Take a deep breath!

Learn how to own your breath and you’ll own your life!

Breathing is life. You can go without food for weeks, without water for days, but without oxygen you can go on just for a few minutes.

You might think that you already know how to breathe and there’s nothing more to learn, but there so much more to simply inhale and exhale.

Learning how to breath properly can help you control your reactions. When you master your breath in uncomfortable situations you’ll be ready to own your life! Deep belly breathing is a must when you need to calm down, focus and de-stress.

When you take deep, long, slow and controlled breaths you can stop the nervous system reaction “fight or flight” to stress. The sympathetic nervous system goes into high gear in case of perceived danger and it gives the input to the brain to get ready for a serious fight or run like your life depends on it. Unfortunately our brain fires up our sympathetic nervous system even when it’s inappropriate to get into a fight or physically run away. Let’s think of a stressful day at work… you can’t just punch your boss in the face nor run out of the office and never come back. When our bodies goes through this stress response our system unnecessarily pump in cortisol and adrenaline. Continuous stress can tear our bodies from the inside out. Here’s where deep breathing technique comes at handy. Deep, long and slow breaths through our nostrils will slow down the fight or flight response and activate the parasympathetic nervous system relaxing the body. Breathing through the nostrils increase the rib and lung expansion optimizing the oxygenation process increasing blood flow.

Proper breathing during all kind of exercise increases blood flow which can give you instant energy.

When it comes to DDPY if you breathe and move in a specific way you can get the most out of your workout and increase the benefits especially flexibility.

When you’re stretching and moving in harmony with your breath you are doing yoga, not just stretching. DDP Yoga take this and brings it to the next level. It’s a total body exercise that improve physical and mental focus and balance along with endurance, flexibility and power.

Let’s see how it’s done. Inhale deeply through your nose trying to push the breathing into the thigh spots where you feel the tension. Exhale in a slow and controlled way. This seems easy enough, but the tough part comes when you need to really focus on every single breath you take during the whole workout. Every time you feel you are slipping away from the proper breathing try to reset and refocus.

Just remember practice is the mother of learning. So you need to practice this deep, slow belly breathing as much as possible until it comes automatic.

Let’s see this easy breathing exercise which will help us calm our mind and relax our body.

Sit in a comfortable position or lie on your back.
Place your hands on your belly. Gently and deeply inhale through your nose. Try to get as much air as possible to expand your belly, pushing your diaphragm out. You should slowly count 1, 2, 3.
Once you have filled your lungs full of air slowly exhale through your nose pushing all the air out using your abdominal muscles and obliques, pulling your belly back towards the back of your spine, counting it out 3, 2, 1.
Inhale back and repeat for 3/5 times. Keep practicing and try to bring the count from 3 to 5, 7, 10 …