Are you suffering from a blocked nose? Are you breathing through your mouth? Maybe you're snoring
at night, or maybe when you talk you sound a little bit like this. If you suffer from frequent
nasal congestion and you're trying to figure out a way to unblock your nose quickly and naturally,
this video is for you. I'll share with you three yoga techniques to unblock your nose fast.
Hey, my name is Lucas. I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer. I'm also a breathing coach and I
find about 20 percent of my students on any given day have one or both nostrils blocked. This might
be from allergies, from a deviated septum, or some people their body is just different and they have
more mucus and that's okay. Luckily, there are yoga techniques that have been used for thousands
of years that can help you to fix this really quickly. Because you're watching this video, I'll
assume you've tried all of the usual stuff like a nasal massage, like pressure points on your face,
like a hot cloth over your face. These techniques I'm sharing with you are a lot stronger. They're
also pretty intense, so let's take it slowly. I'll share with you first of all an apnea walk,
jala neti, and then sutra neti. A quick disclaimer here: if you have a sinus infection,
nasal polyps, a major deviation, or any other major nose problem, please go see a doctor. This
is for educational purposes only. If you'd like to skip forward, you'll find time stamps down below,
and there's a PDF of the exercises we'll cover down in the description as well.
Let's start off talking about apnea walks. Apnea means to hold your breath, and walking means we
apnea hold our breath while we're walking. And the reason we do that is because it helps to build up
CO2 really quickly. When we think about CO2, carbon dioxide, many of us think about this as
a toxin, or as a waste product, but that's not really how it works. All these different gases
and nutrients in our body they all work together. One thing that CO2 does, carbon dioxide, is it's a
bronchodilator, that means it dilates, it opens up your bronchi, your bronchioles,
but also your upper respiratory system as well. It quite literally will dilate your sinuses,
and you can feel it very, very quickly. The reason we do these walks holding our breath is because we
don't actually want to deprive our body of oxygen, but we would like to boost the CO2.
So when we hold our breath and then we walk just for a short period of time
our oxygen levels aren't really affected but our CO2 levels boost really, really quickly. So we can
get that dilation effect very fast. Let's practice together. Stand up, inhale, exhale everything out,
now close your nose, hold your breath, and let's walk 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Good, take a seat down on the floor, keep your mouth closed, and breathe
just through your nose. As you're breathing I'd like you to imagine that you have a little, teeny,
baby cup of air, and the air comes in very, very gently and slowly, and the air goes out very,
very gently and slowly. Imagine you're sipping the air, only breathing through your nose.
Let's try a second set. Stand up. Again, we'll hold our breath at the bottom of the exhale,
this helps the CO2 to be more concentrated and the dilation effect is often more pronounced.
Let's inhale, exhale everything out, close your nose and again let's walk 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Good, take a seat down on the floor, close your mouth, close your eyes,
little baby sips of air in and out through your nose. Hopefully those CO2 levels are rising,
rising, rising. By now hopefully you're feeling a little bit of that dilation effect. Let's do
one more round and I'm almost certain that you'll feel it with these apnea walks. Stand up, inhale,
exhale everything out, hold your breath, and let's walk 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Good. Take a seat down the floor, keep your mouth closed,
little baby gentle breath in and out through your nose. You stay here seated. This technique was
popularized by Konstantin Buteyko, who's a Ukrainian medical doctor. He was a Ukrainian
medical doctor and he used this technique for asthmatics. In fact, even to this day,
this is one of the best natural techniques for managing asthma conditions. Whether you have
asthma or not is beside the point, you can use this technique to open up your breathing
passageways. Now let's take a look at jala neti. Five-six hundred years ago, Swami Svatmarama
codified the Hatha Pradipika, some of these classic yoga techniques, and one of them was
jala neti. This is where we'll do a nasal flush with a saline solution. This is called a neti pot,
n-e-t-i, you can order them online, they're very inexpensive. You have three options - porcelain,
you can buy metal ones, they're often made of copper or something similar, and then there are
plastic ones. I'd avoid the plastic ones, but a metal or a porcelain one is a really good option.
With your neti pot make sure you keep it clean and don't use it for anything else. I've seen people
use them as pencil holders or toothbrush holders, that's really not a good idea. You need this to be
very, very clean, because it ends up going inside your nose. The key thing about this neti pot is
the long teapot nose at the end, because this will literally go up your nose. With our neti
pot what we'll add in is boiled water. It has to be boiled, so it's purified, and then we add
some salt. I usually add about 2 grams of salt. If you don't add salt it'll really sting your
nose. If you add too much salt it'll also sting your nose. So you have to find the right amount.
This neti pot has about 200 ml, I add about one gram per 100 ml, but again it's not an exact
science. So I'll add about 2 grams to this neti pot, you can figure out what's right for you.
With your water, whether it's bottled distilled water or whether it's purified water from the tap,
you need to boil it. Please, please, please boil it. When you put anything in your sinuses it's
very close to your brain, you don't want to risk infection. Make sure that water is boiled and
then cooled. Even a slightly too warm water will really, really, burn when it's in your sinuses.
So boil your water, set it aside, add some salt, let's now fill up our neti pot with that saline
solution. The next step is to fit the nozzle way up your nose, and the key thing, the trick
with the neti pot, is to get your chin way, way, way down low, I like to look towards my navel.
And then get your neti pot up high. Now, I'll warn you when you first start it might just dribble,
dribble, or even get stuck. Don't worry, it can still be very helpful for clearing your nose.
Eventually you'd like a free flow of that saline solution from one nostril to the other. We'll
refill our pot and switch nostrils. You can go back and forth. Now, you should expect a red face,
you should expect your eyes to get a little red, you should expect to maybe sneeze and blow your
nose. Remember, you're clearing out your sinuses, this is part of the process, totally healthy,
totally natural. That is a neti pot. I often encourage people to do this right away when they
wake up in the morning, right away before exercise, or yoga, or breathing practice,
and definitely right away before bed, so you can sleep and breathe more clearly. Let's
now take a look at a, we could call it a more advanced version, and that is called sutra neti,
where we'll actually use a thread in our nostrils. So sutra means thread and traditionally yogis
would use a thread, a piece of cotton, to clean their sinuses. I don't recommend you use that.
Modern sutras are made of rubber, like this one. You can order these online. It's just a
soft piece of rubber. I would encourage you to order the thinnest gauge that you can.
Gauge refers to the thickness. Thinner is going to be more comfortable when you first start,
and let's put "comfortable" in air quotes, because it is a little bit uncomfortable.
But if you've tried everything else and it's not working, this practice is very, very effective.
It is a little weird, I'll warn you in advance. So once you have your rubber sutra, your rubber
thread, the first thing you want to do is wash it. Take it to the sink, soap and water warm water,
wash it really, really well. And before we put this into our nose we need to get it lubricated,
and the best thing to use is your own saliva. So put it in your mouth and get it nice and slippery.
Great. Now as you insert this into your nose, right away you'll feel the urge
to sneeze. One thing that's very helpful to counter that urge is to make a humming sound
in the back of your mouth. It'll sound and feel strange, but it makes a big difference. Like this.
The second thing to remember is you'll very likely hit a block where you just feel like it doesn't go
any further. Don't jam or force it, just really gently twist ever so slightly. The third tip that
I'll give you is as you're putting it in your nose if you add a little bit of pressure with your free
hand it'll really reduce the sneezing sensation, meaning rather than just sticking the sutra up
your nose, if you press and have it go really, really slowly, it'll make a big difference. Now,
your goal is to get this thread all the way to come out in the back of your mouth. It comes out
back by your tonsils by the way, and traditionally yogis would reach in with two fingers, grab it,
and then they would floss their sinuses. For me, I have a really strong gag reflex, so I don't do
that. I just pop it through the back of my mouth and once it's there I just very gently go back and
forth. For me that's enough. I don't need to be gagging all over the place as well. And then after
that we pull it out. After you pull it out you'll notice your eyes are red, you might be sneezing,
very, very likely you'll have a big clearing of mucus. You won't feel it right away. In fact,
it might feel worse at first, but within a couple of minutes you'll really notice a big clearing.
Many people like to combine sutra neti with jala neti. You could even combine your apnea walks
with one or both of these practices and hopefully this should make a big, big difference, in your
sinuses. I hope you found these practices helpful. I'd encourage you to take it really, really slow,
and if they work for you, you can integrate it into your daily routine. If you'd like
more science-based yoga videos, hit subscribe down below. I do my best to answer all the questions in
the comments section down below. And lastly, you can always find my breathing, my teacher training
schedule, everything at yogabody.com. Thanks so much and I'll see you in the next video.