We will speak about four different aspects of breathing.
First is physical.
Second one is energetical.
Third one is emotional.
And fourth one is essence of the breath.
And the physical breathing is really important.
To be able to breathe fully,
To be able to nourish ourself with oxygen.
Our posture is really important for that.
We need to sit and walk to have our shoulders back and down,
To have our chest open,
To have our abdomen relaxed.
And this is exactly the opposite of what we are doing today.
Usually we sit hunched in front of the computer and we hold our belly very tight due to fashion order,
Correcting our posture,
Opening our body for full breath is really important.
Even then we need to pay attention to the breath and see that we are relaxing different parts of the body and allowing the breath to be rich.
But we see that the physical aspect of the breath is not the only one.
The energetic part of the breath is a great component of the teachings.
Breath means energy.
Breath means prana in Sanskrit.
So we are actually having an energy or what we call life force as the breath.
We cannot live without that.
But it's more than a physical thing.
It's actually an energy that goes through different channels in the body and nourish our body and its vitality.
Another interesting aspect of the breath is emotional.
We can see by the breath what emotions we have.
If we are anxious,
Our breath will be shallow.
If we are angry,
Our breath will be very strong.
If we are happy,
Our breath will be flowing in the body in a very beautiful way.
And if we are relaxed,
Our breath will be deep.
The breath actually indicates the state of mind that we have and the emotional state.
The last aspect that we'll mention is the breath as essence.
When we tap in to the depth of the breath,
Really penetrate into it,
We see that the breath is still.
We see that the breath is awareness.
We see that the breath is infinity itself.
So the breath is important for so many reasons.
And it's actually nourishing all layers of our being.
This is the reason we focus so much on breathing in different parts of the practices.
Usually we breathe very shallow breath and we use only 50% of the lungs or even less.
But when we breathe a full yogic breath,
We actually want to increase the capacity of the lungs and to open up and to impact and influence all the layers of the breath that we've just mentioned.
So we are increasing the capacity of the lungs by breathing to the lower belly,
Breathing to the ribs and breathing to the upper chest.
And this is different types of breathing.
When we breathe to the lower belly,
What we actually do is breathing to the lower lungs.
The diaphragm is in a dome shape.
And when we inhale,
It becomes flattened.
When it's flat,
It pushes the internal organs out and the belly comes out.
We will feel it as a vertical breathing.
The belly comes up and down when we lie down.
The second breath,
It's a different type.
It's a different direction to the breath.
We'll be more to the middle of the lungs.
And the middle of the lungs are more horizontal breath where the ribs,
The floating ribs are going to the side with inhalation and going back to the center with exhalation.
We can put our hands in the location of the breathing in order to help ourself feel even more the sensation and direct the breath.
After a while,
It becomes a habit and we are able to breathe into different parts of the body.
In a more fluent way.
The last direction of the breath will be to the upper chest.
We breathe into the collarbones and we're actually breathing into the upper part of the lungs.
It brings a lot of energy into the system.
Each and every part of the lungs is important for breathing.
And as we mentioned,
It will bring different aspects of the breath to be expressed.
When we breathe to the lower lung,
We actually breathe into the earth and water element of our being.
When we breathe into the middle of the lung,
We breathe to the fire element.
And when we breathe to the upper parts of the lungs,
We breathe into the air and space elements.
In this way,
Only with the breath,
We can create so much healing and balance.
We can create openness of the whole energetic body and therefore increase our emotional capacity as well.
We are going to do this practice lying down.
The reason we are going to do it lying down is that to do pranayama,
To do a full yogic breath in a sitting down position is advanced.
We need to practice a lot of asana in order to do it properly.
We need to sit with shoulders back and down.
We need to have spine erect.
We need to have hips open.
And we need to feel very relaxed by doing that.
This is not an easy task.
Most teachings starts with full yogic breath lying down and we will do so as well.
You can always try sitting down as well after many times trying it lying down.
This can be a great preparation for any meditation,
But can be a practice by itself that brings a lot of energy and a lot of joy.
