Elissa Weinzimmer here I'm a vocal health educator and the founder of Voice
Body Connection and today it my How to Warm Up video series I am seated we
are doing a yoga breathing technique called Kapalabhati and it is best done seated
on a chair or even cross-legged on the floor now Kapalabhati means skull shining
breath and the idea is that as you send the energy up
it makes your skull feel sort of tingly or like it's shining okay so this ties
into everything we've been doing with breathing exercises so far because all
of them are about supporting from the bottom of the toothpaste tube as I've
talked about or the bottom of the breathing system bottom of the torso in
order to send the energy and the air and the voice up and out okay now this breath
comes in and out through the nose it is a forceful exhalation through the
nose followed by a recovered inhalation back in through the nose you will hear
sound both directions because of the turbulence coming in and out through
those small openings of your nostril but make no mistake we are doing work on the
exhalation and recovering on the inhalation just like the exercise we did
last time with breathing called shh let it go and the exercise before that
where we did tense and release but backwards and the work was on the
exhalation and the release is on the inhalation so same theme that when we
are making sounds for voice and speech when we are breathing for voice and speech we
want to do the work on the exhalation and recover on the inhalation let it be
easy this is the paradigm shift the 180 degrees from the way our bodies
hardwired that is so valuable for breath support okay so let me do this for you
just a couple times so you can see what it looks like and then I'll explain a
little bit further so here's what Kapalabhati looks like I will do it with my
eyes closed just a couple times
so as you can see the low belly is drawing in as the air goes out to through the nostrils
and then the air is coming back in as the belly releases now is the belly
pushing out no it's just releasing back out I'll put my hand on my low belly
so you can see even a little bit better the movement right so that's how it
works now here's a really important thing to be paying attention to when
you're doing Kapalabhati when you breathe out you want to see a little
bounce of your chest upwards or feel a little balance of your chest upwards if
it's doing the opposite if it's contrasting downwards or if it's pushing down you're
actually doing the push in push down try to send the energy that way the poopy
breath is what I call it right but that is not helpful it is not this pattern so
let me show you what that would look like this is what you don't do that's
not Kapalabhati we're not being punched in the stomach that's not the
pattern we're drawing the very lowest part of the belly in we're letting the
ribs stay open letting diagram stay open letting the diagrams bounce upwards
and letting the sound I'm sorry the air out right no sound this time unless
it's just the noise of the turbulence alright so here's how we're going to do
this we're going to do 18 rounds and then on the 19th breath a long breath
out through the nose a long breath in through the nose and then you can let it
go and take a break okay that's one set you ready to do this with me here we go
okay
okay that was one set so you might be starting to get that tingling sensation
up in your skull feeling that energy of sending it all up and out want to take a
little bit of a break in between steps so that you don't over oxygenate
yourself and then we can do another and I would say with this you want to do two
or three sets that's enough it's really just about getting your body into the
pattern so it feels ah yes I remember you wane me to squeeze from the bottom and
send energy up and out yeah okay let's do one more set here we go
nice okay so as your body calibrates this new thing which might be really
challenging for you it's okay if you're like wait where do I squeeze how do I do
it oh no I'm doing a poopy breath that didn't work I lost track don't
worry just keep practicing it and the cool thing about this breathing pattern
is it's eventually going to trick your body into oh I get it this is what you
want me to do yeah so this is kapalabhati I hope I explained it well
to you but if you want more videos with people all over the world including many
from India explaining to you how to do it type it into the YouTube search
box I promise we'll find lots of videos let me assure you that if you practice
this and then do your local exercises afterward it's going to really really
help you find that pattern of breath support and the energy flowing up and
out of you I hope you have fun enjoy your yoga pranayama and see you soon