Hello everyone! Tutu Mora here with the Y bringing you tools to feel well in your body,
mind and spirit. Today we're going to be doing some diaphragmatic breathing practices that
are going to be really helpful not only to help yourself feel more calm and peaceful but breathing
from your diaphragm can be a really important component of mobility within your body. So
whether you want to take this practice sitting up or lying down that's up to you. I would always
recommend starting out lying down because you have the extra and added feedback of the surface
beneath you to help you understand whether you're breathing back into the back of your body. So my
recommendation would be to start this practice lying down however if that
does not feel doable for you, you're certainly welcome to to sit up. So let's go ahead and
get started here whether you're lying down or sitting up and I'm going to invite you to first
place your hands on the sides of your rib cage here. Now we're going to just feel the sides of
the ribcage we're going to start by feeling for that last rib so that floating rib at the bottom
finding that space with your hands and we're going to take a couple minutes a couple breaths here
to just start to breathe out widthwise into your hands and so as you breathe with your inhale,
I want you to feel like you're pushing your hands away with your breath. So let's take
a few here and just practice. Sometimes it can be tricky to get out of our normal day-to-day
breathing which a lot of times takes place up in the high chest here and start to let that
drop down in into the diaphragm so let's just take a little practice here starting to inhale
and exhale, breathing however is normal for you to breathe but invitation is
to breathe in through the nose so breathing in
breathing width wise as if you're trying to push your hands away to either side.
Let's take a few more here really just starting to feel yourself push your hands away with your
breath perhaps even noticing is it easier to push one hand away than the other so is it easier for
my breath to come in perhaps through the left side then the right side or maybe the other way around
but just using this as an opportunity your hands are feedback for you to feel
where is my breath able to enter in through my body. So breathing in
and out and we'll take a few more here just at your own pace your own rhythm.
All right so go ahead and let your hands relax you can return to normal breathing so we have
practiced breathing widthwise through the rib cage through that lower part of the ribcage and now
we're going to take that into the back of the body which is where lying down can be really helpful
feedback however if sitting up is your preference can be helpful to reach around if that's doable
for you place the back of your hand in that same place so bottom of the ribcage entering in that
low back territory and then a hand on the front of your body in that same space so now as we breathe,
let's try to push our back hand away so really trying to breathe into the back of the body
and again it might take a minute for that to drop in because we spend so much time breathing up in
this space and also just into the front of our body so it can be a really um strange feeling to
start to direct that breath into the back of the body but let's try that here breathing inhaling
and exhaling. Now you've got your front hand here for feedback so if you feel like you're
more you're breathing out into your front hand way more than your back hand again just
allow yourself the opportunity to practice directing your breath towards the back hand.
Let's take a few more here directing that breath into the back of your body
and then you can again let your hands rest at your sides.
So we're going to complete this now with a 360 breath so again you can either let your
hands rest at your sides or if you feel like that that feedback of your hands is helpful for you, I
would again invite you to place your hands on the bottom of the ribcage just to the sides and let's
start to breathe. I want you to direct that breath both width wise but also see if you can continue
to direct that breath into the back of your body so it'll almost feel like we're inflating
a balloon and letting that soften as you exhale so again using your hands for some
feedback let's just take a few here breathing inhaling towards the back and the sides
and exhaling.
Let's take a couple more here just at your own pace your own rhythm
uh
and you can go ahead and let your hands relax. Now take a second notice how you're feeling
um how your just countenance is feeling perhaps that might have been
a really calming experience for you because it absolutely does have that effect.
As well, see if you can just move around a little bit side to side and just notice how
that might have impacted how mobile you feel particularly um through through the spine
so this can be a really lovely way to work on your mobility so whether this is something that you
start your stretching or your workout with or something you cool down with,
it can be really helpful especially in helping you train your body um to
to avoid just breathing into this space to really use that diaphragm which is is meant to uh
work with you as you breathe. So whether you use this um in the context of stretching or working
out or you use it just as a way to calm down and feel a little bit more present within your body,
take this in the way that it feels most supportive for you. So thank you so much for joining! I hope
you found this helpful and I'll see you back here next time on the Y's YouTube channel. Take care!