Sectional Breathing (Yogic Breath)

Hi everyone, welcome to Yoga & You, I'm Sanjana Prasad. We all know that your yoga practice is incomplete without a breath. The connection to the breath that you established through your asana practice is what you carry forward, your pranayama practice as well.

But before you get into your asana practice, you need to know how to breathe, how to connect with the breath, what part of the body are you using to breathe. And a great way to get started is yogic breathing, for which we need to understand sectional breathing. We have three sections, abdominal breath, thoracic breath and clavicular breath. We're going to be practicing each of these in depth in today's episode. So let's get started.

Abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing is the body's most natural and efficient way to breathe, but unfortunately we've lost touch with this breathing, owing to our lifestyle and poor posture. In abdominal breathing, we rely on the movement of the abdomen for your inhalation and exhalation. So when you inhale, you are breathing into the lower lobes of the lungs, which makes your diaphragm move downwards, and this forces your abdominal contents to move outward, which is what makes your belly expand. And the reverse happens on exhalation. So here you're relying more on the lower lobes of the lungs and the diaphragm rather than the middle lobes and the ribcage.

So let's get into the practice of abdominal breathing. Abdominal breathing is easier to access when you're lying down, and once you get comfortable there, you can also try it in a comfortable seated position. You're going to lie down on your mat, your feet apart, in a comfortable shavasana. Move your right palm towards your navel. Your elbow can be comfortably resting down on the floor.

Take a few normal breaths here, you don't have to force the breath. Now, what is happening with the body, naturally. Now I want you to bring your awareness to the navel, imagine that you are drawing your inhalation in towards your navel. And the exhalation is also moving out through the navel. Inhale, drawing the energy in towards the navel, exhale, allowing the energy to move out through the navel.

You will notice a deep expansion in the belly as you inhale. And complete relaxation and even a slight contraction of your abdomen as you exhale. Inhale, using the lower lobes of the lungs, visualizing your diaphragm pushing down into your abdominal contents, belly expands, exhale and allow your belly to completely relax. There is almost no movement around your upper chest and ribcage, you are focusing on only expanding and relaxing your abdomen.

Let's take two more breaths, inhale. One more, inhale, slowly relax your hand and come back to your natural breath.

Now that we've practiced belly or abdominal breathing, we're moving on to the next section, which is chest or thoracic breathing. In thoracic breathing, you're not going to rely on the diaphragm but on the ribcage, the intercostal muscles and the middle lobes of the lungs. So here you're going to allow for the chest, the ribcage to really expand not only upward and outward but also to the side. So you're using the entire capacity of the middle part of the chest to inhale and exhale.

If you notice, when you're exerting the body or when you're doing any kind of physical exercise, your body will naturally resort to chest breathing and it's great. Even during your asana practice, your thoracic and clavicular breath is great to use so that your core remains engaged, but unfortunately this becomes a natural breathing pattern for us even throughout our daily lives. So this is what makes us stressed out because the breath becomes a little shorter, faster and sharper when you're using your chest and your clavicular breath. So you want to stay connected to the abdominal breath but also have access to your chest and clavicular breathing so that you can use it during your asana practice or when you are exercising.

Let's lie down and practice your chest breathing now. Again coming down into a nice comfortable shavasana, this time you're going to take the left palm and place it at the center of your chest. Again elbow is resting comfortably on the mat. Bring your awareness to the center of the chest.

As you inhale, you're drawing the breath in through the center of the chest, allowing your chest to expand upwards, outward and sideways. Exhale and allow your chest ribs to relax, middle lobes of the lungs. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, we've done four breaths and you will notice that through these four breaths there's barely any movement around the belly.

Belly is completely relaxed, all the work is happening around the center of the chest. Inhale, exhale, when you keep the abdomen relaxed and drawn in slightly and you breathe deep enough, you can also feel the breath in the back of the body. You're using the chest to its maximum capacity. Let's try one last breath, inhale. Exhale, slowly relax your hand and come back to your natural breath.

The last section that we're going to practice today is your clavicular breathing or your collar bone breath. So it's important to use your chest and clavicular breath together during your asana practice, but it's also important for us to learn how to isolate, to make sure that we're using all three sections and taking some inhalations and full exhalations.

In case of your collar bone or clavicular breath, you will notice that you automatically resort to this kind of breathing when you are extremely stressed out or your physical exertion is at the max. Now this shouldn't become a pattern in your everyday life, although it is okay to do when you are stressed out or when you are really, really exerting yourself physically. You will notice that the muscles around your neck start to engage and this kind of allows your collar bone and your upper ribs to draw up. So you're filling up the upper lobes of your lungs in case of your clavicular breath.

So let's give this a try, we're going to lie down again. This is probably the most challenging section to access, but we will give it a try. So here you're going to place your palm slightly higher than your chest level towards your collar bone. Now your chest and belly completely relax, there will be very, very minimal movement around the chest, almost no movement around the belly.

As you inhale, allow your collar bone to lift up, accessing the upper lobes of the lungs. Exhale, you will notice that the breath might be a little shorter. Inhale, exhale, inhale. Exhale, inhale, minimize the movement in the chest, exhale.

You must also be aware that you're not tensing the shoulders when you're doing this, work only with the collar bone and upper chest. One more breath, inhale and exhale. Slowly relax your hand and return to your natural breath.

Now that we've practiced all three, abdominal, chest and clavicular breath, you'll understand that like the most natural and comfortable way to breathe will be your abdominal breathing that we've unfortunately lost in touch with, so we need to go back to that. But chest and clavicular breath also has its place. So as yoga practitioners, it's important for us to be able to access every section and be able to switch between sections and combine them as and when necessary.

Once you're comfortable practicing this lying down, you can move to practicing this in a seated position, and then you combine the three for modified yogic breathing, yogic breathing, and then apply that in your pranayama practices. So as you can see it's a step by step progressive practice, so start on the base, get your foundations intact and make them very strong, and then progress from there.