COMPLETE YOGIC RESPIRATION

Remember, Inhalation is made up of three partial phases:

1. Diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing induced by lowering and flattening the dome-shaped diaphragm.

2. Intercostal breathing brought about by expanding the rib cage.

3. Clavicular breathing from the top of the lungs, produced by raising the upper part of the thorax.

Each of these phases has its own merits, but yogic inspiration is only complete when all three are done in conjunction.

How can this breathing be learned? Before attempting to combine them - that is to say before we can achieve in one single, smooth and continuos movement complete and easy filling of the lungs, thereby supplying them with reviving air, and expanding the pulmonary alveoli (all 70 million of them) - we must learn to dissociate the three phases. First of all we practice breathing from the diaphragm.