Are you as excited as I am that summer is here? This new season should bring pleasurable thoughts about spending more time outside, lazy summer days at the beach, enjoying fresh food from the garden, and relaxing with friends. But last week instead of being full of joy, the thought of summer did nothing but stress me out. I kicked off my summer beach yoga classes which meant a complete change in schedule, concerns about the weather, and a lot of worry and distractions that kept me from being fully present.
Does this happen to you? If so, I have a quick and easy pranayama breathing routine to help you slow down, get grounded, let go of stress, and find the joy of being in the present moment. Want to try it? Follow these steps:
Stand up tall in Tadasana (mountain) pose
Place both hands at the center of the abdomen (approximately one inch above the belly button). Press the middle finger firmly into the abdomen as the other fingers gently rest there.
Close the eyes.
Take three slow, deep breaths, focusing on inhaling and exhaling completely.
After just three breaths a sense of calm and presence should prevail.
Don’t believe me, stand up, and give it a go! I shared this practice with my yoga classes last week and I saw a lot of blissed out, smiling faces after just three breaths. If you feel like you need more than three, take as many as you need.
When placing the fingertips on the area above the abdomen it connects us to the Manipura chakra, also called the solar plexus. This is your personal power center and where food, thoughts, and energy are digested and distributed throughout the body. Your ego and self-esteem reside here, so this is an excellent place to bring your hands to get connected back to the body and bring balance to this chakra.
So why does this work so quickly and effectively? The simple act of focusing on your breath will get you out of your mind and into your body and is calming to the central nervous system.
The funny thing about stress and worry is that most of it comes from things that we have no control over. I can’t control the weather or how the beach is going to be, so the simple act of stopping to breathe and connect with my core reminds me to let go of the struggle and be at peace. I did this a lot last week!
The beach looked great and people showed up for the first beach yoga class! Woo Hoo!
This exercise takes less than a minute, can be down anywhere, and is so powerful. Next time you are feeling stressed out, stop, pause, and breathe!
Sometimes all you need is three breaths.
My favorite part of beach yoga is connecting with friends each summer.
I’m sending hugs out to everyone who showed up for Beach Yoga and making it such an awesOMe first week. If you want to get outside this summer and feel the sun on your face and hear the sound of the waves as your practice, please check out the 2017 Summer Beach Yoga schedule and join me for a class.
This is one of my favorite pranayama breathing exercises and a great way to clear the mental chatter to prepare for either an asana or meditation session. Nadi means energy channel, shodhan means to cleanse or purify, and pranayama is the name for yoga breathing exercises. This breath exercise is also called alternate nostril breathing. When you practice nadi shodhana, you are clearing out blocked energy channels, and when that happens, the mind begins to clear. With a calm mind, you will be more peaceful and happier. I don’t know about you, but I am all for anything that will help de-stress my monkey mind and bring me bliss!
I taught this breath exercise in my yoga classes this week and want to share the instructions here so you can practice this beneficial exercise at home.
First, find a comfortable seated position. Sit up straight with relaxed shoulders. Easy sit pose (as shown in the image above) is great, but if that doesn’t feel good, you can do this with legs out in front of you or sitting in a chair. If necessary, place a folded blanket, towel, or yoga block under your tail bone to help you sit up with a straight spine. Then, place the left hand on the knee, and bring the right hand to your nose. Your index and third finger rest at the third eye (center of the forehead), right thumb on the right side of the nostril and ring finger, and pinky finger on the left side of the nostril. Do not apply heavy pressure to block off the nostril; just gently press in each side. Keep the breathing gentle and natural, and do not force it.
1) Use right thumb to close off right nostril.
2) Inhale slowly through left nostril, filling up with a complete inhalation.
3) Pause for a second at the top of the inhale.
4) Now close left nostril with ring and pinky finger, and release the thumb off right nostril.
5) Exhale completely through your right nostril.
6) Now, inhale through right nostril.
7) Pause at the top of the inhale.
8) Use the right thumb to close off the right nostril.
9) Breathe out through left nostril.
10) This is one round. Start slowly with 4 to 5 rounds, and gradually increase up to 7.
Bring the hands down to the knees, and sit quietly for a few moments to let the effects of the nadi shodhana pranayama settle in.
If you are having a stressful day, take a break, sit down, and settle into a session of nadi shodhana to instantly feel better.
Want to learn more pranayama breathing exercises? Check out this post on bhramari breathing (bumble bee)!
Don’t you just love when you hear a song and it instantly makes you happy (and maybe even a little high)?
You hear it on the radio, groove into a little happy dance, and the smile starts to spread across your face.
When a song has a title like “Lovely Day,” you know it has a damn good chance of being one of those feel good songs, and this classic from Bill Withers (circa 1977 ) is my new yoga theme song. Go on, hit the play button below, you know you want to feel the love…
I’m convinced that Bill has to be a yogi with amazing breath control, because at 3:05 in the video he holds a note for 18 seconds! According to Wikipedia that note remains the longest held in any Top 40 hit in the United States. Yowza – nice pranayama Bill!
This song will be on one of my yoga class playlists real soon, and when it does, I’ll be singing the official Daily Downward Dog song parody lyrics….
…
A Yoga Day
When I wake up in the morning
love
and the muscle ache hurts my eyes
And stressful mindless chatter
love
bears heavy on my mind.
Then I grab my mat and the world’s alright with me
Just one breath and stretch and I know it’s gonna be –
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
Yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
When the day that lies ahead of me is full of stress and angst
And someone else instead of me always seems to know the way
Then I grab my mat and the world’s alright with me
Just one breath and stretch and I know it’s gonna be –
A yoga day – yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
yoga day
…
To me a lovely day = a yoga day. Just a little yoga every day and the world’s alright with me. Just a few asanas and some breathing and suddenly the day seems possible to face. Wishing you a beautiful yoga daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy (that was 22 seconds a new DDD record!).
Have you ever spent a night trying to fall asleep but, instead, tossed and turned, lying awake, regurgitating the events of the day or, my specialty, stressing out about everything you need to do in the next 24-hours?
Being the major stress queen that I was (Okay, I’m still a bit of a stress queen, but yoga has really helped put it in check), I have spent more nights than I care to admit in a hellacious fit of exhaustion, unable to let go of the angst, the rampant monkey in my mind going wild, prohibiting me from getting a few precious hours of sorely needed rest.
Well, I am happy to report that I have some groundbreaking advice to share on how to relax and get a peaceful night of sleep. I wish I could take credit for this wisdom, but I have to give props to Professor Azaad S. Khaira (The Laugh Doc), a certified laughter yoga teacher who shared this sage advice at a recent laughter yoga class I attended.
If you have trouble falling asleep at night it is likely due to the fact that you just can’t shrug off the pressures of the day and all of the items on your to-do list for the following day. Before going to bed, Azaad suggested spending a few minutes focused on removing all the thoughts and stresses of the day from your mind. Next, spend a few more minutes bringing in positive thoughts and affirmations.
Azzad cautioned that this might not help with sleeplessness right away, but he challenged us to try it for a month and guaranteed we would sleep better. At first, I wasn’t sure about this method, but I have given it a try, and I’m here to tell you it works. I just spend a few minutes each night erasing the story of my day and then writing and reading a lovely story to myself about what I want the next day to bring. It’s the coolest and most relaxing bedtime story I can imagine.
If I can embellish on Azzad’s recommendation, I’d like to suggest some focused breath work along with this exercise. Get comfortable in your bed and sit upright as you start to take some deep inhalations and exhalations through the nose. Breathe in love, breathe out fear. Breathe in joy, breathe out stress. You can be as self -indulgent as you like with your affirmations; just try to mix in a little gratitude and send out a little peace and love to the world. Focus on your breath as you let go of the day, and then start to bring in positive affirmations or things you would like to manifest in your life. Just put it out there in the universe and you never know; it may just find its way back to you.
At her eightieth birthday party, Sophie Tucker (a.k.a. The Last of the Red Hot Mamas) was asked to reveal her secret of achieving a long life. She replied: “Keep breathing.”
Damn, I was hoping she would say it was a few glasses of red wine every day, but nevertheless, Sophie must have been a yogini at heart because she knew understood the power of pranayama*.
Like most people that work at a computer all day, I have very tight neck and shoulder muscles and frequently experience pain in my lower back. I practice yoga to help relieve my back pain, and I recently started directing my pranayama breathing into my lower back and problem areas during yoga class (primarily during savasana). Since I started this breathing practice I’ve noticed a huge difference. My back has never felt better, and the tightness and pain in my shoulders are diminishing.
So I started to think, is this back pain relief all in my head, or is my directed breathing activity really medicinal?
I did a little research on the phenomenon and got really excited when I read that during meditation, if you allow your mind to focus on a particular part of the body, the blood flow to that body part increases, providing an abundance of oxygen and other nutrients into those cells.
So, it wasn’t all in my head. There really is something to this focused breathing, and it is having a positive impact on my well-being. I’ve been flooding my aching back with natural healing ingredients fueled by the gift of my breath. Plus, this deep breathing also leaves me in a calmer state and reduces my stress levels.
Do you have back aches and pains in your body? Try a little meditation with guided breathing and you never know, you may just add a few more years to your life!
Photo: Jonathan Natiuk (Isn’t that a cool picture? According to Jonathan those are real lungs that were plasticized!)
*Pranayama: Broken down into plain English, pranayama means breath control. Breathing comes natural, but we can control our breath with special methods of inhaling and exhaling to gain physical and mental benefits, and to alleviate stress.
Here is a related story about the power of meditation to increase the production of stem cells from Yoga G33k.com.
