When you deep breathe it’s important not just to know where to breathe to and for how long, but the dynamic of these key areas, how they work together when inhaling and exhaling, and what you need to do to ensure correct deep breathing technique is applied.
Here is a simple 6-step sequence that may be helpful.
- When you start inhaling, your focus should be on inflating the abdomen. The diaphragm is pushing down and as the air enters the lungs the abdomen expands. But it’s important for the muscles of the abdomen not to be completely passive. Keep the muscles in and around the abdomen gently engaged and don’t let the abdomen just drop out completely. Controlled expansion of the abdomen is what you want.
- After you have completely inflated the abdominal region, your focus switches to inflating the chest. But you will still need to be aware of the abdominal area. When you inflate the chest area, the abdominal area will naturally retract back. You should expect this and start to pull back the abdomen with the abdominal muscles (the diaphragm is still pushing downwards). This allows the expansion of the chest, but also massages the internal organs as they are compressed by the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and lower back. As you inflate the chest, you will feel your back naturally straighten.
- The final part of inhalation moves to the clavicle region. This is a small but important part of deep breathing and focuses your attention on filling the lungs completely, right to the top. You will also find that this part of the inhalation also helps ensure the back is straight.
- Now you switch to exhalation. This first step is to empty the lungs from the clavicle region. But what often happens is that the abdomen and chest also start to contract. You don’t want this. At the start of the exhale, focus on keeping the abdomen and chest inflated as well as slowly exhaling from the clavicle region.
- The next step is to empty the lungs from the chest area. Again, your abdominal area will want to start retracting. Stay focused on slowly deflating the chest area, but also remain focused on keeping the abdominal area inflated.
- Now you move to the final part of deep breathing, exhaling from the abdomen. Sometimes, exhalation can speed up towards the end as there may be a need to inhale oxygen to the body. But try to keep the exhalation nice a slow and steady, and slowly retract the abdomen and pull up the diaphragm to complete one full cycle.
Now practice vertical breathing for 3 minutes. After, relax and return to normal breathing.