The Breathing Series developed when I started sharing some thoughts on an approach to "full" breathing, which you can watch here and here, and then created a series of practices to introduce this approach.
The series takes you through a process of becoming aware of the way you breathe now, exercising some conscious breathing and some controlled breathing. Below is an outline of the practices and an audio player with the episodes. I hope you'll take from it what is useful to you and let the rest fall by the wayside.
I'll begin by guiding you to become aware of some aspects of your current breathing patterns. I say some because there's a lot there to notice -- you might uncover a little or a lot. You could repeat this practice daily and discover new things each time!
Try Practice #1: What you do now
In the second practice, I'll invite you breathe in and out through your nose and/or lengthen your breathing and notice your response to any accompanying effort.
Try Practice #2: Intentional breathing
We'll revisit the practices from the second practice with a new focus, noticing where in your torso you feel any effort that comes along with nose and/or lengthened breathing.
Try Practice #3: Noticing where you feel something
Building on the previous practice, I'll guide you to direct your lengthened breathing into the major areas of your torso.
Try Practice #4: Breathing into your torso regions
In this practice, I invite you to repeat breathing into one major area of your torso at a time with the addition of limiting movement into other areas at the same time. This practice pulls together awareness, effort, lengthened breathing, and directed breathing to create a manner of breathing that can take a lot of work!
Try Practice #5: Shaping your breathing in your torso
In this session, I'll guide you to breathe into different quadrants/sections of your ribcage.
Try Practice #6: Breathing into ribcage regions
Once you've practice breathing into sections of your ribcage, I'll invite you make use of the flexibility of your ribcage to reshape the expand and compress action that goes along with breathing.
Try Practice #7: Aligning your ribcage through breathing
This session will be part anatomy lesson! I'll talk about the core abdominal muscles that connect ribcage and pelvis, support the spine, and can move in concert with the diaphragm when you breathe.
Try Practice #8: Connecting your upper and lower torso through breathing
In this session, I'll invite you to practice exercising the abdominal-diaphragm connection to encourage your ribcage to move into a "postural neutral" position.
Try Practice #9: Positioning your ribcage through breathing