Yoga Breathing | Alternate Nostril Breathing

Transcript

- Hey, Everyone! Welcome to Yoga with Adriene. I'm Adriene and today we're going to learn a pranayama practice,
or a breath technique, called alternate nostril
breathing, or nadi shodhana. It's one of my favorite tools. I feel like almost everyone
can benefit from this practice. It's a very simple breath technique with an abundance of benefits. Everything from being a nice tool to cure headaches, anxiety, it's
a great connector of the brain and body and something
to balance out the nadis, or the energy channels in the body. So hop on the mat or
find a comfortable seat and we'll learn it
together, nadi shodhana. (acoustic guitar music plays) All right, so to begin, we're going to come into a comfortable seat, so you might come into sukhasan here, like
a nice cross-legged position. I'm using a block under my butt today. You can also fold a
blanket or use a pillow. If that's not comfortable
for you and you want to try this, you can do this in a chair. Just make sure that you're
in a nice, supported position so that your back can be nice and tall and we can sit up with
the head over the heart, the heart over the
pelvis, just a suggestion. So I'm going to come into my nice, comfortable seat here,
cross-legged position. Again, I've lifted the
hips, just to give myself a little bit of space for the thighs and the knees, legs to drop down. Take a second, roll up through the spine, maybe loop the shoulders
forward, up, and back. And then, just take a
couple of seconds here to just notice your breath as
we inhale in through the nose (inhales) and out through the nose. (exhales) Inhaling in through both nostrils (inhales) and exhale out. (exhales) One more. (inhales) And exhale, we arrive. (exhales) Just kind of checking in with the body and opening the mind
to learn something new. Take your right hand in front of you, if you're left-handed, you can
do this with your left hand and on the blog, I'll
talk about how to adjust for the left hand, but for now, we're going to use the right hand. I'm going to take my index
finger and my middle finger and drop it down towards my palm. So for some, this might be kind of like already a little yoga for the brain. So just give it a try, you
can even take your other hand and bring the fingers down,
just kind of guiding it there. And in time, this will
become easier, with practice. Right? It's all about practice. If you're finding that this
is just too distracting and you're, like, not able
to do this in the hand today, then it's okay to go hang loose. Bring all three middle fingers down and just use the thumb and pinky. This is a nice little beginner's tip, but like I said, with practice,
this will become easier. So the index finger and the
middle finger are coming down. And for this practice, pranayama practice, I'm going to use my
thumb and my ring finger. The pinky is just kinda there
for style, mudra points. So I'm going to sit up nice and tall And I'm going to take my right thumb to my right nostril, kind
of sealing the deal here. Sealing it up, sealing it up. And I'm going to inhale in
through the left nostril. Inhaling in through the
left nostril, here we go. (inhales) After the inhale, I pause
and I take my ring finger and seal the left nostril,
exhaling out through the right. (exhales) Inhaling in through the right. (inhales) I seal the right nostril with my thumb and exhale through the left. (exhales) Inhale through the left. (inhales) Sealing with left nostril,
with left finger, sorry and exhaling through right nostril. (exhales) Inhale in through right nostril. (inhales) Pause, sealing with the thumb, and exhale through left nostril. (exhales) So just in case you're like, "What?" Here's a little tip. Each time I inhale in, I seal. Then, I exhale out, I inhale in, and seal. So just a beginners' tip
is each time you inhale, that's when you're sealing and alternating to the next nostril. So each time I inhale
in, I seal and alternate. So we're going to give it a little bit of practice time together and then you can just try this on your own. At first, again, this might
feel a little more like yoga for the brain, even though
it is yoga for the brain. Certainly replenishing and
good for the mind and brain, but don't get frustrated and quit. Stick with it and soon, your brain and body will work together. So here we go, we take a nice deep breath in through both the nostrils. (inhales) And a nice exhale out. (exhales) We find our mudra here, relax your jaw. You can close your eyes. And we seal the right
nostril with the right thumb. Nice, long, smooth,
deep breath as I inhale in through the left nostril. (inhales) I just inhaled in, so I'm going to seal with the left ring-finger, excuse me, seal the left nostril
with the ring finger, and exhale out through the right nostril. Let me get this clear for you, here we go. Inhale in through the right nostril. (inhales) And seal and alternate, exhale
through the left nostril. (exhales) Inhale in through the left nostril. (inhales) Seal and alternate, exhale
through right nostril. (exhales) Inhale in. (inhales) Seal and alternate. Exhale out. (exhales) Inhale in. (inhales) Seal and alternate, exhale out. (exhales) Inhale in. (inhales) Seal and switch and exhale out. (exhales) Inhale in. (inhales) Seal and switch, exhale out. (exhales) Keep it going, inhale in. (inhales) Switch. Exhale out. (exhales) Inhale in. (inhales) Switch. Exhale out. (exhales) Inhale. (inhales) Switch. Exhale out. (exhales.) Let's do one more round
together, deep breath in. (inhales) Seal and switch, exhale out. (exhales) Inhale. (inhales) Switch. Exhale out. (exhales) Release the mudra, palms
to the tops of the thighs. We take a deep breath
in through both nostrils (inhales) and we exhale, release. (exhales) Take a second here to
just notice how you feel. Eyes closed, skin on
the face nice and soft. And then, gently, we'll
open the eyes, soft gaze. And inhale, drawing the shoulders
all the way up to the ears deep breath in, and exhale, let it go. (exhales loudly) All right, so that was
alternate nostril breathing. Like anything in our yoga practice, remember, it's a practice. So if it feels like
you're doing this at first or if it feels weird or funky, I encourage you as your
teacher and as your friend to return to it and give it a try, maybe give yourself a little
goal to try this video four times this next coming week, just to see what happens. As I mentioned before,
this breath is great for just connecting brain and body, it's great for replenishing
and waking up the body and the energetic channels
in the body, or the nadis. It's wonderful for anxiety,
if you're a student or you're a creative person, you have a big project coming up or an
exam or something like that, this might be a great thing to practice to just get the mind and the body centered and just kind of calm the nervous system. There's, as I said before,
an abundance of benefits to practicing this regularly and I'm gonna talk about
all of them and more on the blog, so make sure
that you hop on over there to read the article
associated with this video. As always, I love to hear
your questions, comments, but really, for this one,
for this pranayama technique, this breath practice, I would love to hear just how it goes, what
your experience was. How you felt afterwards,
maybe you could share with me and the others
and I think we could all kind of inspire each other and
it just might be interesting to hear how others felt after practicing alternate nostril breathing. And it's kinda cool, you can
share it with your friends. Ok, I think that's all for now I thank you and I wish
you the best of luck. Have a wonderful day, namaste. (acoustic guitar music plays)