per breath. By training your natural breathing to change to yogic breathing you can increase the amount of air you intake to 3 Litres. So do yourself a favor and learn and practice yogic breathing. In Fact whenever you become aware of your breathing try and change it to yoigc breathing.
So what exactly is yogic breathing
When you combine abdominal breathing (stomach), thoracic breathing (chest) and clavicular breathing (throat) into one smooth breath – it is called yogic breathing. It is assumed that you know how to do yogic breathing before you begin any yogic practices and that’s why not much is mentioned about it in traditional texts. To do yogic breathing:
- Keeping your chest stationary inhale deeply in the abdominal area.
- Once the abdomen is fully expanded release the chest and carry on inhaling in the chest
- Once Chest is fully expanded carry on a few counts of inhales till you can feel the breath is all the way till your throat
- To exhale start from the throat and chest (keeping your abdomen stationary) and finally exhale from the abdomen by bringing the abdomen in towards the spine.
- This is one round of Yogic Breathing
- Try to make your exhalations longer than inhalations
- Once you are familiar with the mechanics try to do it in one smooth movement (visualize a balloon expanding and contacting inside the body).
Please watch the tutorial video to learn the mechanics.
Fun fact: Once you are familiar with yogic breathing observe the movement of the abdomen. If while inhaling, the abdomen is first expanding and then slightly coming in – congrats you are doing the yogic breath correctly. This has to do with the movement of the diaphragm. Initially, we are keeping the chest (and hence the ribs stationery) and once you start inhaling the lungs start expanding, since the ribs are fixed lungs push the diaphragm down to the abdominal cavity and hence the belly starts to expand. Once the ribs are allowed to expand lungs get more room to expand in the thoracic cavity and that releases some of the pressure on the diaphragm and hence the slight in the movement of the abdomen.
It is assumed you know how to do yogic breathing and hence you won’t find it in traditional yoga texts. It is expected that your natural breathing is yogic breathing.
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