Hello and welcome.
In today's practice,
I'm going to be teaching you alternate nostril breathing.
This is a fairly straightforward technique that's often used in the world of yoga,
And it's very helpful for balancing the energy in our bodies.
The basic idea is that we cover up one nostril and breathe in one side of our nose,
And then we cover that nostril and release the other and breathe out on that side.
So with this technique,
We tend to feel the effects fairly quickly,
So we don't have to do a lot of it to really feel the benefits.
We do perhaps four or five rounds of this technique,
And one round is considered as a for instance,
Breathing in through our left nostril,
Out through our right,
In through our right,
And out through our left.
That would be considered one round.
So let's get set up to practice this technique.
You can find yourself in a chair or on a couch or sitting directly on the ground.
And take a moment just to find yourself here in this space.
So we're going to take either our right hand or our left hand,
Whichever is more comfortable for you.
And we're going to bring our index and our middle fingers together and then place them right between our eyebrows.
Just the top of our fingers right there to that space between our eyebrows.
If you're using your right hand,
Your right thumb is going to be covering your right nostril,
And we're going to use your ring finger to cover your left nostril.
And if you're using your left hand,
Your thumb is going to be on your left nostril and your ring finger is going to be on your right.
Let's find ourselves here with our index and middle fingers right there in that space between our eyebrows.
And we're going to just get a feeling for covering up one nostril with our thumbs and releasing it and then covering the other nostril with our ring fingers and then releasing it.
So as you're finding yourself in your seat,
Let's take a moment to just check in.
If we are looking at a zero to 10 scale,
Zero being I feel totally,
Totally crummy and 10 being I feel really,
Really amazing and let's say five being somewhere in the middle,
Somewhere perhaps neutral.
Where would you say you're at right now?
And just take some inventory here.
There's no right or wrong.
We're just seeing where we're at right now before we practice our technique.
And we will check in again on this scale after we've done five rounds of alternate nostril breathing.
So let's go ahead and start practicing our technique.
So we have our index finger and our middle finger right there between our eyebrows.
And we're going to first start by covering up our right nostril and taking a breath in and releasing our right nostril,
Covering up our left and exhaling.
Going to inhale through our right nostril,
Release,
Cover up our right nostril and exhale.
That's one round.
We'll start our second round covering up our left nostril and breathing in,
Releasing our left,
Covering our right and breathing out,
Exhaling.
Breathing in through the left,
Releasing the right,
Covering the left and breathing out through the right.
It's two rounds.
And we're going to breathe in through the right,
Release the left,
Cover up the right and exhale out through our left.
Breathe in through our left,
Release the right,
Cover up the left nostril,
Breathe out through the right.
Great.
We'll do two more rounds.
Breathe in through the right,
Cover up the right,
Release the left,
Exhale through the left,
Breathe in through the left,
Cover up the left,
Release the right and breathe out.
Good.
Again we're going to breathe in through the right,
Cover up the right,
Breathe out through the left,
Breathe in through the left,
Cover up the left,
Release the right and breathe out through the right.
Beautiful.
Nice work.
Now again,
I'd like us to take a moment here to check in with our bodies.
We'll go back to that zero to ten scale.
Zero being I feel totally crummy,
Ten being I feel the best I could feel,
And about five being neutral.
Where would you say you are now after doing five rounds of the alternate nostril breathing?
And again there's no right or wrong here.
We're just gathering information to see what techniques really work well with our bodies.
And if this technique felt good for your body,
I invite you to practice it again,
Maybe five rounds at a time.
We don't really want to do more than that.
And please feel free to let me know in the comments how this technique works for you.
Please let me know if you feel more calm,
More balanced after practicing.
Thanks very much and enjoy.
