Kapalabhati (Skull-Shining Breath)

Hi everyone, I am Sanjana Prasad, welcome to Yoga & You. Today we are going to talk about Kapalabhati — what are its benefits, contraindications, how to begin your practice, and how to progress in the practice of Kapalabhati.

Kapalabhati means frontal lobe cleansing, the literal meaning: Kapala — skull, Bhati — to shine, shining skull. So Kapalabhati is a kriya, or a cleansing technique, which helps you to prepare, or it is a warm-up for a formal pranayama practice. Kapalabhati uses forceful exhalations and slightly longer and passive inhalations. So when you begin your practice, make sure you understand your breathing pattern first. When you inhale, your belly should expand, chest should expand; when you exhale, your belly and your chest should relax.

So before we move into the practice, if you are pregnant or on your period, you have heart issues or high blood pressure, please do not practice Kapalabhati. But Kapalabhati can be beneficial because it is an energizing cleansing technique — it helps to warm up the body, it helps to clear your sinuses, making way for a long and healthy pranayama practice.

So let's begin with today's practice. You're going to start by placing your right palm on your belly. Let's understand the breath first. So as you inhale, you find the lower belly expands; as you exhale, you find that your lower belly contracts. Make sure you're not doing the opposite, right? Inhale, belly expands, exhale, it contracts. One more time. Inhale, belly expands, exhale, belly contracts.

Now Kapalabhati uses short, forceful exhalations. So you're going to exhale forcefully through the nostrils and you're going to keep the mouth closed completely. Inhale, start to exhale forcefully through the nostrils. Once you're comfortable with this exhalation, I want you to combine it with contracting your abdomen every time you exhale. Inhale, exhale, and draw the belly in. You can use your palm to push the belly inwards. Make sure you're not doing the opposite here again. Inhale, let's try one more time — pushing the belly in, forceful exhalation.

Once you're comfortable with the forceful exhalation combined with drawing and sucking the belly in, you're going to combine this with one more aspect. When you suck the belly in, you're also going to draw up your anal muscles. So two things are going to be combined here: drawing the belly in and drawing up your anal muscles, and forceful exhalations through the nose. When you begin your practice of Kapalabhati, keep the space between every exhalation a little longer. Try not to go too fast. Avoid this kind of a practice; maintain a very moderate space. Inhale — this would be a perfect pace to go at.

So we're going to try drawing the belly in and drawing up your anal muscles at the same time. Let's do eight forceful exhalations at a moderate pace. Inhale, begin, relax. When you're very comfortable with this technique of drawing up your anal muscles and contracting the abdomen with the forceful exhalation, you can start to speed it up a little bit, and from eight exhalations we can push it to 15 or 20 or even 30 repetitions. So let's try 20 exhalations at one stretch. Take a deep breath in, let your palm continue to stay on your belly, and begin. Twenty. Relax.

Once you're comfortable with 20 or 30 exhalations this way, you can also advance your practice by changing the arm position in which you do Kapalabhati. So instead of placing your palms on the knees or your palm on the belly, you can lift your arms up from the sides, interlock your fingers above the head, and do the same practice. Exhale and bring your hands down. If this is also very comfortable for you, and you're also able to increase the speed of your practice and maintain the same 30 counts, you can do an alternative arm position, which is taking your palms on the opposite shoulder blades. Exhale and relax.

When you're able to do three or four rounds of 30 exhalations each, then you can start to combine the arms, eventually doing about 108 exhalations at one stretch in one arm position, or you can continue to change the arm positions as you do these 108 repetitions. So this is how we start from a very basic Kapalabhati practice and progress to an advanced level, combining with the anal contraction and changing the arm position, and also increasing the number of repetitions at one stretch.

I really hope this video was helpful in understanding Kapalabhati kriya. Thank you.