5 BEST PRANAYAMA BREATHING EXERCISES You Should Practice Daily - Soma Breath

So in this video, I'm going to teach you the five fundamental, most important, powerful and scientifically proven breathing practices from Pranayama. That's right. And I'm also going to share with you a routine that you can do every single morning that's going to help you get all the benefits you want for your health and well being out of these proven techniques. Okay? So one of the most important things you must be aware of is that there's a difference between normal breathing, breathing that you do on a day to day basis compared to a technique which you're doing when you're using your conscious ability to control your breath. Okay? So normal breathing on a day to day basis where you're just. When you're working, cooking, just hanging out, listening to your friends when they're, when you're having a conversation should be where your emphasis is on nasal breathing, where you're breathing in and out through your nose, okay? And your breath should be as silent as possible, okay? So you're not forcing your breath. You're not.

All day long, okay? You're not breathing in with lots of force through your nose. You're not doing like all day long. That's not correct. Okay? It should be silent and it doesn't even have to be deep, okay. It just needs to be with no force and effortless and silent through your nose. When you can do this and you're calm and you're not gasping for air, it's a sign that you have good oxygen efficiency, okay? It means you're very efficient. Using oxygen means you need the least amount of oxygen to create the same amount of energy. And what that means is that you're going to have less risk of oxidative stress over breathing. All of these things that are now shown to be one of the worst things for your health. And becoming more oxygen efficient means you're going to be more calm, you're going to have more fitness, more stamina, you're going to have less risk of inflammation, degenerative diseases, and your lifespan is going to be improved as well because according to Pranayama, the less you need to breathe, but the slower your breathing rate, the longer you live. And this is shown already in animals. Animals that have very slow breathing rates, like elephants and turtles, they live much longer than animals that have very fast breathing rates like mice and rats. And then there's this weird phenomenon, the mole rat, the naked mole rat that lives underground in hypoxic conditions, that lives 30 years versus one or two years, and it lives in an oxygen Free environment most of the time. It's incredible phenomenon that shows that control over our breath means that we can have control over oxygen and the stress that it causes on the body. And therefore, these five fundamental breathing practices are designed to actually make you more efficient using oxygen. So your breathing rate comes down over time, and you can live longer, happier, and healthier. That's the logic behind them. Okay? So normal breathing should be through your nose and into your diaphragm. Okay? So to correct your breathing, to make sure you're diaphragmically breathing, okay, you're going to put your left hand on your belly, right hand on your chest. Breathe in.

Observe which hand rises first. If your hand on your belly rises first and then your hand on your chest, great, you're doing it correctly. And remember, your lungs are actually in your back. So when you're breathing in.

Imagine you're filling up your back and you're filling up like this, and then into your chest, and you're getting a full yogic breath. So when you're breathing in and out with normal breathing, you are going to be breathing through your nose, but you're not going to be breathing very shallow from your chest.

Okay? You're going to be breathing into your diaphragm.

And you can do a full yogic breath and breathing out through your nose.

Very slowly. Okay? And that should be your natural breath. Now, you also don't need to fill your lungs completely with air. The more efficient you're using oxygen, you will actually look like you're even shallow breathing. Okay? But you're breathing into your diaphragm rather than your chest. Okay? So deep breathing is not so important. What's more important is your ability to be able to breathe less and still produce the same amount of energy. And that oxygen efficiency is way more important than actually whether you're deep breathing throughout the day. Deep breathing serves a purpose of moving the lymphatic system. So one of the techniques we're going to be sharing in a moment is all about moving the lymphatic system as well. And the lymphatic system clears all of the junk out of your system, and it can only move through breath and movement exercise. Okay? So that's why breath can be used to really clean out your system as well. Okay? So we've talked about normal breathing, breathing through your nose. And what happens when you talk a lot is you breathe out through your mouth. So avoid mouth breathing, because what you do is you're breathing out lots of carbon dioxide, lots of carbon dioxide. Being breathed out means you mess up the oxygen carbon dioxide ratio. You become actually too charged with oxygen and you don't have enough carbon dioxide. And you need the carbon dioxide to get the oxygen off the red blood cells into cells it needs to go. This is super important and therefore why we need to build up carbon dioxide tolerance as well. And these techniques I'm going to share with you actually help you get the perfect ratio between oxygen, carbon dioxide, and allows you to get the oxygen into the cells where it needs to go. Okay. And it prevents these problems of over breathing as well. And being mindful of breathing in through your nose rather than your mouth is the first, most important principle of pranayama. Okay? Now, mouth breathing is sometimes used in techniques. So the first pranayama technique I'm going to share with you, Bhastrika, actually you can use your mouth and your nose as well. Okay. If you want. This is a very powerful energizing breath. So the way you do Bhastrika, okay. Is you sit with your back straight in a comfortable position and you breathe in and out in a rhythm. Okay. Like this.

You can also do this.

But you're breathing into your belly, then into your chest in a rhythm like that. You can breathe out through your mouth, in through your nose, like that. And when you start any, any pranayama technique off, you exhale first. So you go when you breathe in.

And you're just allowing your exhale to be brought down through the weight of gravity. You're not forcing the exhale, you're not doing this.

You don't need to do that. You're just doing it. Relax.

There's no force. You can also do it still like this.

However, when you're doing this movement.

It also allows a lot of air to come into the lungs and it actually exercises the spine as well at the same time. And it helps move the lymphatic system. So Bastrica is a great way to move the lymphatic system and bring in lots of oxygen. And that's actually why it's called bellows breath. You breathe in lots of oxygen, but you also breathe in out loads of carbon dioxide. So you're going to get very tingly and you're going to get like feel like you're hyperventilating after several reps of this. After about 20 reps of this, you might feel lightheaded and tingly. And that's not a good thing. If you're doing this chronically all the time, why hyperventilating is bad. So Bhastrika you should always follow up with your breath retentions or extended exhalations. So that's the next technique I'm going to talk about, which is called slow rechaka. Slow rechakra is where you extend your exhalation. Okay? Now you can do this either just by extending your exhalation, by breathing out.

So you're breathing out through pursed lips.

Now what that allows to do. So if you've done lots of bhastrica first, like 20, 30 reps, you're going to have lots of oxygen, less carbon dioxide. And what happens is now you're allowing the carbon dioxide to build up because you're breathing out very slow. You're not inhaling or exhaling again. And what that means is that first your nervous system quietens down, you switch on the parasympathetic because you're extending your exhalation. But what's also happening is that your oxygen that you've got all bound to your red blood cells actually gets absorbed into the cells where it needs to go through the Bohr effect because you're raising carbon dioxide now. And this has a very powerful cleansing effect through your bloodstream at the same time hyper oxygenating your cells in your body. Okay, so this is a great way to energize your body and get the oxygen where it needs to go. Okay, so, so the combination of basrika, which literally means bellows breath, it burns the fire, okay, with all the oxygen. And then extending your exhalation.

Allows all that oxygen to go into the cells it needs to go. And it has a calming effect on your physiology. You can also make a tone like this. So remember, you're always going to breathe in a full yogic breath like this.

So you're into your belly, into your back, expand in your chest, and then you're going to breathe out very slowly through your pursed lips. Or you can make a tone.

Now those three syllables, A of om stimulates each of the endocrine glands of your digestion of your sex, of your heart, thymus gland, your thyroid, and then your pituitary and pineal. And also when you hum, you stimulate production nitric oxide. Also nasal breathing produce nitroxide, which keeps your blood vessels dilated and is really good for your circulatory system and staying relaxed. Okay? So you can also do aum chance after bastrica as well. And actually you'll find you have to do really long aums. And this has a very calming effect over your whole nervous system and can help actually wake up the energy Centers of your endocrine glands. Especially if you imagine like a light moving through your body as you're going aa, umm, starting here and moving up with each tone and vibration that you make. So bhastrika followed by slow rechakra and chanting is a great combination. If you just did that every day, you're going to feel really, really good. So 20 to 30 cycles of Bhastrika followed by the aum chanting or slow rechaka. Extend your exhalation. Now, another way to create a lot of fire inside is through kapalbhati. You may have seen this one is where you're forcing the air out of your nose and okay, like this and you're sucking in your abdomen. So again, back straight, sit upright and force the air out for your nose and suck in your belly.

Now what's happening is there you're breathing out carbon dioxide. You're maintaining oxygen stuck to your red blood cells. And this actually changes the ph very dramatically of your bloodstream. So does bastrica. And it creates like a charge, a current, and actually generate a lot of heat inside your body. And also it's called shining skull because you're going to start feeling like a flushing sensation, tingling session all over your face and your head. A lot of heat can be generated from this. Actually, you can use this technique to generate heat on a, on a very cold day. But also it expels gastric gases from your digestive system like stale gases. Great thing to do on an empty stomach in the morning. But it also dramatically.

Because you're blowing out loads of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is what triggers your brain to breathe again. It dramatically allows you to hold your breath for longer and to do the slow rechakra or aum trance. We're going to do the breath retention, breath holds in a moment and we'll talk about that. But again, you can use kapalbhati and slow red shaka or a as well as a sequence. So you do 20 reps of this, 20 to 30. Do a minute, then two minutes, three minutes. You don't need to do a lot of this, but you will find that you'll be able to do more every day. Okay. And you'll be able to do longer and longer tones and breath holds afterwards as well in this sequence. But you must follow the breath retention or slow red chakra at the end of this because you're building up a lot of fire. And if you just keep that fire, it actually can affect your nervous system. So you want to actually calm the fire down with the breath holds or the.

The slow red chakra toning, which we're going to explain in a moment. So again, to recap.

Keep exhaling force in your exhale. You're not doing this.

You'Re not doing that. Just exhaling.

Feel the charge building up. And then inhale.

And then.

Breathe out very slowly. Or.

Now this is a great routine for beginners. You can do this every single morning. And you're going to get a lot of benefits from the chanting and the, the fire, fiery breathing practices. You may have also heard of breath of fire. That's just a type of bastrika as well. It's just the faster rhythm of it. And you can experiment with different rhythms. Slowing bhastrika down, speeding up, slowing the kapalbhati down, speeding up, doing it for longer, shorter. But always follow with the slow rechaka, or what we're going to talk about now, which is a bit more advanced breath retention kumbhaka. And this is arguably the most important and revered practices of all the different types of kumbhaka. Breath retention on your exhale, called bhayakumbaka, or breath retention on your inhale called antara kumbhaka. Right. When you do it after the exhale and you hold it so slightly beyond the comfort zone, what you're doing is you're bringing the oxygen levels down a bit. The reason why that happens is when you do bustreka, you're breathing out carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is what triggers your brain to breathe again. So when you've got less carbon dioxide in the system, it means you can hold your breath for longer. You trick your brain into being able to hold your breath for longer. Okay? So when you hold your breath for a certain length of time, usually around a minute 30, you bring the oxygen saturation down your bloodstream. Normally, your oxygen saturation is around 98%. And a little sip of air is going to saturate you fully. All right? Oxygen is not the problem. It's getting the oxygen into the cells that you need it to go. And when you hold your breath like this, okay, you bring carbon dioxide levels back up again because you're not breathing out, you're not breathing out carbon dioxide. You're holding your breath. And what's also happening is, is the oxygen that is in your red blood cells shoots in to the cells it needs to go. Because oxygen's affinity for your red blood cells depends on carbon dioxide. If you have too little carbon dioxide, because you're breathing a lot, you're exhaling a lot if you're talking a lot like this, you're hyperventilating. Actually. Hyperventilation actually makes your red blood cells saturated. Oxygen stop, stops the oxygen going where it needs to go. Okay? But when you hold your breath, pause your breath for a moment, or you breathe out slowly, you allow this oxygen to flood the cells. It needs to go through the Bohr effect. This is called the Bohr effect. You need the right amount of carbon dioxide. So the more carbon dioxide tolerance you have, and you can train for this with this technique, it means your breathing rate slows down. You can actually hold your breath for even longer. And breath rate is directly linked to longevity. The slower your breathing rate, the less risk of oxidative stress, the longer you live. Okay? This is one of the reasons why this technique is so powerful. Now, actually, this technique where you're holding your breath beyond the comfort zone, okay? And especially if you do the Bhastrica first. So you're doing.

Around 20 to 30 times, and you're breathing fully in.

Breathing out.

Let it go of the air.

This allows less gaseous exchange to happen. There's no air in your lungs. Don't force it. Don't compress your. The lungs. Just get the remaining air out with a hiss. Relax your body completely. Bend forward, let your chin go towards your chest. Close your eyes. What happens is you'll be able to hold your breath for like two minutes, even sometimes three minutes, depending on how efficient you become with the oxygen, right? What happens here, you go into very deep, profound, meditative state state. Holding your breath like this allows you to go into a very deep medicate. It's like a defrag switch for your hard drive. So imagine your computer when it gets cluttered with files, okay? Just like your PC getting full of viruses. After a while, you need to defrag it. You have to keep defragging it to make it run again. This is like a defrag switch for your operating system. So imagine your operating system is your mind. Over time, it gets cluttered with thought files. Holding your breath like this is like a pause, pause for your mind. Your thoughts quiet right down. It's like a deep frag, and it reassembles all the thought files, and you can get a moment of clarity at the end of it. Now what happens is after about a minute 30 of holding your breath, your oxygen levels goes down from 98% down to like 80%. It triggers positive stress response in your body. It's called intermittent hypoxia. This has wonderful health benefits for your body. You're Wondering, like, why would bringing oxygen down do this? Well, here's the thing. Your body is tricked into thinking you're going to go into an environment where there's low oxygen and it adapts. It's like you're going to the top of Everest where there's very little oxygen. Your body adapts. It produces more red blood cells. You get better blood flow all around your body, especially into your heart and your brain. And this actually improves your cardiovascular system. It prevents against heart disease, heart attacks from oxidative stress. You actually become more efficient using oxygen. So your risk of oxidative stress goes down, inflammation goes down, can even relieve the symptoms of disease. It's very, very powerful technique. And it can also improve the length of your telomeres. So this is associated with longevity. So this is why kumbaka could be the most revered technique of all. The other thing is you improve carbon monoxide levels, nitric oxide levels, you dilate blood vessels, and you get better blood flow to your organs as well over time, especially to your heart and your brain. And this can actually improve cognitive function. It can even wake up dormant parts of the mind. It's amazing. Okay, so nishesha vatshaka, which is the holding your breath beyond the comfort zone, which works from doing the bhastrika first, could be the most powerful breathing practice of all. But it must be done with respect. So the way to do this is you do 20 to 30 reps of bhastrika. Then you breathe in, breathe out.

Hiss.

You hold your breath. You get to this point where you get this urgency to breathe. When you get that first urge to breathe, count down in your head. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1. In your mind. And this will trick your brain to letting you hold your breath even longer. And you'll go beyond the comfort zone and you'll start to feel this rush, this adrenaline builds up. This is called epinephrine inside. And you get this cascade of positive hormones building up. You feel this feel good rust sensation building up in your spine. At this point, you breathe fully in.

You pull on the pelvic floor muscles, the muscles around your sphincter. You contract them up, you pull them up. These are also the muscles. If you need to go to the toilet, you need to pee. You're pulling up this energy. You're screwing up your forehead a bit. You're shutting your throat like this by bringing your neck down. And you're holding your breath on the inhale from around 30 seconds, okay? And this is called antara Kumbhaka breath retention on the inhale, which actually sends blood flow to the brain. So all those feel good hormones you produce to bringing this energy up to the brain, you can also use this to send energy to organs. Say you want to improve healing in your.

Skin. Maybe you've cut yourself or you've had an injury, you've hurt your bones, you in an accident, you can actually, instead of sending it to your brain, screw up your forehead. You can actually screw up your arm like this or your foot, your wherever it is, you need to send the healing to send your intention there. And then when you can't hold it any longer, usually around 30 seconds on your inhale, you don't need to do really much more than that. You can make a tone.

Imagine this energy is going to wherever you want it. For most people who haven't got any injuries, any problems, you want to send the energy to the brain. This is going to help the health of your brain dramatically. Okay? Now with deeper practice, what can happen with low oxygen, bringing yourself into this intermittent hypoxic state is you can trigger the activation of very small embryonic like stem cells which are omnipotent. They have the ability to transform into any other stem cell, any other cell in the body. These stem cells are like amazing. They're like powerful stem cells that people are doing more research into and storing away, spending thousands of dollars on treatments. But imagine if the ancient yogis knew that we can activate these stem cells. They're usually dormant in your circulation. You can actually wake them up, awaken them and use them in the right concepts for healing, lowering inflammation, improving brain function, allowing them to go to the areas where you want to grow new abilities in your mind, in your brain, just through the power of intention and using these energy locks to send energy to these areas. So this is why this technique in sequence done could be the most dramatic and most powerful technique of all. Okay. And it's why for some reason is kept a secret up in Himalayas and I'm now sharing it with the world because I think we desperately need everyone to know how to do this. Everyone should do this because it can help us become more self sufficient and take control of our health. And the science is out there. You should see the testimonies we get from people who are doing this safely in the right context, inside our groups, inside our soma breath courses as well. Thousands of people going through these techniques, reporting back amazing results. So we now have doctors and healthcare professionals using them in a, in a more medical environment, getting good Results too. Okay, so to recap, rhythmic breathing, doing Bhastrica, you can also do Kapalbhati. Holding your breath on the exhale with nowhere in the lungs beyond the comfort zone. Then holding a breath on the inhale, sending the intention where you want to go, either to the brain or to an area in your body that needs healing, and then making the chant.

At the end of it. That is an amazing sequence. Okay, so I'm going to talk about another tool. You can add in another technique, which is actually the most common pranayama technique of all. It's called anulom vilomite alternative nostril breathing. I like to end the routine that we. I just talked about there, doing like two or three rounds of what I just explained there with alternate nostril breathing. So the way to do alternate nostril breathing, put your middle finger, your forehead, and use your ring finger to close each nostril, your thumb to close the other nostril. Okay? So like this, you can close each nostril. Okay? And what you're going to do is you're going to exhale.

And then you're going to breathe in through your right nostril.

Again, remembering to do a full yogic breath into your belly, into your chest.

Now hold, breathe out through your right. Your left.

Hold, breathe in for your left.

Hold both shut. Breathe out through your right.

And again. And just repeat on both sides. Now anulom vilom is a very common and famous technique, okay. In pranayama. And a lot of people think that this is pranayama, okay. But it's probably one of the least important techniques. The routine I just explained is way more powerful. But this technique is useful as well, because what it's doing is slowing the rate of air coming into each nostril. Right down like already. Nasal breathing slows the ray of airflow coming in, so it prevents over breathing. But shutting off a nostril slows down the breathing even more, allowing even less oxygen come in. And you may be wondering, why do we need less oxygen? Well, if you get pulse oxymere, you'll see that you're already saturated with oxygen. This is a machine you can put on your finger, measures oxygen levels, and just with a sip of air, you're fully saturated. Oxygen is not the problem. Over breathing is the problem. Where we're breathing out carbon dioxide, too much carbon dioxide, which means that you're not getting the oxygen into the areas where it needs to go, because you need carbon dioxide inside your body to be at the right levels. And to get the oxygen in to the cells where it needs to go. Now, Anulom villum trains you to have more carbon dioxide tolerance because it's slowing the breathing right down. It also prevents over breathing. It can actually over time if you, you can do this for several minutes a time, 10, 15, 20 minutes. And you'll feel how beautiful it feels. And what this can do is it calms nervous system down, it trains you up to more carbon dioxide tolerance, it improves your oxygen efficiency. But here's the mystical benefits of it. Each nostril is, according to Pranayama, linked to the opposite hemisphere. So your left nostril connects your right hemisphere. Your right nostril connects to your left hemisphere. The right has functions that is associated with memory, creativity, imagination, the more feminine side of the brain. The left hemisphere is associated with digestion, digestive fire, with concentration, focus, drive. It's the more masculine side of the brain. It's like to do with problem solving. Okay. And you can actually wake up the powers of each side by controlling the airflow from each nostril. Also your, your nostrils will switch throughout the day between being predominantly more through the left or, or to the right, depending on which side of the brain is more active. And momentarily you may get both nostrils active at the same time. This is very rare. However, this is a sign that both hemispheres are active. But by doing alternate nostril breathing, you can actually create a balancing between both hemispheres and go into very profound, blissed out, mystical states of awareness. Especially if you do it for several minutes. So what I like to do is do that routine I just told you of, Bhastrika. Followed by breath retentions, followed by chanting, then ending with anulom vilom. That's right. Alternate nostril breathing. It's amazing. That combination is super powerful. That's right. Okay. So these are core breathing practices from Pranayama that I found to have the most therapeutic benefits, the most science to back them up. Okay. We go into this in a lot more depth inside our soma breath courses, including the way to do it, the right time to do it, the context to do each thing, and also how to use it. Like your own pharmacy of different breathing practices where you can actually even invoke extraordinary out of body altered states of consciousness. And also you can use them for fitness, health, to heal yourself, to, to help yourself have more energy and stamina, more focus, more concentration, and even do things like go to sleep or to wake up and be more energized. That's right. So I teach you like a pharmacy of medicines. I teach you how to use your breath as medicine inside our SOMA breath courses and how to be an instructor where you can use these in the right time the right way with your clients and you're even doing as groups and you can even build a very rewarding career out of this as well. So if you want to learn more about this then sign up for the masterclass in the link below this video in the description. Subscribe to our channel because there's a lot more content like this that I'm going to be creating as well as already lots in our library and you can also.

Ask any questions you might have in the comments below and any requests you might have for future videos. So I hope this was useful. It was just a brief overview. We go in a lot more depth inside our actual courses and this is a great way for you to start getting the benefits of this ancient breathing practices right from today. Much love Peace.