Feeling Anxious? How to Breathe your Way to Calm

In these challenging times, when anxiety can seem to hit us like a wave, it can be difficult to know where to turn for relief. The options for relief can feel overwhelming, expensive, unavailable or time-consuming. But of the most accessible and effective ways to bring calm is already within us – our breath.

Each of us takes as many as 30,000 breaths in a single day. Most of those breaths go unnoticed, but in fact, they can be a key tool to optimizing our health and wellbeing.  As one of the eight limbs of yoga, breath work, or pranayama, is itself a practice just like asana or meditation, and it can take different forms – from simply breathing deeply into the belly, to more advanced manipulations of the breath. Each pranayama practice serves a purpose – whether to calm anger, bring in more energy, or reduce anxiety.

So how does it work? Breath is tied to the nervous system. When we inhale, we activate the sympathetic nervous system, or the ”flight or fight” response. Think about when you are startled by a noise outside your home at night, and gasp. When we exhale, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, enabling us to calm and enable healing. Think about the deep sigh of relief when you realize that what startled you is just the wind.

To function optimally on a daily basis, we need both aspects of the nervous system to operate in tandem to keep us safe and well. However, when anxiety is high, we need to focus more on turning on the parasympathetic nervous system and eliciting a relaxation response to bring balance.

Here are some pranayama exercises you can try to help bring calm when anxiety is high.

1:2 Ratio Breath – Perhaps the most straightforward way to use the breath to trigger the relaxation response is to emphasize the relaxing aspect of the breath as described above – the exhale. If you feel yourself getting anxious, but don’t have the space or time to sit down for a more involved pranayama practice, you can easily welcome in calm simply by extending your exhales longer than your inhales.

For several breath cycles, try inhaling deep into the belly for a count of four, and exhaling fully for a count of eight. You can do this for as long and as often as you need to help bring a sense of calm.

Nadi shodhana – This breath, also referred to as alternate nostril breathing, works to balance the subtle energetic channels of the body – the ida and the pingala, which intertwine and spiral as they move up through the central channel of the body, representing the opposing forces of light and dark, night and day, energy and rest. Just like with the inhales and exhales, we seek to bring these two forces into balance for optimal wellbeing.

To practice nadi shodhana, bring the second and third fingers of your right hand to rest at your third eye center. Rest the right thumb on the right side of the nose, and the right fourth finger on the left side of your nose, tucking the right pinky finger in. Exhale all the air out the nose. Press your thumb against your nose, blocking the right nostril, as you inhale through the left nostril. Hold at the top of the inhale, then release the right nostril and block the left for the exhale. Hold at the bottom of the exhale. Keep the left nostril blocked as you inhale through the right, hold, then switch and exhale through the left nostril. Repeat for several minutes.

Sitali – Sitali, or the cooling breath, can help pacify some of the fiery pitta energy that largely corresponds to the sympathetic nervous system being switched on. Practice this and see if you feel more of a sense of cooling and calm. 

To begin, roll your tongue and bring it just outside of your lips, so it creates a kind of straw. If you cannot roll your tongue, bring it the roof of your mouth, where your palate meets the back of your front teeth. Inhale through the “straw”, drawing the air in through the mouth, and exhale the same way. Practice this for several minutes.

Healing Breath – This is a more advanced practice for which you’ll need a partner. One of you will take the seat of the healer, and the other, the seat of the receiver. The receiver should lie in a comfortable position to enable relaxation, while the healer sits next to them, as still as possible, maintaining a neutral mind. The healer will then gently rest their second and third fingers gently on the receiver, and mirror their breathing. Stay like this for up to 10 minutes.

This can help the receiver feel connected and supported. If the receiver works to breathe through the left nostril only, and the healer through the right nostril only, the two sides are balanced and healing can take place.

The ability to simply notice the breath and be more intentional about how it nourishes you is a hugely important step in calming your mind and body. Taking that a step further and implementing these pranayama practices can be transformative in helping manage during these anxiety-ridden times. Try them for yourself next time you feel overwhelmed or worried.

Interested in PYI's COVID19 response initiative - including breath exercises to prevent and manage the disease?  Please join our mailing list today.  

LINKS:

Calm with Yoga – Pranayama for Anxiety: The Ancient Drug-Free Solution
Kripalu – A LifeForce Yoga Breating Practice to Ease Anxiety and Depression

 ——————————————————————————————————-

Hannah Slocum Darcy is a yoga teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and adaptive practice for many life stages and scenarios.

Connect and Balance During Spring & the Upcoming Pink Supermoon

"In just-spring when the world is mud-luscious
and... puddle-wonderful"

e. e. cummings

 
In Ayurveda, every season has a dosha, or set of qualities, associated with it. Winter, governed by Vata dosha, has been cold, dry and dark. But when the sun stays around for longer, everything gets warmer and the ground begins to thaw, making mud often the first sign associated with Kapha season.  Kapha season starts out wet and cold in March and ends up wet and warm, in May and June.

And Ayurvedically, it’s been an interesting time this past month to say the least! With COVID-19 happening, we’re being told to do the opposite of what we instinctually want to do since March is early Kapha season, a time when the world is slowly coming out of hibernation, but we’re all “hunkering down”.

Yet don’t despair. The spring flowers are still poking their heads above the mud, the birds' ecstatic singing signals mating season has begun, and soon young fawns will be born. It’s also a good time to reconnect with the upcoming April’s full Pink Moon. The name Pink Moon comes from one of the first spring flowers, Wild Ground Phlox, as they cover the ground like a pink blanket

On the night of Tuesday, April 7, venture outside to catch a glimpse of April's full Pink Moon. This full Moon—which is a supermoon, the first full Moon of spring, and the Paschal Full Moon—will be visible after sunset and reach peak illumination at 10:35 P.M. EDT. We’re in a series of supermoons, which are 15% brighter than a typical moon, but this April moon will be the brightest of 2020!

And here are other ways for you to savor the beauty of the skies and the season this spring using all five senses:

Sight: See the light, make space for the light.

Shake out winter blues by letting in the light, fresh air, and de-cluttering the space(s) in your environment, mind, and body. Start by cleaning your closet and filling a donation bag with the clothes you no longer wear but just keep around in case you might want them (hint: if you haven’t worn it this winter, you likely won’t wear it next winter). Get rid of the random knickknacks around you, organize papers, and streamline your space by reducing clutter which can be stressful. Create a peaceful space with room to breathe. Clean your house with homemade concoctions including lemon and vinegar.

For your body and mind, do vigorous yoga flows such as sun salutations to create more space and cleansing that our bodies need this time of year. And for pranayama, Kapalabhati is a great antidote for seasonal allergies and mucous congestion.)

With the full super moon coming, also make sure to embrace your lunar side to with chandra namaskara, or moon salutation. The 15 steps in the sequence are here by Yoga International represent 15 tithis, or lunar days.

Taste: Lighten up and have vigilance.

In the winter months, we naturally gravitate toward sweet, sour, oily, and salty foods to mitigate the dry, light qualities of the cold (vata) season. But now we’re feeling a lot of vata going on due to recent events. Despite needing to work in more pungent, bitter, astringent, dry, and light tastes to reset the weight of heavy kapha season, both kapha and vata need warmth to keep agni going, said PYI Faculty, Ali Cramer, in her recent Kapha busting workshop via Zoom.

She recommended getting good routines established and having them not be negotiable – such as eating three meals a day, dry brushing, and exercising regularly to keep lungs healthy, and endorphins to keep depression at bay. The consistency in practice will help keep momentum and strength in our health going forward. For food, work in natural fats like avocados, drink Tulsi tea, Triphala powder in water before bed, and cook your greens like kale and collards.

Hearing: Tune in to birdsong.

Meditating in nature is a foundational practice that I follow during all seasons, but spring is one of my favorites. With flashes of color, from red cardinals, robins, and other bright winged colored birds, and the sounds of bird song, the very music and sights herald the changing season. And if you pay close attention, you can even get to know individual birds since they usually stay close to one location for the season. Re-connecting and observing individual animals in their natural habitat can also help us avoid a term called, species loneliness, which is a sense of isolation and sadness coming from human estrangement from other natural species.

Smell and Touch: Appreciate new growth and life.

As the days grow longer and warmer, this beautiful time of year inspires us to appreciate the renewal of life. Be mindful and fully take in all the new growth around you with your senses of smell and touch – touch the soft tree leaves growing, smell the spring rain, put on some gloves and dig your hands into the earth and smell the rich soil or plant early seeds, watching them grow in your windowsill.

As we all continue on this journey, say or sing a few words of gratitude, and remember to take time to pause and savor the mysteries of the moment while we watch the inner and outer blossoming of life.

For more information on yogic listening skills, consider PYI’s Sound Yoga Therapy online April 17-19, 2020, and our annual Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy Training with Ali Cramer and the PYI Yoga Therapy faculty.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Katie Leasor is a second year Prema student and owner of Elements Yoga Therapeutics, a yoga therapy studio in Fair Haven, NJ.

.

From Lip-Synching “Om” to Leading Chants: One Yogi’s Sound Therapy Journey

Music and I have always enjoyed a pretty fraught relationship.  I have long been something of a screech owl blundering amongst a watch of nightingales, forever surrounded by the musically gifted but unable to join in their chorus without causing amusement or, more often, wincing.  It’s been my dubious fortune, as someone who literally cannot sing in key, to be a kind of magnet for people with perfect pitch (although I am, at least, consistent: my college roommate—a violist— used to stare at me in a kind of appalled awe as I sang along with the radio.  “It’s uncanny,” she’d say, “you are literally always exactly a quarter step down.”)  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people express appreciation when I sing harmony on “Happy Birthday”—I’ve learned to stop telling them that I’m trying to sing the melody.

But speaking of perfect pitch, my personal euphonic albatross: do you know what percentage of the world’s population has perfect pitch?  Less than eleven percent.  Here is a partial list of the people in my life who have (or had) perfect pitch:

·      My husband
·      My best friend
·      My college roommate
·      My late father
·      My uncle
·      My paternal grandfather
·      My paternal grandmother
·      A seemingly endless parade of my students
·      You get the picture 

Music has a bit of a complicated history in my family: my father’s father, the son of a bandleader, was a ragtime piano prodigy who was forced to tour the Orpheum Circuit with his father from the age of six.  At fourteen years old he quit the band, left home, and eventually became a surgeon and, later, a psychiatrist.  He married a woman with a stunning soprano voice in the style of Jeanette MacDonald, and together they raised four children absolutely devoted to music.  My uncle is one of the very few people in the United States who has made a living playing professional tenor saxophone over the past forty years. 

Many people my age grew up with fathers obsessed with jazz, and I would stake my late father in a jazz trivia contest against any one of them—his knowledge was beyond encyclopedic, beyond obsessive—jazz was, I think, his literal best friend.  NPR’s “The Art of Jazz” played on multiple radios throughout the house every single weekend of my childhood.  My father would often interrupt me or one my sisters from our Shrinky-Dinks or Sweet Valley High books to point at the stereo demand, “Who’s that on trombone, girls?”  It was never someone easy to recognize, like Tommy Dorsey or J.J. Johnson, it was always a hard one. “You mean to say you don’t know Miff Malone when you hear him?!”  Sorry, Dad.

There was also musical talent on my mother’s side. My maternal grandfather, who died when my mother was twenty, was a classic Irish tenor—although I never met him, I have a false memory of his beautiful rendition of Danny Boy, from hearing it lovingly referenced in so many family stories. 

It probably doesn’t help that I spent three years of piano lessons practicing on an out-of-tune piano before my teacher—a local Methodist pastor’s wife whose large family definitely had use for every spare penny—told my mother that she couldn’t, in good conscience, continue to take her money.  I joined Seattle Girls’ Choir in the fifth grade and, over the course of three years, came to tower over my fellow choristers as every girl in my training choir class was promoted to the Intermediate Choir except for me.  Eventually, the choir director echoed my piano teacher in gently suggesting to my mother that I be redirected in my interests, perhaps towards watercolors, or volleyball, or ikebana, or literally anything other than music.

All of which is to say, I am not, at this point in my life, confident about my musical abilities.  While I enjoy many kinds of music deeply, and have always found music and dancing to be a direct channel to spiritual connection, I avoid singing in front of others, and freeze up instantly when a musical instrument is put in front of me.  So you can imagine my reaction upon discovering, during the first day of my Sound Therapy training at Prema Yoga Institute, that by the end of the weekend I was expected to chant while accompanying myself on the harmonium.  Outwardly, I nodded enthusiastically.  Inwardly, I panicked.

Ironically, I am not afraid to use my voice—I taught vocal technique for actors for years at various acting schools and studios in New York City, including the Musical Theatre studio at NYU, where I was, I think, the only non-singer in the building.  The technique I taught, developed by Kristin Linklater, teaches actors to undo the maladaptive muscular habits that prevent them releasing their sound fully and expressively while speaking.  The technique is often referred to a “freeing the natural voice,” and—especially in the beginning—“ugly” sound is not only allowed but actually encouraged.

But I had never encountered “ugly” sound in yoga.  At that point, the only sound I was really familiar with in the yoga world was kirtan: a division of bhakti yoga often involving melodic call-and-response chanting, generally led by a yogi playing a harmonium.  I had attended large kirtan sessions where my imperfect voice could be masked by blending into the wall of sound, and found them to be ecstatic experiences.  But the idea of leading a kirtan myself—of being responsible for the sound element of a yoga class—was beyond daunting: it seemed actually impossible.  How could I expect a class to echo my chanting when it would almost certainly be off-key?

Happily, Jessica Caplan’s sensitive, inclusive teaching gradually made me feel more confident in my ability to lead a class in chanting over the course of the weekend. She also offered a variety of non-vocal ways to include sound in my yoga experience, whether as a teacher or as part of my home practice.  I came away with a practical understanding of what had been, before, a nebulous idea of the concept of sound healing.  I learned about the bija mantras’ relationship the chakras, and how to use them effectively in sequencing a chakra-centered class or private session.  I learned about toning and humming, and how the body responds to vibration and frequency.  (A useful maxim from the manual: “Sound is organized vibration.  Thus, organized sound can organize matter.”)  I was introduced to a variety of simple but powerful musical and percussive instruments (such as singing bowls, hand drums, chimes, and rattles) that I could accumulate and practice with in order to provide, for example, a soothing sound element during savasana, or an invigorating percussive element to a chi dance.  I also learned about the history of Indian sacred music.

Most transformative were the two immersive sound baths I experienced in the training, one a standalone experience and one incorporated into one of Dana Slamp’s incomparable restorative yoga classes. I also had the opportunity to create one myself, in conjunction with two classmates.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as simultaneously grounding and transporting as a sound bath conducted by Jessica Caplan.  The experience is hard to describe, and I would be lying if I said I left the class feeling as if I could instantly replicate what Jessica had created—she is, after all, a professional sound therapist.  But I did leave with confidence in the imperative of my curiosity to explore sound.  I have since started acquiring instruments to be able to create sound baths for my own students and clients, and have begun incorporating healing sound into my own yoga classes, and especially into my teaching of yoga nidra.  I can’t tell you how exciting it was to learn practical ways to begin including sound into my own teaching right away.

Another major takeaway for me was the incorporation of chanting and mantra in to my own meditation practice.  We learned several mantras and were each encouraged to select one that resonated with us and practice it for a week.  I was deeply moved by the Maha Mrityunjaya (“The Great Chant of Healing”) and continue to use it in my personal practice on a daily basis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, consistently chanting in my daily meditation practice has made me more confident in leading chants, and now I am more likely to begin or end a yoga class with Loka Samastah or Om Navah Shivaya, rather than my usual three Oms.  I use an app version of the droning chord created by a harmonium or shruti box (a sort of elementary version of a harmonium that I plan to add to my collection of instruments), so the students with better ears than mine have an accurate pitch to follow.  Surprisingly, though (to me, anyway), chanting nightly backed with an accurate drone has actually improved my relative pitch.

In PYI’s Sound Therapy training, I learned that sound itself can be therapeutic, not just what we conventionally think of as “music” or “singing”.  This was a major revelation for someone who has always thought of herself as musically challenged.  It is not an overstatement to say that the course opened new world of expression and devotion was opened to me through this course, both as a yoga teacher and as a practitioner. 

Prema Yoga Institute’s Sound Yoga Therapy Training runs from April 17th to April 19th.  More information can be found here.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.