How Should You Breathe During Yoga?

Breath awareness is becoming increasingly popular, which is so great because it's one of those things that you (literally) just can't live without! There are many breathing techniques out there that have been used in a positive way to help people understand the importance of their breath and the incredible power that it has.

But before we get all crazy with that side of breathing we need to first understand the importance of achieving a relaxed, natural breath. This is often overlooked in the practice of yoga and also very undervalued.

When you connect back to your natural breathing rhythm throughout your yoga class you will generate a more nourishing and viable practice because calm, relaxed breathing takes you out of the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight mode) and into the parasympathetic nervous system (rest & digest). When we transfer from sympathetic to parasympathetic we are able to heal and be well.

Here are some tips for natural breathing:

1. Bring awareness to unnecessary tension in your belly and let it relax.

2. Soften your jaw and lips.

3. Notice where you have a tendency to hold your breath

The third point mentioned so easily sneaks in under the radar. This is because we often want to synchronise our breath with the teachers cues and as a result we actually end up UNDER-BREATHING or OVER-BREATHING, both of which makes our nervous system pretty stressed during an active yoga class.

Take for example the cues commonly used to get into a cobra flow starting from lying down on the belly. You'll commonly hear 'inhale cobra' to cue the lift of the chest, followed by a pause, and then 'exhale lower down'. During this flow it's incredibly common to stop breathing at the top of cobra, waiting for the cue to come down. This is a great example of 'under-breathing'.

So what do we do about that? Well you've got two options:

1. Inhale very slowly as you go into the pose so that you can try to keep inhaling until you come out of the pose and then exhale very slowly coming out of the pose OR

2. Attempt to do the above, however if you have reached your maximum lung capacity and you find you are holding your breath while still in the pose then just slowly exhale and breathe as per normal until you are ready to exit the pose.

In both options the driving point is the same; don't hold your breath! Either lengthen it out and breath for longer or else take an extra breath when you feel that your lungs are at their capacity.

The exit of your pose might be timed with an exhale and it might not be, but that is okay! Don't stress your breathing just because you think you need to enter and exit the pose with a particular breath.

Use these tips to get yourself connected to and familiar with breathing in a calm and relaxed manner throughout your ENTIRE practice. Do this FIRST and then once you have really mastered it you might try and move onto other more complicated and fancy ways of breathing during yoga.