Deep Ujiyah (Yoga) Breaths

During this time of stress and uncertainty in our lives with the hurricanes (and everyday life if you are not affected by the storms), take a step back and take at least 5-10 deep belly breaths as many times per day as you can. If you ever look at a newborn baby while they are sleeping or lying on their backs, you will see that as they inhale their belly rises away form their spine and the floor, and as they exhale, their belly button moves toward the spine and floor. As we grow and develop and get enveloped into everyday human life, we lose this natural belly breathing. Notice when you get in a stressful situation what happens: your breathing will start to shallow and hyperventilation occurs. This is not optimal for performance. Performance in life or in anything that you do. Why? By filling the lungs to capacity on a inhale, several things happen: 1.) Our lungs are lengthened (if we inhale until we can fit no more air in the lungs) which helps to improve the amount of oxygen you can consume in a minute, which, if improved will improve your VO2max and how efficient of an athlete/active person you can be because you fitness levels and thresholds will improve as well. 2.) By filling the lungs and fitting this excess oxygen into the lungs and body, this excess oxygen will help us to be more efficient and recover quicker because that oxygen works to nourish every cell, tissue, and organ of the body. This happens because the fuels that we put in our bodies are transported by the amount of oxygen that we can consume, so, if we can consume more oxygen, our fuels will be delivered more efficiently and more often to the places in the body that need them, both during exercise and at rest. 3.) Finally, when stretching and doing yoga, our breath can help us to lengthen our tendons, ligaments, and musculature more and allow us into positions that would not otherwise be possible for us unless we were inhaling to the capacity of the lungs which will help us create a greater capacity for our lungs. By emptying the lungs completely on a exhale, several things happen: 1.) We release toxins from the body through our expiration, in the form of CO2 and other metabolic waste. 2.) We allow the body to internally decrease space so that we can move through different ranges of motion when doing yoga, stretching and even doing core exercises and other activities. 3.) by detoxifying the body we allow the body to be more efficient in everything from cognitive function, to neuromuscular impulses, to muscular contraction, and a decrease of free radicals in the body which are the agents that cause disease, sickness, and cancer. This detoxification can also help in many other areas as well.

Theses full, deep breaths, when combined with a full inhale and exhale help to relax the mind and body, no matter where or what situation you are in. Even in stressful situations be mindful of your breath and what it's doing and always come back to those deep ujiyah breaths. The physiology behind the full, complete, deep breath is this in addition to all of the aforementioned: when we inhale, our diaphragm drops to facilitate the oxygen moving into the body. It does this to allow your body to take in as much oxygen as possible. When this happens, all of our organs drops to the lowest possible place in our bodies allowing our body to be nourished by that oxygen. When we exhale, our diaphragm is pulled in and up as high into the ribcage as possible (keep in mind the diaphragm is a muscle). When this happens our pelvic floor, or perineum, is lifted and all of our organs lift. If we exhale to the point where we have to almost gasp for our next inhale, our organs are squeezed, and rung out like a wet rag, releasing those unwanted toxins from where they are being held. So, with a full complete breath, our breath will work as a pumping mechanism used to nourish all the tissues of the body (inhale) and rid the body of all of the toxins (exhale). Try to get in at least 5-10 long, deep, ujiyah breaths everyday!