3 Part Yoga Breathing for Meditation

Video Transcript

"Hi, the next part of centering and preparing for your yoga practice is Continuing on with Pranayama. In the previous clip, I told you about what Pranayama means and how to start to incorporate it into your practice. The easiest way if your new to this type of breathing is actually to lay down on your mat. So find a comfortable way to roll yourself down. You can leave your knees bent and it'll take the tension under your lower back. The three part breath of the yoga breath starts with the abdominals and what you want to do, you can place a hand on your abdominal area which is right around the navel area and let the breath fill up into your hand. And then go ahead and try that again. And then second part of the yoga breath is more into the diaphragm area or middle part, lower part of your chest. So you can place your hand kind of where your rib cage starts to open up, right below your sternum and let the breath rise from the abdominals into the middle part of your chest and let it fall back down again. And then slowly let it rise again. And let it fall back down. Now the third part of the Yoga Pranayama is the chest or the heart center, it's the upper part of the chest. So you slowly let the breath rise from the abdominal area into the middle part, into your chest and then slowly back down again. I also like to think of this breath, if you have a bucket on the shore and it stuck in the sand, and the ocean wave comes and it fills the bucket up and releases, and then as the breath releases, think of the ocean wave going back out the bucket and back up to sea. So one more time. Try to breath in to the abdominals, the middle of your chest and the upper part of your chest. And then let it release back down from the top, middle and lower. And that is how you do the Yoga Pranayama."