Posts In: Breath

So you’re brand new to yoga, you may be feeling the effects of age creeping up on you as you bend down to slip your shoes on. Or perhaps after a few hours gardening you are laid up for the rest of the afternoon with a bad back. Or maybe even you have seen a few contortionists throw some handstand shapes on Instagram and think ‘I would love to do that!’  

Whatever your reason that brings you to yoga, know you’re in the right place. Generally 9/10 people that look for a yoga class, it’s because they would like a movement based practise and they’ve heard the hype surrounding yoga and would love to give it a go. But what they end up experiencing is so much more. 

Yoga has been around for many years. In fact some early traces were found over 5,000 years ago. But without writing an essay of the history (if you’d like some book recommendations, message me and I’ll be more than happy to provide some guidance), yoga has evolved. Especially for the western world. It’s said there could be over 300 million yoga practitioners in the world… isn’t that amazing?  

But what is yoga? Yoga in its essence means to unite. To unite body and mind.

But to practise yoga is not just physical movement. It’s how we conduct ourselves in our day to day lives. But again, I could waffle on about this for hours. What you’re here for is to reaffirm what you already know… that yoga will make you feel so much freer in your movements. It will increase your mobility, flexibility, balance. It will help prevent osteoporosis, it will lessen stress and anxiety. It will improve interoception which will in turn, allow you to respond to your body earlier so you will become more in tune with your body. You will change. Your body will change, your mindset will change. 

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I have been so incredibly fortunate to study at Breathing School with the iconic Ben Wolff at the Shala in London. He is incredibly knowledgeable in the fields of neuroscience and clinical hypnotherapy but has spent the last 10 years studying the effects of the breath on our health, well being and our brain waves. 

So how can I spend 30 hours studying something we all know how to do?

Well, to be honest I did wonder this when I began too. But now I’ve completed the Breathing School course I feel I have barely scratched the surface. As a species we have become incredibly lazy in utilising full belly breaths the way we did when we were babies. Have you ever watched a baby sleep? Seen the rise and fall of their belly as they breathe? Later on in life we seem to lose this skill, choosing instead to only breathe into the top part of our lungs. And then there’s the speed in which we breathe.. actually the optimum is only 6 breaths a minute! Give it a go, I bet you’re not breathing at that rate are you? I certainly wasn’t. 

Then there’s the mouth breathing…..

So many of us are mouth breathers now and actually find it difficult to revert back to nasal breathing. Nasal breathing is antimicrobial, antibacterial and antiviral, providing our body’s first line of defence. Even more important in today’s situation. 

Utilising belly breathing and properly engaging the diaphragm increases the body’s ability to use oxygen by 500% by increasing the blood circulation to the brain. It also helps the body’s ability to use nitrous oxide, the pathogen responsible for oxygen delivery. Up to 20% more oxygen is available to nasal breathers than mouth breathers too. Isn’t that insane? We can just make this small adjustment and our health will benefit no end. 

So that was just the basic breathing part of the course, there was so much more!

Ben introduced us to specific techniques utilising the breath than can help us with anxiety, panic attacks, grief, Long Covid, hypertension, menopause, pain… and the list goes on. 

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