Breathing

Breathing

In yoga, longer breathing is favoured. This can be done by the following tecjniques that can be combined:

• inhaling by the nose
• inhaling by only one nostril
• inhaling with constricted throat, aka ujai breathing

Exhaling by the nose, helps also keep humidity.

Breathing has also an impacts on posture, mental and emotions. The impacts are going in both directions: i.e. posture can have impact on breathing, and breathing can have impact on posture.

Examples of emotional impacts on breathing [Bloch]:

• anger: often big inspiration followed by anger bust
• fear and cold: breathing can be blocked
• joy and laughter: sequence of small expiration with sounds
• letting go and relaxation: yawn, i.e. deep breath followed by relaxing jaw
• relief and annoyance: sighs
• stress: often shallow breath in upper part of the body
• surprise: blocked respiration

Yoga breathing techniques

• kapalabathi: strong exhalation using abdominal muscles
  • see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapalabhati
• ujay: breathing with constricted throat
• breathing with alternate nostrils
• Om: vibration

Yoga sources

• Patanjali, Yoga Sutra (around -200 BC..200 AD)
• Hatha Yoga Pradipika (XIV century)

References

• [Bloch] Yael Bloch, Respire: yoga, meditation, pleine consccience, La Plage, 2018