Breathing Room

Yoga allows you to pay attention to the breath—and brings greater awareness to the parts of the body that allow us to exhale and inhale fully.

By Julie Gudmestad

You also need strong back muscles to help you take a deep breath. Your spine forms a strong column that supports the expansion of the ribs up and out, with the erector spinae muscles running up each side of the spine, acting like guy wires to support the spine and rib cage. When you are curved over in a slump, with a forward head and a collapsed chest, your posture significantly limits your ability to breathe deeply. The collapsed chest puts pressure on the diaphragm, limiting its ability to function, and also hampers the expansion of the ribs. Breath movements can also be limited by short and tight abdominal muscles. Chronic pain in the lower back, pelvis, or abdomen can also affect breathing patterns by causing guarding and holding in the diaphragm and abdominal muscle layers. In fact, most pain, chronic or acute, is accompanied by abnormal breathing patterns. When I work with a client in pain, I often begin with breath awareness.

Freedom of Motion

Yoga can help improve your breathing patterns, and good breathing patterns can immeasurably improve the quality of your yoga practice. Whether you are practicing quiet, relaxing poses like forward bends, energizing poses such as Sun Salutations, or the subtle techniques of pranayama, one of the most important steps to improve your breathing is to free the movement of the diaphragm by opening the chest and upper abdomen.

Since it's much more challenging to open the chest while standing or sitting, you'll do best to begin lying down. Lie on your back lengthwise on a bolster. Your hips should be on the floor, with the end of the bolster supporting your lowest back ribs, just above your waist. The bolster's support will open space for the diaphragm to contract and relax without constriction.

Put a folded blanket or small firm pillow under your head so that your chin is a little lower than your forehead. This head position will help direct your focus inward, so that your attention can center on your breath. As you relax and settle down onto the bolster, notice that your breathing becomes slower and smoother. Your belly should softly rise and fall with each breath. This quality of relaxed, slow, and smooth breathing indicates relaxation of the nervous system; you can use it to facilitate the release of muscle tightness in stretching poses like forward bends and supported backbends.

You may be able to feel your rib cage expanding softly up and out as the diaphragm and intercostals work together to expand the chest cavity with each inhalation. This chest expansion is the primary action needed in pranayama; the abdomen should remain quiet, with most of the increase in volume occurring in the rib cage. Most of us need many months or years of practice to make this breath pattern smooth and nearly effortless.

Now bring your attention to the exhalation. During demanding physical activity, the breathing rate increases. Air must be pushed out of the lungs quickly to make room for more incoming air. The abdominals and some intercostals contract to help compress the chest cavity and squeeze air out.

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