Lung or diaphragm breathing

Hello hellerworkca

Yep, you found yet another inconsistency or example of poor instruction in the ‘dialog’. Teachers will often tell you to suck your stomach in at the wrong moments. You have intuitively worked out that while you are inhaling that your breath is being hampered by sucking in your stomach.

One of the issues is that sucking in one’s stomach is being mistaken for improving core strength.

One can improve core strength by engaging the core. There are ways (and it’s not necessarily pertaining to this particular pose) to suck in the stomach (and the timing with certain poses) which actually weaken core strength. I am not going to go into that here.

So …

When you are inhaling your job is to get long. As you bring your elbows up, you can feel your body lengthen, especially at the sides, along from your hips to your armpits and then up to your elbows.

Try inhaling and doing this motion without sucking in your stomach. Notice how, automatically, your body flattens in the abdominal area simply because of the movement. This is not you sucking in your stomach, now is it!? :cheese:

The problem with sucking in the stomach on the inhale (remember, this is not core engagement we’re talking about) is that you shorten things rather than let them extend, elongate and create space. It actually shortens your spine.

As you inhale think about your spine and the spaces between your vertebrae opening up. The actual stretching of your torso will make it difficult for your diaphragm to move outward very much at all. What you will find is that your lower ribs will expand to accommodate the expanding of your lungs.

This beginning Pranayama exercise is NOT an example of abdomino-diaphragmatic breathing. There is a touch of it plus a big serving of chest breathing. Not the top-of-the-chest panic breathing but that nice low deep breathing that occurs in the lower part of the ribcage. You will hamper that system if you suck in your stomach by drawing in the lower ribs instead of letting them expand. No wonder your breath feels limited, trapped.

Try this: Notice how you can keep your legs locked out on the inhale but let your butt muscles and a portion of the muscles on the back your legs go as you inhale… and let go of and lengthen the muscles in your lower spine. Feel how you can really grow tall on the inhale as a result and your belly does not feel constricted in any other way than the natural elongation of the body.

Once you have reached the zenith of your inhale, and before your exhale, you squeeze the butt, lock the pelvis in place and then exhale with that perfectly straight back. THIS is the exact moment – when you squeeze the butt, in the instant before exhaling – where you suck in the stomach!

Pranayama in the Bikram dialog is scripted* wrongly and takes the nuances out of good, efficient, effective and satisfying breathing!

Hope that brings you the magic you are looking for. Come back and tell me how you go

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

* A script – any script is just a snapshot. It’s not the instruction. That’s why instruction has to vary.