Being able to notice where your body moves well while breathing, and where it doesn’t, is a very useful tool.

For today’s practice, just notice what parts move with ease and what parts don’t.

❄️ To begin, lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Put a pillow under your head if you need it.

❄️ Hook your thumbs into your armpits and rest your hands on your upper chest. As you breathe, can you feel this part of your body expand – notice the area under your thumbs – is it moving? Then notice the area under your fingers – is it moving?

❄️ Hold your lower side ribcage – thumbs towards the back. Breathe in and feel for side to side expansion of the ribcage. Then feel for front to back expansion of the ribcage. Can you move in both dimensions?

❄️ Place your hands on your belly. As you breathe in, can you feel your belly rise into your hands? Can you also feel the area around your kidneys press into the ground?

❄️ Bonus noticing – is your pelvic floor gripped the whole time you are doing these breaths or is it responsive to the air entering your body?

Today we are continuing our exploration of how the body can move while we are breathing. In particular we are looking at the ability to move between areas of the body when we are breathing. Be sure to keep your effort low when exploring this breath practice.

❄️ To begin, lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Put a pillow under your head if you need it.

❄️ Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your upper chest

❄️ Take 4 or 5 breaths where you ONLY expand your belly.

❄️ Now take 4 or 5 breaths where you only expand your ribcage.

❄️ Now try toggling between the two – one breath into the belly, one breath into the ribcage.

Breathing only into one area is never a great strategy over the long term.

Belly breathing can be a tool to help someone get air lower into the lungs, but when we breathe this way we miss out on core engagement AND we can end up with very rigid ribcages.

Chest breathing can be useful to help find expansion here, but if you only let your chest rise you will end up in a state of hyperinflation, and potentially anxious.

Today we are exploring how much we can find expansion in the back of the body when we breathe. Many of us are pretty locked up in the posterior ribcage so this type of breath can both feel a bit elusive and totally liberating when you are able to find the expansion!

❄️ To begin, grab a pillow and sit on your knees (I also show how to do this in a chair at the end of the reel).

❄️ Fold your body over the pillow and rest your forearms on the floor.

❄️ Don’t let your head collapse to the floor, tucking the chin. Stay a bit active in the head and gaze forward.

❄️ As you breathe in lightly through your nose, notice that the belly is blocked by the pillow and see if you can feel the lower ribcage expanding.

❄️ You may also be able to sense expansion in the low back around the kidney region AND the posterior pelvic floor, as you breathe in.

Today we are going to help our breath and our blood pressure today.

❄️ To begin, get into constructive rest and then grab a ball or a block and place it under your sacrum, raising your hips higher than your heart.

❄️ Stay here and breath low and light through your nose.

❄️ After a minute or so, try pausing at the end of your exhale for up to 5 seconds before inhaling again.

When your hips are higher than your heart, many positive things happen for your body.

The first is your sympathetic nervous system gets turned down, helping it to become less active. We can compound this in a good way when we pause after exhale, allowing nitric oxide (NO) to accumulate in our sinuses. NO does lots of wonderful things for the body, including helping to calm us down.

Second, due to the inverted position, we activate the baroreceptor reflex. This means information gets communicated from your carotid arteries to the brain to keep blood pressure stable. The recline allows the baroreceptors to sense that too much blood is heading towards the brain and the response is to slow the heart rate, slow the breath rate and lower blood pressure.

Third, being in this inverted position helps your pelvic floor and diaphragm to dome up, meaning we get a better exhale.

Today we are going to help reduce hyperinflation in the upper body. Many of us get caught breathing high and shallow. Combined with over inhaling, we can end up with ribs loving to be inflated and less good and being able to deflate. This practice will help.

❄️ To begin, sit comfortably cross legged or in a chair.

❄️ If you can, have access to exposed skin on your upper chest, but through a shirt is ok if that’s your only option.

❄️ Place one hand on one side of your chest and drag down gently against the skin.

❄️ Place the other hand on top of the first hand. Press down gently with the top hand. Tip your head back and away from the side you are placing your hands on.

❄️ As you inhale light and low through your nose, feel the drag and press of the hand. As you exhale increase the pressure of both hands on the upper chest.

❄️ Repeat on the other side and in the middle of your chest.

Today we are going to use a partially inflated courageous ball to help our diaphragm move better by addressing held tension in our deep abdomen.

❄️ To begin, grab your coregeous/pilates ball and partially deflate it.

❄️ Lie with the ball placed into one side of your belly with the leg on the opposite side partially bent. If the sensation created by the ball is too unpleasant, deflate it more – this can be very uncomfortable for many people when they first begin.

❄️ Breathe in light and low through the nose and feel the belly meet the ball, as you exhale, let the ball press into the belly.

❄️ After 4 or 5 breaths, inhale, hold the breath in, contract the belly muscles and then as you exhale relax the muscles. This helps change the state of your nervous system, toggling between sympathetic and parasympathetic states.

❄️ Repeat on the other side.