A Breathing Series: An Antidote To Reverse Breathing

In this practice, you will learn 1 of the fundamental practices to correct a reverse or 'paradoxical' breathing pattern. When you are breathing 'correctly', as you breathe in the diaphragm should descend and the belly may expand outwards & conversely, when you breathe out, the diaphragm ascends & the belly draws back in. In paradoxical breathing (which often stems from stress & trauma) the reverse happens, so as you breathe in, the diaphragm ascends & the belly sucks in & when you breathe out, the diaphragm descends & the belly expands out. This practice is taken from day 4 of my 10-day course here on Insight Timer 'The Breath - Heal Your Life From The Inside Out'.

Transcript

In this practice,

We'll be looking at a way to begin to resolve what's called paradoxical or reverse breathing.

There are two main ways to resolve paradoxical breathing.

One is through slow conscious belly breathing and using weights on the belly to increase resistance.

The other is through what we call training the dysfunction,

Which means we intentionally breathe in a paradoxical or reverse way in order to take the pattern out of being an unconscious one and into being a very conscious one.

How this works is when we have an unconscious pattern in the body,

It's very hard to shift it as it's unconscious.

However,

When a pattern becomes conscious to us,

It becomes much easier to work with and to shift and this is the practice we're going to do now.

So you can do this practice lying down or seated and I recommend putting your hands on your belly and applying gentle pressure to work against.

Take a couple of full deep cleansing breaths and we'll begin with 10 rounds.

So 10 inhales and exhales of normal belly breathing where the belly and chest expand out as you breathe in and draws in when you breathe out.

So begin and do this at your own pace,

Just counting 10 full rounds of belly breathing.

Great.

Now we're going to move to 10 rounds of paradoxical breathing.

So intentionally as you breathe in,

Draw your belly and chest in and as you breathe out,

Let your belly and chest expand out.

Count yourself through 10 full rounds.

Beautiful.

Let's go back to normal breathing.

The belly and chest expands out as you breathe in and draws in when you breathe out.

Counting 10 full rounds of breath.

Beautiful.

Moving back to 10 rounds of paradoxical breathing now.

So intentionally as you breathe in,

Draw your belly and chest in and as you breathe out,

Let your belly and chest expand out.

Count 10 full rounds.

Beautiful.

And let's finish with normal breathing.

10 full rounds.

The belly and chest expands out as you breathe in and draws in when you breathe out.

Slowly begin to wrap up this practice and just simply notice how you feel in your body.