Yoga Breathing

Unlock your hidden potential with yoga

By: Ed Harrold

We’ve known for years just how important pre-and post-exercises stretching is for athletes. But because few of us ever take the time to do it, we diminish its role in our daily workout regimes. It doesn't have to be this way.

With yoga's explosion in the West, millions of practitioners discovered the stretching benefits it delivers to the body's neuromuscular, skeletal, and muscular systems. Along the way, it also evolved into a popular training tool in many athletic milieus. When applied properly, yoga can help deliver significant gains to your athletic performance.

But don't just think of it as something you do every couple days to bring balance to your training. You should work it into every workout, incorporating proper breathing, stretching, and a relaxation/meditation piece into your daily regime. To get the most from your body while tapping into yoga's healing and restorative powers, focus on three key components: posture, breathing exercises, and relaxation/meditation.

Breath and movement is the foundation of yoga. But athletes often lose their ability to link these two together in training and competition. In a sport like rowing, which is roughly 67 percent aerobic and 33 percent anaerobic, harnessing the body's core energies becomes crucial. Your core energies are found in the belly and lower lobes of your lungs. Without your breath reaching these areas, you've only tapping into two-thirds of your body's energetic potential.

More good news: The yoga techniques that follow are open to anyone regardless of range of motion. Use them for warm-ups, cool-downs, or to simulate racing conditions in the mind and body without the risk of repetitive motion injuries.

Begin by focusing on your breathing. Western sports focus on the neuromuscular system first and all other systems second. Yoga turns this on its head, beginning with basic yogic breathing techniques that will feel challenging as you begin to strengthen your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Athletes typically think, "mind over body." In yoga, it's "body over mind."

Begin with the three-part and ocean-sounding breaths. As you master these two techniques, you'll learn they go hand-in-hand and serve as the foundation for all the other techniques.

THREE-PART BREATH

Actively inhale through your nostrils into three parts of your abdomen (belly, ribs, chest) breathing continuously through your nostrils. Inhalation and exhalation begins in the belly and lower back and rises up the front and back of your body.

TIP: Visualize filling a pitcher with water. Don't breathe into your chest until your abdomen is full. If you have trouble with this, try falling asleep at night for two weeks with your hands on your belly. Make sure you're seeing your belly rise into your hands as the breath rises under the ribs and into the chest. It's the way all young children and infants breathe, and eventually your body will remember it.

OCEAN-SOUNDING BREATH

Using the three-part breath, partially close and constrict the glottis muscle in the upper back of the throat above and behind your Adam's apple. Make a soft, sibilant (hissing) sound as the breath passes over the roof of your mouth. Exhalation should be slow, deep, and rhythmic through both nostrils.

TIP: To keep your mind in the game, try making this sound at all times. Since it's hard to space out when you master this technique and overcome the nervous system, it can prove to be useful to those who tend to be scattered and are not reaching their full potential. Use this to co-create balance-mentally, physically, and emotionally-with your crewmates.

Practice both of these while sitting, standing, or lying on the floor, and then take them with you on the erg. Try to breathe this way continually during your workout, keeping your mouth closed as much as you can. If you need to use your mouth during this exercise, use it on the exhale only. The key is to be patient.

Ed Harrold, is a studio owner of Comfort Zone Yoga in Delaware, the Director for Sports Training & Yoga for The Institute For Extraordinary Living at Kripalu Center and originator of the Flexibility For Athletes® program. He leads programs and workshops and has a series of instructional DVD's that can be found on www.comfortzoneyogacenter. com.

 ______________________________________________________________________________

 

Title	Yoga Breathing: Unlock your hidden potential with yoga.
Author	Harrold, Ed
Source	Rowing News (Lebanon, N.H.)
Publisher	Independent Rowing News, Inc.
Vol/Issue	15(1)
Date	Mar 2008
SIRC Article #	S-1072398

 

This material has been copied under license from the Publisher. Any resale for profit or further copying is strictly prohibited.

Contact us | Read our Policies | Terms and Conditions | Copyright © SIRC