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COURSE

Breathe: Discover Your Inner Power & Peace

With Verena Backes

You breathe around 23,000 times a day for as long as you live – time to pay some awareness to this life force! With each session of this course you will get to know a powerful breathing exercise which you can include in your meditation, asana, or pranayama training, as well as your daily life. This course is suited for all levels and does not require any previous knowledge. You will learn about powerful and energizing, as well as calming and relaxing, techniques and how to combine them with fascinating facts about anatomy and physiology. Discover the positive and healing effects the knowledge about your deeper power within can have on your overall well-being, physically and mentally, and explore the scientific and holistic art of our life's necessity. Turn an unconscious habit into the powerful magic it is – our source of life. Please listen to the health advice at the beginning of each lesson. Please consult a physician first. All the exercises in this course are taken at your own risk. They are not suitable for pregnancy or blood-pressure/glaucoma patients. Credits: Special thanks to Veena Kinhal - Haratanaya Sree Special thanks to Spatium by Keys of Moon Music promoted by Chosic Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Uncover powerful and calming breathing exercises to incorporate in meditation and yoga practice, and improving you overall well-being.

11 Days

3.4k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

English

About this course

Dirga Pranayama

Counting Meditation

Bandha

Meet your Teacher

Verena Backes

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Vienna, Austria

Everything you need is already within you. Currently living in Vienna, Austria, Verena is a breathwork, YT-200, (RYT – 300 ongoing) yoga, and professional health and fitness instructor. She received her Master of Arts from University of Vienna and Bachelor of Arts from LMU Munich. She is fascinated by the effects breath and movement have on the human physique and state of mind and has had the opportunity to study these in different parts of the world. Always a student, always a teacher. Join her in this wonderful experience!

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11 Days

3.4k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

English

Lesson 1

Introduction To The Art Of Breathing & First Session: Abdominal Breath

This session will introduce the course and give an overview of the effects and power of varieties of breathing. It will explain when to avoid or benefit from certain breathing techniques and aim on creating awareness of anatomy and physiology of breathing for a better understanding of your own body processes. Most importantly: Never force! As a first practical session, we will determine what breathing type to focus our attention on. We will discover the first breathing technique, abdominal breath or diaphragmatic breathing, also considered the “natural breathing”. This can be done both as energizing and as calming breath.

Lesson 2

Yogic Full Body Breath/ Dirgha Pranayama

This session will introduce 3-step breathing and explain the technique in various steps until we experience various rounds of full breathing. We will focus on the different steps of a full breath and learn how to unite these parts to the breathing flow. We will then learn about the benefits of this kind of breathing, when to do it best, and how we can try out different varieties for different days, moods, or levels. This can both be practiced as energizing or calming breath.

Lesson 3

Ujjayi Breathing Or Ocean Breath Session

This breathing technique is essential for practicing yoga, especially for asana practice. You will learn the first steps and its benefits. This breathing technique creates a soothing sound resembling an ocean tide, which can be the leading rhythm of the movement impulses in your asana practice.

Lesson 4

Nadi Shodana Or Anulom Vilom/ Alternate Nostril Breathing Session

This breathing technique is done with a finger mudra and is said to connect both hemispheres. It will promote more balance into body and mind and even out hormonal imbalances, as well as those of mind or soul. We will explore different varieties. This is usually done as calming and balancing sequence.

Lesson 5

Kapalabhati Breath Or Shining Skull Session

This advanced and very intense breathing technique is a great training for the diaphragm and is my favorite technique! We will approach this type of breathing by learning how to do it step by step and how to combine it to benefit the most of its cleansing power. This an intensely energizing practice.

Lesson 6

Bhastrika Breathing Session

After having learned about Kapalabhati Breath, we can go one step further to the “breath of fire”. After learning about the Shining Skull breath we will intensify this technique through adding explosive inhales. This type of breathing can be considered hyperventilation and is not advised for pregnant people. This is an intensely energizing practice.

Lesson 7

Sheetali & Sitkari Breath

These two techniques will be approached in the same session because they have very similar effects and can be used in similar settings and times. Those cooling techniques can have a soothing effect on the body and be a useful tool for heated days or situations. These are calming breathing techniques.

Lesson 8

Breath Counts

In this session we will learn various breathing forms, in which we will influence the length of the breath in, breath hold, or the breath out through connecting it to a certain silent or loud count. Alternating the breathing length influences other processes in the body and can be helpful to treat sleeplessness or anxiety. This can be both energizing and calming.

Lesson 9

Kumbhaka/ Breath Retention – Antara & Bahya

In this session we will learn how to enhance the natural pauses of the flow of breath and why we would benefit from doing so. The breath holds can introduce stillness in the body and promote stillness in the mind, thus allowing a better and more beneficial meditation practice.

Lesson 10

Bandhas As Energy Locks

Mula Bandha (root lock), Uddiyana Bandha (abdominal lock), and Jalandhara Bandha (throat lock) are energy locks in the body that can be implemented to intensify the benefits of certain breathing techniques and amplified in Mahabandha, which combines all of them together.

Lesson 11

Full Breathing Session

In this bonus session we will combine the techniques we have learned to a beautiful breathing flow that will get us into the right mood for the following Buddhist Metta meditation of loving kindness.