HOW TO DO DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING AND ITS AMAZING BENEFITS! - SOMA Breath

So here are the benefits of diaphragm breathing. So you may have heard this term diaphragm breathing or belly breathing even, and you may be confused, like, wondering, what is it? How do I do it? And why is it beneficial? Okay, so let's discuss what diaphragmic breathing actually means. So the diaphragm is an organ in your body that serves a very important function, which is breathing. And it allows you to actually expand your lungs, fill it with air, and then release your air from your lungs and create that process of respiration, breathing in and out, inhale and exhale. So diaphragm breathing means actually then breathing from your diaphragm with an intention. And what I want you to do, actually, just as an experiment, to see whether you are already naturally diaphragmic breathing, because a lot of people do it naturally, okay? Especially babies. You observe babies, they do this naturally. And another term for it is also belly breathing. But diaphragm breathing is a bit more precise, is just do this as a test. So put your left hand on your belly, right hand on your chest. That's right. And inhale and see which hand rises first.

Now, if your hand on your belly rises first, then your right hand on your chest, that means you're breathing in through your diaphragm first, which is actually what we mean. That's what we want to achieve. We want to breathe in to your diaphragm then into your.

Chest, because that means you're getting a full breath in and out. Now, you don't need to do this all day long either. Actually, super healthy yogis, they are still diaphragmically breathing, but they are not fully expanding their chest and out throughout the day. They are actually breathing in very slightly, in through the nose and out through the nose, but.

It'S still from the belly.

Now, there's a reason why we're doing it from this region, okay? And actually, to be even more precise, what you're really doing is you're breathing into your back because your lungs are actually in your lower back. So. So when you breathe in, what you're doing is you may be expanding your diaphragm, but you're not just sticking out your belly like this.

You're not just expanding your belly. When you just stick out your belly like this. Let me show you.

That's wrong. You're not getting a proper lung full of air, okay? And what you're doing is you're only filling up some of the lungs full of air. And if you breathe in Actually, and imagining actually you're expanding your back as well. What will happen is your belly rises, then your chest.

So this full diaphragmic breathing is got a specific use and benefit when you do this full diaphragm breathing, where you breathe into your diaphragm and then into your lower lungs and expand your belly, diaphragm and your back and then your chest at the same time, which is also called a full yoga breath. You're using it for certain pranayama techniques for Bhastrika is very important. With Bhastrika, what you're doing is you're breathing in.

And then just letting go.

And you keep a rhythm going like that. And you follow that with holding your breath on the exhale with no air in the lungs. Okay. Now this Bhastrika technique, what it does is doing that full yogic breath.

Firstly, it moves the lymphatic system around the body. So it's like a cleanser of junk from your body, from your lymphatic system, especially your cerebral spinal fluid. It's very good for that. You can even do a faster rhythm and you can feel this very quickly.

And over and over again. If you do that for a couple of minutes, you're going to feel lightheaded and tingly, but it's going to cleanse your, your cerebral spinal fluid and then you follow the breath retention. Hold your breath on the exhale for as long as you can and then on the inhale for as long as you can. And actually has this, it's called kumbaka. The whole sequence is.

Has this amazing effect. It's Bhastrika with Kumbhaka has amazing positive health benefit. We go into this in a lot more depth in our soma breath courses. And that's when it's really important to have this full yogic breath. Another time to do it is when we're doing this slow rechakra, extended exhalation. So what you do is you breathe in to your belly.

And then you breathe out very slowly through like a straw.

So you're breathing in fully.

Breathing out very slowly through a straw.

Now the benefit of that is profound. First, you're stimulating the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system. And this calms the nervous system down. Secondly, as you are not taking any more oxygen in and you're not breathing and not respiring, you're allowing carbon dioxide to build up in your bloodstream. Okay. This allows a flood of oxygen to go into the cells that needs to go through the Bohr effect, very, very important for hyper oxygenation of your whole system. Doing that technique, repeating that for several minutes day, really, really powerful. So that's the two very important times when you use this technique. When you're doing the bastrika rhythmic breathing, okay. And also when you're doing this slow rechaka. Now, during the day, like normal breathing.

It'S also important to try and keep your chest from rising first. Okay. And try and breathe into your belly as much as you can, okay? But it doesn't need to be deep, powerful, deep breaths all the time, all day long. That's a misconception. It should be slight breaths in and out.

If you want to learn more about why that is, then you can either sign up for a master class or you can check out some of the videos on our YouTube channel that are related to healthy breathing habits and why.

It'S important to not over breathe. Over breathing. Why over breathing is a big problem. So this actually.

Breathing through your nose and with a slight breath into the lungs and being very mindful that making sure it's slight and into your diaphragm, the normal way to breathe.

And you won't even, it won't even look like you're actually breathing.

But doing this.

Gasping like that all day long is not healthy. Chest breathing and mouth breathing is not healthy. The nose is there for a reason. It's not just for smelling, but acts as a filter. It filters the air, okay. It allows the air to be ready for absorption through your lungs and it cleans the air, okay. It's also when you breathe through your nose, it produces nitric oxide. It also helps you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system receptors at the back, which keeps your nervous system calm. When you breathe through your chest, you stimulate the sympathetic nervous.

Response and that actually produces more adrenaline, it's more energizing. But it can also be more stress inducing because we don't need to be overly stressed during the day. We don't need it. Most people are really stressed out. So for them, normal breathing is just relax, calm, okay? People who are very apathetic with no energy at all and maybe have severe depression could do benefit from a lot of intense breathing techniques to wake up the nervous system. But on the whole, most people are going to just do slow, calm breathing with no force and into the diaphragm. That's the normal, safe and healthy way for us to breathe. So I hope this gives you a bit of an overview on diaphragmic breathing, the benefits of it, why we should be doing it. There's other ways to actually you can also.

Experiment to make sure you're breathing through your diaphragm. This is the easiest I find by breathing and seeing which hand rises first. Another one is you can lie on your front on your belly and bring your awareness to your belly and breathe into your belly. Whilst you're lying on your front on top of your belly, you can feel yourself rising as you're breathing into your belly. That's another way to train for it. And other ways are you can actually bend forward and as you know your your lungs are actually in your lower back when you're breathing. You're.

Becoming aware of that the lungs expanding from your lower back.

There are other ways for you to train and breathe in that way. To really practice diaphragmic breathing. Again, no force required. Don't overthink it. Don't overanalyze this stuff. If you want to go deeper, join our master class and subscribe to our YouTube channel and you'll be able to get your questions answered from me as well if you're confused in any way. But here's to healthy breathing habits and much love positive energy for the day ahead. Peace.