Breathing for Birth

Welcome. Today's episode is all dedicated to breathing. So breathing, of course, is an essential part of any yoga practice. And it's also a very essential part to labor and pregnancy, and even after pregnancy when the baby is born. Benefits to having a breathing practice are that, it's really kind of the place where we start to move from, you know, when we're practicing our yoga, when we're doing our asana practices, we can start to find concentration, and we can get out of the thinking mind by really focusing on the postures, and the efforts, and the movements.

But then the next step is to try and do that also when we're not moving. So, pranayama is an excellent place to start training the brain to get out of thinking, the constant thinking, or, in some cases it's emoting, all of the emotions that we create. So, some people can just sit down and drop into meditation and hit a meditative state, where there's no thought, no emotion. Most of us need some training before we can get to that place, so, asana is excellent for that, but then pranayama is another great technique. And of course, as we go towards labor, we don't really, most likely we're gonna be doing asana during labor, so really we just have pranayama at that point, (laughing) and breathing.

So, that's one really big purpose. And I'm gonna demonstrate three different breathing techniques, and we'll do short practice today. The first one, ujjayi breathing, which most of you are probably familiar with if you've been practicing yoga for a while. And, you know, simple, but incredible powerful, and if you only learn one, learn that one, learn it very well, and you can place variations on the length of the inhale, length of the exhale, and it'll be a practice that'll support you forever. And then we're gonna do viloma, which is is just basically breathing and filling the lungs up in stages, and then exhaling and emptying the lungs up in stages.

And lastly, nadi shodhana, which is an excellent practice just for balancing out the breath and the energies of the body, and calming the nervous system. So it's really great for stress. And this may or may not be a stressful time in your life, and after the baby's born there may or may not be stress, so, these are all practices that can really support you during this next transition. So in ujjayi breathing, we'll just come to a comfortable seated position. I'm sitting up on a bolster.

If seated isn't comfortable for you, lie down, take your favorite restorative pose, just be comfortable. I really want you to relax so that you can really focus your mind on the breath, and not be distracted with discomfort, at least for now. So we'll just close the eyes and drop in, and at first, don't even think about changing the breath. Just get really quiet and still. And pay attention to what the breath is doing on its own.

And start to observe both the inhalation and the exhalation. And observe if one of them is different than the other. Notice the qualities of the breath. Does it feel smooth, even, relaxed? Or does it feel raspy, tense, difficult?

And then start to pay attention to the physical body around the breath. So the shoulders, the neck, the ribcage and the belly. And see how much you can just relax. Putting zero effort into constricting or tensing up. And a lot of times the breath is tense and the body is tense around the breath.

So if we can relax one of them, the other one will follow. And then with ujjayi breathing, there's gonna be a soft sound to the breath, and one thing that I have noticed is that this soft sound turns into a very harsh, tense sound. And that's not really what we're looking for. We want a soft sound that really just you can hear. And it's just something that you can focus your mind to.

And when that sound is at the right level, someone next to you or a couple feet away from you may not even hear it. The mouth stays closed for the entire time. Both the inhale and the exhale. But there's just a slight toning in the back of the throat, the muscle we use for swallowing. Just pretend you're swallowing.

You're making a (exhales) sound. And then close the mouth. And then with inhalation you'll breath in, toning the muscle in the back of the throat. And exhale, you'll breath out, keeping that muscle toned. And get really comfortable with that inhaling.

And exhaling. A few more rounds on your own, noticing that the sound is very very light. You may not have much sound at all, and that's okay, you can still practice the breathing, in and out through the nose. And as you start to bring your attention to doing, and changing the breath, just notice if you've tense up in the forehead or in the shoulders or in the neck, and relax that again. And see how much you can guide your concentration to the breath without tensing up anywhere else.

And just stay with your own natural pace of inhale and exhale until you can do the inhale and the exhale without any tension anywhere else. Not in the jaw, not in the face, not in the shoulders, not in the neck. Not in the belly, not in the ribcage. And so the diaphragm does drop down, the ribcage does expand in all directions. Just kind of tune into the whole torso.

Just observe if there's anywhere that's tensing up and restricting the breath from getting into those areas. And then we're gonna add a slight count. If you're still finding that you're tensing up, don't pay attention to my count. Just focus on relaxing and breathing at your own pace. If you're ready, and you feel like you can add one more layer of focus, of concentration, of change, then we're gonna add a count, a four count for the inhale and a four count for the exhale.

So exhale completely. And inhale for one, two, three, four, exhale for one, two, three, four. Inhale for one, two, three, four, exhale for one, two, three, four. Inhale for one, two, three, four, exhale for one, two, three, four. Inhale for one, two, three, four, exhale for one, two, three, four.

Inhale one, two, three, four, exhale one, two, three, four. Continuing with that pace. Counting it out in your mind. And that count gives you one more layer of focus to sync the breath to. And as you're there, staying with that four count for inhale and exhale, again, just pay attention if your shoulders have started to tense or your neck has tensed.

And if you need to, stop, go to a regular breath, and then resume again. Always resuming from a place that's calm, cool, collected, relaxed. And then stopping that four count and just going to normal breathing, taking a little break in between. You can lift the gaze, open the eyes. So that's ujjayi breathing, inhaling, exhaling through the nose, mouth stays shut.

And it's really the foundation for all other pranayama practices. In pregnancy, we don't do any of the breath retentions, where we hold the exhale or the inhale, mainly because we don't wanna constrict the abdomen at all, and we really don't wanna stop the breathing. So the next practice we're gonna to is viloma, and this is basically breathing in stages, so as many inhales as it takes to really fill up the lungs, and as many exhales to empty it, but you take little pauses, almost like you're taking a step, and then you take another step, inhale, then another step, until you reach the top of the staircase. In this case that'll be the lungs, and then the same thing, step down, step down, step down. And this is one way where we can work on increasing the capacity of the lungs.

So one tip that was shared with me at a point when I was learning pranayama from one of my teachers was that at the top, sometimes you can feel like, almost like a choking sensation of being full. You don't have to get to that point today, maybe you don't have to push yourself quite that much, but if that does does happen, one thing that you can do is just take an extra inhale at the top before you exhale. And that'll give you just a little bit more oxygen in your system, so that you can control the exhale instead of it just bursting out like, (exhales) gasping the air out. So I'm gonna demonstrate a round of viloma, and then you can join. So it's basically.

And so we'll do that together, and we'll just do one round, and then we'll take a couple of natural breaths in between, and then we'll do another round. In the beginning as you're getting used to these techniques, it takes a little while to figure out how much air to inhale each time and how much to exhale. So, closing the eyes, take a natural breath in, exhale completely, and then inhaling, little more, little more, little more, and then exhaling. And then taking a few natural breaths in between. And I counted four stages of inhale, four of exhale.

However, it may take you five. It may be after two, after three. So you just find that pace that's right for you, we're all at different stages, most importantly, staying relaxed. So, inhaling. And exhaling.

And if you feel ready, go right into your next round. And exhale. Continue, inhale. And exhale. Continue for another eight rounds.

And if at any point you need to just take some normal breaths in between, you're starting to feel winded or tense, then just pause with the exercise, take some natural breaths, let yourself relax, and then resume. And really just focusing on letting the belly expand, the ribcage expand, the chest expand. And just a couple more rounds. Probably we're at about six or seven right now. And your last round.

And once you've completed your round just go back to natural belly breathing. You can even open the mouth if you'd like, and we'll open the eyes. And the last breathing technique for today is nadi shodhana. And so, I'm giving you three. Ujjayi's crucial, that's the one you really wanna work on, master, and then, if you feel ready to explore these other ones, then integrate them into a practice, they can be very useful.

For nadi shodhana, you just take your index finger, middle finger, and pull them back. And then you have your ring finger and your thumb that are out and straight. And basically what we do is we cover the nose. And there's the bridge in the nose and then there's right where it goes soft, and that's where your fingers are gonna be. So, we keep the wrists a little elevated.

And the only reason is, we don't wanna cover our mouths, and then have the old air be recycled, we wanna get fresh oxygen in. So we keep the wrist a little more lifted, and then both of the nostrils are kind of pushed in a little bit. Now, not so much that you can't breathe, but you just keep them both a little bit constricted. Almost like if you were to imagine a balloon, and you wanted to control how quickly the air came out of the balloon, you would just kind of hold it tightly together and monitor it, well, it's kind of the same thing. We're controlling how much air we bring in to the sinus passage and then into the lungs, so we use our fingers just to kind of like, close the floodgates, so to speak.

And, same with the inhale and the exhale. And then, we're gonna alternate breathing. So, our left nostril connects us to our lunar channel, the Ida, and the right, the Pingala the solar channel. And so, in nadi shodhana, we alternate them. We breath in and then out through the opposite.

But these can be used for particular reasons. If you wanted to generate more energy, you would breath through the right and out through the right. If you wanted to open up the left, the lunar channel, like, let's say you wanted to get relaxed or go to sleep, you would just focus on opening up the left channel. In nadi shodhana, we don't do that, we just alternate breathing in and out of each side. And it balances out the solar and the lunar energies.

So if you need a tissue, you blow your nose now, clear out the sinuses, and if it's difficult to breathe, sometimes there's a deviated septum, or there's a polyp in the sinuses, just focus on the exhale for that side, if you can, if that's even available to you, focus first on exhaling through that side, and inhaling through the opposite side. And that will, over time it's said to help open up that nostril. If you have it available to you and you can breath in and out freely from both sides, then you'll follow along with me. So we're just gonna take our hand position, and we're using that similar ujjayi breathing. And we'll just slightly tone the, press into the bridge of the nose, just below the bridge, and take a deep breath in.

Exhale completely. And then we're gonna press, now not so much, when I say press I just mean seal the left side, and don't do so much that you start to push the nose to the side, you don't wanna hurt yourself. Just seal the left side, and we're gonna take an inhale through the right nostril. And then we're gonna seal the right nostril and exhale through the left. Then you'll inhale through the left.

Seal the left nostril and exhale through the right. Then we'll inhale through the right. Seal the right nostril and exhale through the left. Inhale through the left. Seal the left nostril, exhale through the right.

Inhale through the right. Seal the right, exhale through the left. Inhale through the left. Seal the left, exhale through the right. And just as in the previous versions, if you need to take extra breaths in between, go ahead.

And with the right arm up, just make sure you continually relax that right shoulder. Continuing on for a couple more rounds, inhale right. Seal the right nostril, exhale left. Inhale left. Seal the left nostril, exhale right.

Inhale right. And exhale left. And then we can relax the arms. And just take some normal breaths, closed eyes. And then tap in.

Sink your consciousness, your awareness into the belly. And just observe how the body feels. Hopefully the mind feels more relaxed too, having focused and concentrated, and having a break from thinking or feeling. And thank you all for joining me today, and namaste.