I recently shared a video on my YouTube channel that teaches 5 simple breath practices that you can use to feel more calm, more grounded and more connected with yourself every single day (and bonus: there are variations for feeling more energized without the post-caffeine slump ?)
If you’d rather read the transcript than watch the video, here it is –
5 Simple Breath Practices Intro
“Today I’d like to share with you five simple breath techniques that you can use to to help you feel calm anytime that you’re feeling a little frenzied. And I would invite you to engage with these breath practices gently – always – and also when the pressure is less on, so that you can get a sense for which of these practices feel really nurturing and nourishing to you. So that when you find yourself in a situation where your central nervous system is activated and you’re feeling your breath get a little short and your thoughts start to race, this is a path that you’ve already walked – and you’re already familiar with which one of these breath practices to call on and what they feel like in your body so that it is a matter of returning to a place within yourself, rather than forging a new path.
It is much easier to return to a place within yourself- especially when you are feeling activated or triggered or just a little frenzied in your world and in your life – than it is to try to forge a new path when you’re feeling that way. So this is part of why we practice on a regular basis so that when the pressure is on, when the stakes are a little bit higher, we’re already really familiar with the tools that we can call on and how they feel in our bodies. And therefore, which one might be just the right tool for any given moment.
Simple Breath Practice One: Diaphragmatic Breathing (Intro)
So the first breath practice that I’d like to share with you is diaphragmatic breathing, sometimes called the belly breath. And it is perhaps one of the most accessible breath techniques that I know. It is also very common- pretty much any yoga class, meditation, spiritual practice that you have engaged with likely has had an element of diaphragmatic breathing or has tried to move you in the direction of diaphragmatic breathing through the the guiding of that practice.
So it’s quite simple. I personally like to practice with my eyes closed, but you are welcome to keep your eyes open if you’d like to. Generally with your eyes closed, your awareness turning inward is just a little more accessible. So, if you are in a place and in a position to be able to close your eyes, I would invite you to do so to at least give it a try.
If it feels unsafe for you to close your eyes, then don’t, because then your central nervous system will be activated and the calming effects of the practice will be a little more difficult for you to access, especially if you’re new to being guided through this practice.
All things done with love for ourselves.
Simple Breath Practice One: The Practice
So let your eyes close. And begin by just observing the way that you’re breathing right now as you come to this practice. Just check in with the quality of your breath right now and notice what parts of the body naturally move to make space for the breath.
Do you notice your breath primarily up in your chest? Do you notice it in your belly? Do you notice it in the back of the body or the sides of the torso at all? Where is the breath or where does the breath already have ready access to and where does it not? And none of these is bad, just taking in information.
So with your next inhale, I’d invite you to imagine that there is a string gently pulling on the bottom of your lungs to draw the breath down into the lungs. So as you inhale, really feel the breath down into the lungs. You can imagine the torso sort of lengthening downward toward your seat.
And then as you exhale, that hammock, those strings, they just let you come back up. This is the diaphragm, it is a hammock-like muscle that’s underneath the lungs. And so as you inhale, imagine it dropping down toward the ground, creating space for your lungs to fill fully all the way down to those bottom lobes. And then as you exhale, it resets back to neutral.
So if this approach is not really resonating with you, I’d invite you to maybe place one or both hands on your belly, and as you inhale, gently press the belly into the hands. As you exhale, let the belly sink back toward the spine.
For the space of a couple of breaths, you might use some muscular energy here to gently push into the hands a little with your belly, and then release – let the belly draw toward the spine.
And then see if you can release the muscular effort and continue when you inhale to have the belly expand in the direction of your hand. As you exhale, the belly naturally moves away from the hands back toward the spine.
Let the breath slow and deepen. Do your best not to strain. So, if you’ve put effort into making this happen up until now – because it might be new or a different way of approaching it – see if you can release the effort and still retain a sense of slow, deep breath that sort of fills the entire torso as you inhale and kind of empties out as you exhale.
Again, no strain.
Let’s take two more breaths.
Release any effort in making the breath be any particular shape whatsoever and just breathe for the space of a few breaths – returning to whatever feels like a natural, sustainable breath for you.
And then when you’re ready, open your eyes to a soft gaze. You might want to pause here and take a moment to write down any reflections you have in a journal or on a piece of paper. Just things that you noticed about that engagement with the diaphragmatic breathing. Otherwise, we move on to practice number 2.
Simple Breath Practice Two: Energy Equalizer (Intro)
And this practice is one that I use a great deal when I’m starting to feel – it’s a good anxiety buster, honestly – whenever I’m starting to feel a lot of pressure, like things are starting to close in on me and I’m having a difficult time clearing the fog of my thoughts or my emotions.
For me, as someone who does energy work with people, this is also a breath I use when the volume seems to get turned up in some way when we’re moving energy in a session or something like that. I use this breath to kind of equalize the pressure in the space, to kind of harmonize the energy between or among the participants and whatever it is that we’re doing.
And so this to me is an equalizer – it’s an energetic equalizing breath. I don’t have a name for this particular breath practice. And it’s very, very simple.
Simple Breath Practice Two: the Practice
And so what you do is, again, you could close your eyes here, take a nice deep breath in. And when you start to notice that there’s swirling happening, you just gently breathe out through pursed lips.
I like to empty my lungs as fully as possible with a slow breath through pursed lips. So this would be like – it wouldn’t be like blowing out a candle; it’s not a lot of forceful effort – this is a slow – like blowing a feather off of your fingers.
The shape of the lips is less important than just the idea of you’ve taken in the air, you’ve pulled in air (which is prana; it’s life force energy) so you’ve sort of imbibed in this life force energy, you’ve drawn it in, you’ve welcomed it in, you’ve received, and now you’re just slowly dispersing it, equalizing it, releasing it.
Maybe three to five times, or as many times as feels necessary to you, and just see how you feel afterwards. Release it, go back to breathing your normal way, and just notice how the energy around you feels.
Again, you might take a moment to jot down some notes if you’d like, in a journal or notebook.
Simple Breath Practice Three: Breath Retention (Intro)
And then we’re going to move on to the third breath practice, which the fourth one will build on, and that is breath retention. So essentially what we’re doing with breath retention at this stage is we are going to look at that natural pause that happens between the end of the inhale and the beginning of the exhale.
It’s almost like going up a hill on a roller coaster – there is the chug, chug, chug up the hill and then for this ever so small a fraction of a moment right before you actually crest the hill and start the downhill shoosh of the exhale- there’s a moment of suspended animation.
There’s a moment of just – neither going up nor going down; that sort of in between space and that is how the breath naturally happens too. We just don’t always notice the pause. We tend to be focused on the inhale and the exhale.
So what we’re going to do with this practice is we are going to first engage with and notice that natural pause that happens at the end of the inhale and before the beginning of the exhale. And again, at the end of the exhale and before we start the inhale.
Simple Breath Practice Three: the Practice
So once again, you could let your eyes softly close and lengthen your spine and just begin by tuning into the slow, steady rhythm of your breath as it is right now without doing anything, making any changes whatsoever. Maybe if you like, you start to slow and deepen the breath a little, moving in the direction of that diaphragmatic breath, but again, without any strain, without excess effort.
And then once you feel your attention tuned to your breath at the end of the next inhale, turn your attention from inhale and exhale toward the space in between. So just become aware of that little bit of a hover of a space between the end of your inhale and the beginning of your exhale. And then again, let your attention rest with the end of the exhale and prior to the beginning of the inhale.
So right now we’re just kind of taking the spotlight of our attention and instead of focusing on inhale and exhale, we’re focusing on the pause that naturally occurs between both of them.
And then when you’re ready, you can start to elongate that pause a little bit for yourself. So maybe initially you engage with it as a one-beat pause. Inhale; there’s a little pause; exhale. Exhale; there’s a little one-beat pause and then inhale. And then the next invitation would be to elongate that pause a little, so maybe it’s a two-beat.
So it’s an inhale, pause, two; exhale, pause, two; inhale.
And just pausing for a count of one, two. And noticing if there’s any discomfort in you for that – especially at the end of the exhale, but for some people it’s at the end of the inhale. And just continuing, so not elongating it any further until you feel a sense of ease with it. And then maybe you elongate it a little bit more if you’d like.
So maybe you see- “what happens if I lengthen the pause here to a count of three?” So inhale, pause, two, three. Exhale, pause, two, three. Inhale, pause, two, three. And so on.
And then you just continue to sort of focus on the pauses for a little bit. And then when you’re ready, just let that go and relax back into the slow, steady rhythm of your breath as it naturally occurs. And notice how you feel.
When you’re ready, you can open your eyes to a soft gaze. And maybe take a moment to note down anything that you would like to, any observations or reflections. Really useful here can be to notice if the holding out of the exhale is more challenging for you or the holding in of the inhale.
If you wanted to really explore into it and play with this, you could see what length of time that you could explore. There we stopped at three, but maybe you could go to four or five or six.
And, again, it’s just exploring into, not creating strain in the body. So being really loving and respectful of yourself and compassionate with yourself and bringing a sense of playfulness and exploration to it. So there’s no goal to be attained here.
It’s really just noticing which of these breath practices feels like it serves you and what purpose it might serve for you in the end. So if you notice that you feel kind of energized when you hold your breath in, for instance, when you focus on the retention of the inhale, then maybe that’s a breath practice that you can use when you get to that mid afternoon slump in your day and instead of reaching for caffeine, maybe you just work with a little bit of breath practice.
If you notice that releasing or holding the breath out brings a sense of calm or grounding to you, then maybe that is a practice that you can call on when you’re feeling a little activated, overexcited, or you need to be able to focus and you’re feeling like your energy is kind of high.
Simple Breath Practice Four: Box Breath (Intro)
So the next breath practice is often called box breathing, and it builds on the breath retention practice that we just did, or the focus or exploration of elongating the pause. And the reason this is called a box breath is you work in the direction of having the inhale, the pause at the end of the inhale, the exhale, and the pause between the exhale and the inhale be the same length.
So you’ll begin by figuring out what a sustainable length would be for you for all of these and then moving in the direction of that box breath.
Simple Breath Practice Four: the Practice
So when you’re ready, let your eyes close and again, just take a couple of breaths and let your attention turn to your breath first – so you’re just recalibrating, reorienting toward the slow, steady rhythm of your breath.
And then when you’re ready, count the length of your inhale and the length of your exhale. And do that for maybe three or four cycles of breath and see where you land. Each breath won’t be exactly the same as every other one so just kind of figure out what feels like it’s probably an average-ish length of your inhale and your exhale.
Notice which one is longer than the other naturally for you and see if you can begin to bring the inhale and the exhale to be the same length. So if your inhale was four and your exhale was six, see if for a couple cycles of breath, you could inhale and exhale for five count each. See if that’s where you could land and if it feels sustainable for you.
So again, we’re not looking in the direction of introducing a lot of strain into the system here – so find what feels kind of comfortable.
And once you settle on whatever that count is, whatever that length, then with the next few cycles of breath, we’re going to begin once again to lengthen the pauses between the inhale and exhale and exhale and inhale in the direction of whatever length you’ve chosen for your inhale and your exhale.
So maybe you try on the first shot- so say it was a count of five, for instance. So you might inhale five, hold the breath for say three, exhale for five, hold the breath out for three. Inhale for five. If that feels pretty good to you, then add one more. So five, four, five, four. And just gently moving yourself in the direction of five, five, five, five.
And then checking in with yourself because, again, we were not looking to introduce a great deal of strain or excess effort. And that might just take some practice. So when you’re ready, it’s a nice deep breath in for whatever length you’ve chosen. Practice holding the breath in. Maybe moving in the direction of that same length, and then a slow, steady exhale, holding the breath out for that same length; a slow, steady inhale.
If you find yourself to the point where you have to let the breath out after inhaling, then your length right now, the duration is too long. So move back one or two, and practice doing – it’ll be a rectangular breath instead of a box breath, and then over time the practice is just moving in the direction of having the same length for each thing.
Once you are comfortable with whatever the duration is for each of those four sides of the box and you’ve got them equal – we’ll use our example of five – so if you are doing five for the inhale, five for that pause at the top, five for the exhale and five for that pause at the bottom, and you’re pretty comfortable with doing that, then the next layer of practice for you would be to add an additional beat.
So it would be six inhale, six pause, six exhale, six pause. And then just keep exploring into what are your edges with your breath. And you’ll know if you get to the place where you’re gasping to take that inhale or “phew, finally I get to exhale”, then that is maybe one too far.
So go back and practice for a little bit longer with the six, six, six, six, for instance, until you feel really steady and strong in that duration. And then maybe you go up to seven and you practice that.
And so, again, being guided by loving kindness for yourself and compassion and grace. And then just seeing where this goes for you. So when you’re ready, let your breath return back to its normal rhythm. Take a few breaths that way, and then open your eyes to a soft gaze and take a moment to make any notes – that might include what the length was for each sides of that box for you.
Simple Breath Practice Five: Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing) Intro
And then the final of the five breath practices that I’d like to share is one called Nadi Shodhana, this is alternate nostril breathing, and this can be performed one of two ways, and I will show you both. The one I’ve actually taken to more lately is the visualization approach to the practice, but there is also a manual manipulation form of the practice that is the more traditional practice.
So I will guide that for you first. And that is simply taking one of your hands and bringing the thumb next to whichever nostril it naturally rests next to. So in my case, I’m using my right hand so my thumb is near my right nostril and my pinky finger is near my left. And then these other three fingers can rest wherever is comfortable for you.
Different traditions have different ways of approaching it. Some say, don’t poke yourself in the third eye – so don’t rest your fingers there on your forehead. Just curl them in so that they’re kind of on the bridge of your nose. But if you’re like me and you wear glasses, that would mean that you would be smearing all over your glasses. So whatever works for you.
Traditionally, it is pinky and thumb finger, but you could pinch with your pinky and your index finger, though there are some energetic qualities of each of the fingers- and depending again on the tradition that you are working with and adhering to that say that using the pointer finger, for instance, it is associated with ego, and so you wouldn’t want to point that at yourself.
Again, entirely up to what resonates with you, energetically, what feels aligned and congruent for you. You are your best guru.
Simple Breath Practice Five: the Practice
So when you’re ready, bring your hand next to your face. Again, I’m going to take off my glasses here.Let these three middle fingers rest wherever’s comfortable, thumb next to one nostril, pinky finger next to the other. And then just take a nice deep breath in. And slow, steady exhale.
We’re going to start by blocking off the right nostril and inhaling through the left nostril only.
At that natural little pause, you’re going to block off the left nostril and exhale through the right nostril. So opening the right nostril and exhaling through that nostril. And then inhale through the right nostril.
Block off the right, release the left, and exhale through the left.
Inhale through the left; switch; exhale through the right.
Inhale through the right; switch; exhale through the left.
So continue in this way, working with yourself.
One cycle of Nadi Shodhana is an inhale through the left, an exhale through the right, an inhale through the right, and an exhale through the left. So that is one cycle of the breath.
After the next time that you exhale through the left nostril, release your hand. And just take a couple of breaths.
Nadi Shodhana: additional options
This is a harmonizing and balancing breath because the energy channels that run along the spine, there are three major energy channels – nadis – that run along the spine; the sushumna, which is like the energy superhighway; it runs right along the spine. And then the ida and the pingala crisscross their way along the spine.
And so essentially what you’re doing is engaging, through the breath, each of the two nadis – the ida and the pingala – that run on either side and finding balance between the two. So, if you found, for instance, that one of your nostrils was harder to breathe through than the other, then that might be a correlation to an energy blockage or a little stagnation in the energy channel associated with that nostril.
The left side of the body is energetically associated with the lunar side of our body and is cooler. And the right side of our body is energetically associated with the solar side or heat or energy or action.
And so the left side is reflective, receptive.
And the right side is action-oriented.
So if you feel a need to calm down, for instance, then a way that you can engage with a variation of Nadi Shodhana would actually be just left nostril breathing.
So you would block the right nostril and just breathe in and out through the left nostril for as long as you like. And then this is a calming breath because you’re really engaging with that lunar side, the receptive cooler side of yourself energetically. You’re bolstering that energy within you.
The same is true if you feel like you’re in need of a pick me up and a little bit of an energizer, then you can engage with right nostril only breathing and you’re sort of stoking that inner fire, that action-oriented solar side of yourself.
The way that I really have come to use this practice out in real life, out in the wild is to not use my hand but to visualize breathing through either just one nostril- so if I need to pick me up and I’m out in the world where I may not want to block off one nostril while I’m standing in line somewhere, then what I might do instead is I will visualize breathing primarily through my right nostril or through my left nostril or alternate nostril breathing.
And in that way, you’re engaging with your divine imagination and this is all energy. So it is really possible for you to engage with yourself to this degree of – I like to think of it as being in relationship with myself and that way being relationship with the receiving and the giving of energy and my receipt of energy, my participation in the energetic environment I find myself in – in as conscious a way as possible and that I certainly have a say in that.
So if what I need to call on right now is a burst of energy or a stoking of the fires in myself to bring more of my energy to bear in the world, to take action, to feel stronger, to feel steadier then I might, for the space of a few breaths, imagine, visualize, call on that right nostril breathing without having to physically block off or dampen the breathing through my left nostril.
So I’m visualizing that most of my breath is coming in through the right side, that I am choosing or favoring the energizing of, supporting that more solar channel, that activating channel. Or vice versa.
If I know I need to calm down, if I need to feel more settled, more reflective, more intuitive, then I might call on that left side and say, and acknowledge that, “hey, this is what I need” and to really trust that that’s exactly what my body is going to do.
That I am in relationship with myself in such a way that when I call on certain support for myself, I’m going to receive it.
I expect to receive it.
And that is a reciprocal relationship with yourself.
Bringing it All Together
And so those are the five breathing techniques that I have to share with you today- a way that you can engage with your personal energy, your presence in the world. Prana is life force energy- and we swim in life force energy every single moment of every single day. And we can consciously engage with how we are contributing -both giving and receiving -of this prana in our environment through the conscious and intentional use of breathing techniques.
I hope you found this useful. Thanks so much for being here. Always a pleasure. Be well, friends. Bye.”
Additional Resources
If you are a sensitive soul looking for some additional resources, check out this journal entry with practices you will find supportive.