Breathing Exercises and Techniques
Exercises from EatMoveLive52. http://eatmovelive52.com/breathing-practice-for-katy-bowman/
Breath is an important part of physical and mental health and is a simple way to add some mindfulness and meditation practice into your life. With COVID-19 ravaging our world, now is the time to work on improving your breathing! There are so many excellent breathing resources, so instead of reinventing the wheel here are my favorites:
Self-myofascial release for your stomach and ribs. Use an inflatable ball to ‘foam roll’ your gut! Jill Miller has a ton of excellent resources on this: gut smash video, rib video, diaphragm exercises, breathing for muscle recovery, and her coregeous ball.
Breathing biomechanics and exercises to improve yours. Reknowned biomechanist Katy Bowman has a ton of great resources on breathing! This podcast has 8 exercises to improve your breathing and this one goes more in-depth into the biomechanics of breathing. If you don’t like podcasts, the exercises are in this blog post and mechanics in this video.
14-Day Program from Breathe by Belisa Vranich. If you have the time for a full book, Dr. Vranich has more information and exercises on breathing than you ever thought you needed. Here’s a link to her TedTalk and to her book. Below are a few easy exercises from her book that can be done anywhere:
5:5:5- Inhale for 5 counts, exhale for 5 counts, 5x
Invigorating breath- inhale for twice as long as you exhale (ex: inhale for 6, exhale for 3)
Calming breath- exhale for twice as long as you inhale (ex: inhale for 3, exhale for 6)
Respiration Rock and Roll- rock your pelvis forward as you inhale, and roll your pelvis back when you exhale. Here is the best video example I could find, but try to move just the pelvis, not the upper body.
Hope you find these helpful! There are a lot, so just doing even one of these (or the guided breathing exercise in the video) will help. What are some of your favorite breathing exercises?