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esther m palmer

the breathing series - all practices

A full-bodied approach to breathing

Last October, 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.

 

Engaging with your breathing

An introductory breathing series
 

1. what you do now

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!
 

2. getting used to effort

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.
 

3. where is the effort?

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.
 

4. belly, sides, chest, back

Building on the previous practice, I'll guide you to direct your lengthened breathing into the major areas of your torso.
 

5. positioning your torso

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!
 

6. ribcage quadrants

In this session, I'll guide you to breathe into different quadrants/sections of your ribcage.
 

7. flexible ribcage

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.
 

8. ribcage and pelvis connection

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.
 

9. positioning your ribcage

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.
 

Audio-led practices

An Introduction to the series is "featured" below and then the episodes are listed in reverse order. If you want to listen to them "in order," start with Practice 1 and work up to Practice 9. If you use a podcast player, you can use this RSS feed address to load the series into your player.

Listen to "Breathing Series Introduction"
 
Be moving, be healing, be you
esther
 
 

photo credit mihail ribkin, found on unsplash

Thoughts or questions? I'd love to hear them.

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