Now that you've started on the path of training your breath, you can continue on with these advanced yoga breathing exercises. All these breathing exercises are built on the Yogi Complete Breath, so if you haven’t already been practicing your belly breathing and your Yogi Complete Breath, please go back to those pages now.
Back in the fall of 2012, I decided to enhance my GYROKINESIS® practice by doing the work every day for a month. I wrote about my progress and experiences as I went along. Here is the first week:
Oct 31 – So lately I’ve been thinking alot about how to relate to people
Now that you’ve strengthened your diaphragmatic breathing, it’s time for the Yoga Complete Breath. (You have been practicing diaphragmatic breathing, right???) The belly breathing exercise is the beginning. Now we’ll add in the rest of the lung capacity.
There are three parts of a Yoga Complete Breath. Unless you specifically develop all three aspects in the correct order, you are most likely over-emphasizing one of the aspects to the detriment of optimal breathing mechanics.
First is low breathing, which was covered in diaphragmatic breathing.
The second aspect is middle breathing. This involves widening and slightly lifting the rib cage to fill the middle of the lungs. This part of the breathing cycle uses the internal intercostal muscles, the ones between the ribs.
The third portion is high breathing. The ribs, collarbones and shoulder blades are raised. This involves the use of neck and shoulder muscles: the SCM (sternocleidomastoid), the scalenes and the upper trapezius.
Any of the three of these phases of this deep breathing exercise can be used independently for inhalation but there are drawbacks to using any of these by themselves. Of the three, low breathing is the best, with the only drawback being that the lungs are not completely filled. Middle breathing is limited in that the intercostal muscles cannot create enough space to completely fill the lungs.
Of the three portions, high breathing has the most drawbacks. Like the others, it is incomplete. However it has the additional negative that the primary muscles used for this portion of the breath are usually too tight in people anyway, especially in our current, computer oriented culture. Those three muscles being too tight is a primary cause of forward head posture. That in turn can lead to nerve entrapment through the neck bones and the scalenes themselves, can lead to tension headaches from shortened and tight sub-occipital muscles and a rounded upper back which will make deep breathing exercises even more difficult. Oh, and bad posture doesn’t look so good!
Enough talk! It’s time to breathe.
The complete breath is a 3 part inhalation, using the full musculature of the breathing apparatus, in the correct, natural order. It combines all three methods of breathing (high, medium and low) in the right order to use the full capacity of the lungs.
While the instruction for the complete breath appear to be 3 distinct motions the breath is intended to happen in a smooth, seamless manner. At first, breaking it down into three parts and then putting them together can help teach the breathing musculature their individual parts. But then you want to smoothly integrate the three parts.
Practice, practice, practice. And when you have this down you can move on to the more weird, interesting and esoteric deep breathing exercises.
With the majority of people having desk jobs sitting in front of a computer, common avoidable postural distortions like Forward Head Posture and Upper Crossed Syndrome have become almost the norm. If you're able to keep your focus on proper posture from a young age and throughout your life
Without it, all your activities, the whole of your life, is built upon a shallow and weak foundation. That sounds like a pretty bold statement and it is… and it’s also true. Diaphragmatic breathing is the engine of your inhale and a strong inhale is going to properly feed your body.
One of the things you'll hear every GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® instructor speak about is that GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® training moves all your joints through all their ranges of motion. This is especially important for the spine. In our modern world of long commutes and sitting at computers
