The Art of Breathing

Breathing is one of the most fundamental aspects of everyday life and yoga. In Ashtanga there is an entire limb devoted to pranayama, consciously controlling each inhalation and exhalation. The breath spills over into everything we do, it is the foundation of life. During my Yoga Teacher Training in Goa I began to learn just how vast the effects of proper breathing are, especially after having asthma as a child.

Before you continue reading on, take a minute to notice how your breath is in this moment. Is it shallow or deep? Is your abdomen rising or is your breathing confined to your chest? Are you breathing through your nose or your mouth? Which is longer, your inhalation or exhalation? Or are they the same?

Pranayama allows us to take our breathing off of autopilot and brings us into the awareness of the present moment, the present breath. There are many different forms of pranayama. Some are forceful and quick, like Bhastrika, stimulating the sympathetic nervous system. Others are more passive and slow the breathing rate down, like Nadhi Sodhana, bringing us towards a state of parasympathetic dominance. One common element to almost all pranayama techniques is that they involve breathing through the nose.

In the anatomy classes I lead at our and Yoga Teacher Training Goa I like to begin the course with breathing and why the nose knows best. After all breathing is the foundation of asana, linking movement with the breath creates Vinyasa and helps to join our minds to our bodies.

From an anatomical standpoint our noses are designed for breathing and our mouths are designed for eating. Here are a few reason why our nostrils are more intelligently designed to handle respiration.

• Our nostrils are much smaller than our mouths, contributing to 50% more resistance to air flow when we breathe through our noses compared to our mouths. Higher air resistance stresses our diaphragm in a healthy way, increasing strength and elasticity. This slows our breathing down, allowing us to move towards parasympathetic dominance of the nervous system where stress is reduced and regeneration takes place. Additionally, longer exhalations allow more time for oxygen uptake in the lungs.

• Our noses are our personal air conditioners, providing around 90% of our air conditioning and recovering 1/3 of the heat and moisture that is released during exhalation. As outside air moves through our nasal cavities, it is warmed up to provide a humidifying effect. Diffusion, the process in which oxygen and carbon dioxide is exchanged, occurs in the presence of water.

• Smell is our first line of defense against air pollutants. In our noses are receptors that detect harmful chemicals and automatically begin to defend the body if harmful elements are present. If any chemicals are present, our bodies respond immediately by triggering the release of nitric oxide to kill incoming bacteria. Breathing through our mouths is like disabling our body's firewall protection when it comes to respiration.

• Nasal vasoconstriction occurs throughout the day, changing which nostril is more open than the other. Each nostril is innervated by five cranial nerves on the opposite hemisphere of the brain. Thus, breathing through the right nostril stimulates the left hemisphere of the brain and breathing through the left nostril stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain. Brain asymmetry increases overall cognitive efficiency.

• Deep abdominal breathing helps to improve blood circulation by changing the pressures in our abdominal and thoracic cavities. During a deep abdominal exhalation, the pressure in our abdomen becomes lower than the pressure in our legs. This causes the venous blood from our lower bodies to flow more quickly back to our abdomens. During the next abdominal inhalation, the pressure in the abdomen rises and becomes greater than the pressure in the upper body, causing the venous blood to continue flowing freely back to the heart. This cycle is repeated with each round of breathing, promoting the healthy flow of blood throughout the entire body.

As I learned during my and Yoga Teacher Training in Goa, when it comes to breathing the nose knows how to do it best.

Siddhartha is an Ryt 500 (Internationally certified Yoga teacher) and teaches at 200 hours Yoga Teacher Training Goa