Best Way to Do Yoga Complete Breathing

In complete breathing you make full use of your lungs, though never to the point of strain or discomfort. This is a yogic technique similar to abdominal breathing, but instead of lying on your back you sit upright, which allows more air to be drawn in and produces a fuller sensation.

Complete breathing calms and steadies the mind, and energizes the whole system. It also relieves anxiety, lifts depression, and promotes clear and positive thinking. Once the technique has been mastered, it can be used at will in any circumstances for instant stress relief.

Instructions

• Sit or kneel in any of the meditation positions, keeping the back straight and the base of your spine, back of your neck and the top of your head in a line. Breathe in and out through your nostrils throughout. Now visualize your lungs as having three spaces – lower, middle and upper -and inhalation as happening in the three stages that follow.
• As you begin to draw in air, the diaphragm pushes downwards into the abdomen, causing it to swell out as the lower space is filled.
• As you continue to inhale, the ribcage expands as air is drawn into the middle space.
• As you complete the inhalation, the upper chest broadens (but note that the shoulders are not lifted), as the upper space is filled with air.

Although the inhalation is visualized as happening in three stages, it should be a smooth, continuous movement. When your lungs feel comfortably full, hold the breath for a few seconds, then exhale in a smooth continuous movement. As you exhale, the air leaves the lower lungs first, then the middle, and then the upper lungs. If it feels comfortable to do so, you may pause for a few seconds before breathing in again.

Once you have grasped the movement, practise in an even, rhythmic fashion. To begin with keep to a ratio between inhalation, retention and exhalation of 1:1:1, to a count of about 4 for each inhalation. Then move on to a ration of 1:1:2, so if you inhale and hold to a count of 4, you then exhale to a count of 8.

Make four or five complete in-and-out breaths (taking about a minute), then breathe normally (abdominally) for half a minute, then do four or five more complete breaths. As you inhale, visualize yourself breathing in energy. As you exhale, visualize yourself breathing out tension and fatigue. Follow with alternate nostril breathing and/or meditation.