Full Diaphragm Breathing

This is a guide to taking a more expansive breath using the expansion and contraction of the diaphragm muscles. When these muscles function properly in respiration, we tend to hold less tension and be much more at ease. This session is part 4 of "Breathing for Beginners" | Part 1 - Find your Comfortable Meditation Seat | Part 2 - Mechanics of Breathing for Beginners | Part 3 - Belly Breathing

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

Today I'm going to guide you through a short exercise on how you can use a little bit more of your diaphragm to take a full breath.

To start you're just going to notice how your breath is today.

You'll get a sense for if it's deep or if it's shallow.

You'll notice if the breath is long or short and then I want you to get a feel for where in the body you can best feel the breath moving.

Sometimes that shows up the nostrils or the back of the throat,

In the chest or belly,

Or perhaps in your ribs.

You'll pick one spot where you can feel it the most and you'll notice how much it's moving in that area.

Then you'll start to take your three deep breaths.

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Breathing in,

And breathing out.

Last one,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

You'll come into your tall seat,

First adjusting your back away from your seat and planting your feet on the floor.

Your hands are going to rest in your lap.

Press the sitting bones into your chair and start to find length in your spine.

You'll feel your shoulders slide away from your ears and the two sides of your neck are going to get nice and long.

Find a little tuck of your chin towards your throat.

You'll start to find even more space along the back of your neck.

Then you'll start to take really nice slow soft breaths through the nostrils.

You'll notice that as you start to slow down the breath,

The breath starts to take up a little bit more space in the lungs.

You can feel it as it starts to fill into the sides of the ribs and belly.

And take a couple like this just to notice and I want you to really start to soften the belly so that you can draw the breath right down into it.

We're gonna add on to this breath here.

So you'll take one hand to your belly and the other hand to your lower back.

I want you to imagine that there's a space that sits in the center of where your two hands rest.

And the breath is going to move into both hands from this point.

So you'll imagine that you're breathing into the front and the back of your body.

We're gonna take three breaths like this together.

Breathing in,

Imagining that expansion draws your hands away from each other.

Breathing out,

The hands draw back together.

You have two more.

Breathing in and breathing out.

Last one.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

One of the visualizations you might use here is that your body is an accordion.

I'd like you to try this on your own just for three rounds to feel what that's like.

Nice.

You'll take one more here.

Then you'll soften the hands down into your lap.

I want you to draw the awareness to the front and backs of your ribs.

We're going to imagine that same thing.

So the front of the ribs and the back of the ribs are moving away from each other with each inhale.

You might feel that stretch between the rib bones front and back as you breathe in.

And as you breathe out,

You might feel that the ribs close in on each other and get smaller.

You're gonna take two more full breaths like this.

Breathing in,

The front ribs move away from the back.

Breathing out,

Relax your shoulders as you fully empty the breath.

Last one here.

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

Nice work.

We're gonna start to put these pieces together.

So I want you to draw the attention first into your belly in the low back.

You'll send a deep breath into that space.

As you continue to breathe in,

You fill up the sides front and back of the ribs and continue to fill all the way up until you get to the shoulders.

And take a full breath out.

We'll do that again.

Breathing in,

Fill the low belly,

Low back,

Sides,

Front,

Back of the ribs,

All the way up to the chest and shoulders and fully empty the breath out.

Last one like that.

You're gonna fill up bottom to top and fully empty the breath.

What you're gonna start to do here is continue breathing bottom to top and as you exhale you'll imagine that you're emptying top to bottom.

So the way this looks is that the shoulders and chest will empty first,

The ribs next,

And then the belly and low back last.

You'll fill up bottom to top,

Filling all the way,

Emptying top to bottom.

You have three deep breaths here to try this on your own,

Imagining that this is a 360 degree breath.

All parts of your torso able to expand and fill,

Creating a lot of space with each inhale and that sense of ease and softness on the exhale.

I'll let you try this in silence on your own for a couple of rounds here.

That's great.

At the end of your next exhale you'll allow that focus to start to relax.

You'll begin to shift your awareness back to the place we started.

You'll notice how this natural breath is feeling now.

You get a sense for if the breath is deep or shallow.

Notice if it seems long or short and then you'll notice where in your body you can feel the breath most now.

You can feel for if it's expansive in that place and take a moment to notice what this breathing practice has done to any tension that you were feeling in your body.

You'll bring your awareness to the shoulders,

The sides of your neck,

The sides of your waist and torso,

Chest,

Back.

Notice now if it feels like perhaps there's a little bit more space.

This is a practice that you might need to do a number of times to start to ease the tension and tight muscles in your body and that's completely okay.

I hope you enjoy the space you've created today in your body and I look forward to seeing you back here soon for your next session.