Breathing

Hi Scott,
Aahh, the nose breathing, it is so crazy difficult to do isn’t it. It doesn’t have to be though. I would always bend forward and take open mouth “cheater” breaths when I first started the yoga…I thought the teacher wouldn’t see.
In my opinion, it is sort of “mis-named” nose breathing. Yes, you are breathing through your nose, but you are pulling it in through your throat. I tell students, when I hear that their breath is “sniffy” sounding to feel the breath travel through the divet between their two collar bones. It should sound deep and throaty.
When it is sniffy sounding, it’s like you are breathing through two cocktail straws (miserable), when it is throaty you feel like you have all day to breathe in. So how do you practice this? Go into the bathroom, in front of a mirror. Place your finger in the divet between the two collar bones focus on that area, feel it and see if you can get the breath to pull or throttle through that area. I think that is what your teacher is telling you when they say to breathe deeper. If that doesn’t work, think of this, hollow out or drop your tongue down into the lower part of your mouth then pull the breath via the throat, this should help. Here is an additional note, I hear students stop breathing through their nose and instead make this really really gravelly noise at the back of their nasal passage, that isn’t it either, it’s been described as a very oceanic sound. Try it, let me know if it helps.

And finally, here’s WHY you breathe through your nose…
Hairs in your nasal passages filter out foreign bodies, better for you to help fight off infection. Asian cultures find mouth breathing “a disgusting, filthy habit”. from Science of Breath, by Yogi Ramacharaka

Nose breathing is said to vibrate against your vagus nerve (conveys information about the state of the body’s organs to the Central Nervous System) which is mixed with parasympathetic nerve fibers which is in charge of rest, digest, restore functions of the body. Mouth breathing, on the other hand, is done usually in a state of distress, think of a panting dog. It also engages the Sympathetic Nervous System which is in charge of fight, flight or freeze reactions. When the fight or flight response is engaged physical symptoms occur, rapid heart rate, palpitations, increase in blood pressure, pupil dialation, adrenaline is released. All of those things you DO NOT want to be happening during your yoga class.

Nose breathing helps lower your heart rate faster than mouth breathing.

Mouth breathing makes us hotter and dehydrates us faster.

Nose breathing, when it is oceanic sounding, pulls the breath deep into the bottom lobes of the lungs giving you the feeling of a more expansive, relaxing breath.

Once you get that, I LOVED Gabrielle’s description of the breath in her book, I’ve been using it in my class with great success, it’ll take you even further.

I have professional endurance athletes who report that when they have an opportunity to change to mouth breathing, say climbing a big hill on a bike they are able to do it with more power and endurance than they had ever had before. That makes it pretty compelling to me :).

Can’t wait to hear Gabrielle’s response, I’m sure she has even more.