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Friday Q&A: Breath Practices for Anxiety

11:26 | Labels: 1:2 breath practice, anxiety, Bhramari, breath practices, exhalation pausing, Pranayama, ujjayi breath

Statue and Bird by Melina Meza

Q: I’ve been having bouts of anxiety lately, especially first thing in the morning after I wake up. Is there a short, simple practice that I can do before I get out of bed that will calm me down so I can start my day in a better emotional state?

A: There definitely are some simple breath practices that you can use in the morning before you get up as well as any time during your day that you may find very helpful! In his post How Your Breath Affects Your Nervous System, Baxter gives the scientific background about why breath practices are so effective. And I myself regularly use a simple breath practice to help me relax when I’m feeling stressed and to help me fall back to sleep if I awake in the night.

I discussed your question with Baxter, and together we came up with a list of three practices that you can choose from. In general, all three are different ways of lengthening your exhalation. Because your heart rate is naturally slower on your exhalation than on your inhalation, making your exhalation longer than your inhalation begins to slow down your overall heart rate, sending a message to your brain that everything is more peaceful and calm than it was five minutes ago. This message encourages your brain to support this shift by activating the Rest and Digest or Relaxation Response (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga), which will reduce your stress hormones, quiet your mind, and hopefully quell your anxiety.

Try all three techniques and see which ones work best for you. When you are initially learning the practices, it is best to do them for shorter periods. But I recommend over time working your way up to ten-minute sessions because it seems to take about 7 or 8 minutes for the Relaxation Response to take full effect. However, in a pinch, even a minute or two of a simple breath practice can help head off an anxiety attack, so even a short session can be very beneficial.

Exhalation Pausing. The simplest breath practice you can do is to pause briefly at the end of each exhalation. You can do this practice in a seated position or even lying in bed, on your back with your head supported by a pillow. Start by practicing basic breath awareness. This means focusing your mind on how your breath moves in your body, perhaps on how your belly rises and falls with your breath or, if it’s easier, how your chest moves with your breath. You could also focus on the more subtle sensations, such as the feeling of your breath moving in and out or your nostrils or, if you prefer, the sound your breath makes in your body. I actually like to lie on my back with my hands on my belly because that makes it very easy for me to feel the movement in my abdomen.

Now you’re ready to try pausing at the end of your exhalation. When you reach the end of your next exhalation, simply add a beat or two—without straining—before moving on to your inhalation. Keep it relaxed and easy. And if the practice irritates you in any way, simply return to your natural breath.

If at any point you realize your attention has wandered from your breath (it will, of course), simply—and without self-judgment—bring your attention back to your breath.

Bhramari (Buzzing Bee) Breath. This breath practice, in which you make a buzzing sound as you exhale, naturally lengthens your exhalation. To practice a simple version of Bhramari, start by inhaling normally through your nose. Then, keeping your mouth closed, make a low- to medium-pitched humming sound in your throat as you exhale. As you make the buzzing sound—which should last the entire length of the exhalation—tune into the literal vibration of the sound waves in your throat and even in your skull and brain. After you complete your exhalation, inhale through your nose, and if you're comfortable, repeat the cycle. Try to make your transitions into and out of each humming exhalation as smooth as possible. See Pranayama for Everyone: Bhramari Breath for more information.

1:2 Breath. In this breath practice, you actually control the length of your inhalations and exhalations, and aim for a ratio of 1:2, for example, a one-second inhalation and a two-second exhalation or a two-second inhalation and a four-second exhalation.

Before starting this practice, spend a little time observing your natural breath and mentally counting the length of your typical inhalations and exhalations. If your inhalation is longer than your exhalation, start by making them the same length by consciously slowing your exhalation.

Once your inhalation and exhalation are equal, try gently increasing the length of your exhalation by releasing air more slowly. Keep your breathing relaxed so you are not straining, and if at any time you begin to feel agitated, simply return to your natural breath. As long as your breath feels smooth and relaxed, continue to gradually increase your exhalation bit by bit until it is twice as long (but no more than twice as long) as your inhalation. If the 1:2 ratio feels uncomfortable or if you're gasping on your next inhalation, return to a ratio that is more comfortable. You can gradually work up to the 1:2 ratio with practice.

Another way to lengthen your exhalation to a 1:2 ratio is to use a gentle version of Ujjayi breathing for your exhalation only. To do this, breath in normally through your nose, with a relaxed feeling in your throat and vocal cords. Then, as you start to exhale, slightly constrict your throat, keeping it very gentle and relatively quiet. This action in your throat is similar to the one who use on your sunglasses when you try to clean them off, and it will naturally slow down your exhalation a bit and bring you closer to the 1:2 ration. As you practice this form of breathing, relax your throat as you inhale, engage your throat a little as you exhale.

Baxter recommends doing a set number of repetitions of the 1:2 breathe, such as six rounds or twelve rounds. Then let your breath return to its natural length and depth, and notice how things feel internally.

If controlling your breath in this manner is stressful, practice the exhalation pausing practice described above instead, and maybe give the 1:2 practice another try after you have some experience with breath work under your belt.

Because chronic stress can exacerbate or even cause anxiety (see Chronic Stress: An Introduction), I think it is also important that you address your overall stress levels in general (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). So see if you can manage to incorporate some time for gentle or restorative yoga or any form of conscious relaxation into your schedule.

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Bhramari Pranayama with Mudras

08:06 | Labels: Bhramari, mudras, Timothy McCall

by Timothy

Recently in a post (Pranayama for Everyone), I wrote about the "buzzing bee breath," Bhramari. I taught a simplified version so that people could get used to it, and feel this practice's almost immediately palpable soothing effects. A reader wrote in with a question about the mudra (in this case meaning a hand position) often taught as part of the practice. So today, I'll teach two more advanced versions of Bhramari, in which the hands are used to deepen the effects.

The fifth limb of the eight-limbed path of yoga as taught by Patanjali is pratyahara, which I like to translate as "turning of the senses inward." Most of us living in the modern world lead lives of nearly constant sensory overload. Phones ring and buzz, TVs blare in the background, and even gas pumps impose video commercials on us. It's hard to escape the visual and aural onslaught. A beautiful antidote is Bhramari, particularly when it's taught with Shanmuki mudra.

Shanmuki mudra is designed to close the gates of perception: the ears, eyes, nose and mouth. It noticeably heightens the power of Bhrmari to internalize the awareness, and you'll notice that the buzzing sounds louder. But before we try the full mudra, let's begin with a modified version.

Bhramari with Modified Shanmuki Mudra

Sit in a comfortable seated position, with the spine upright but relaxed. Place the pad of each index finger on its respective ear, on the tragus, the skin-covered tab of cartilage near the front of the ear, just above the earlobe.

Using gentle pressure, use the tragus to block sound from entering the ear. Try a few rounds of Bhramari, making a medium-pitched buzzing sound on each exhalation. Compare the effects when you occlude the ear and when you lift the fingers.

Bhramari with Full Shanmuki Mudra

In full Shanmuki mudra, instead of the index fingers, use the tips of the thumbs to push down the tragus. The index fingers exert mild pressure on the upper, inner eyelid. Be careful not to press too hard. You want the pressure to feel soothing to the eyes. The middle fingers are placed on either side of the nose, above the nostril and below the nasal bone. You'll know you're in the right place, when gentle pressure on the fingers slightly occludes the passage of air through each nostril. The ring and pinky fingers are placed on either side of the midline just above and below the lips, respectively.

Once you've successfully got the mudra in place, try anywhere from one to five minutes of Bhramari, then lower the hands. You may want to continue to sit in meditation for a few minutes after you finish.

Therapeutic Benefits

Bhramari very quickly shifts the autonomic nervous to parasympathetic dominance. The practice can be useful for anyone with a stress-related condition, and particularly when demands and sensory input make you feel overwhelmed. It may be especially useful conditions like anxiety and insomnia, and even autoimmune conditions.

If you're using Bhramari to reduce symptoms of a cold or sinus infection, either skip Shanmuki mudra entirely or only use the modified version above. Ditto if you feel claustrophobic with the mudra.

While high blood pressure can have multiple causes, many cases of so-called "essential hypertension" (which make up the vast majority of cases), are characterized by heightened activation of the stress response. Thus the regular, ideally daily, practice of Bhramari and other calming yoga techniques may be very effective both at keeping your blood pressure down, and helping reduce it if it's high.

Note from Nina: For more about the yogic approach to high blood pressure, please check out Timothy's upcoming webinar on Yoga U, at an online educational resource. It will be held on two consecutive Saturdays at 12:30 eastern and 9:30 pacific time, starting November 30, 2013.

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Pranayama for Everyone: Bhramari Breath Practice

08:13 | Labels: Bhramari, breath practices, Pranayama, Timothy McCall

by Timothy

Bee and Flower by Melina Meza

One of the dirty secrets of the yoga world is how few yoga practitioners—and how few teachers—do pranayama, yogic breathing exercises. It's better in some yoga traditions than others, but overall I've been shocked to see how few of my colleagues practice pranayama regularly. This is a shame!

The breath is probably the single best way to affect the autonomic nervous system, which in turn controls the function of every internal organ, as well as systems like digestion and immunity. Pranayama can also be the gateway into meditation and higher yogic practices. Furthermore, there is a potential synergy: the regular practice of pranayama can make your asana practice subtler and more refined, and your meditation deeper and more concentrated. For therapeutic purposes, I believe there is synergistic benefit from doing some asana, along with pranayama, meditation, and other yogic practices.

Some schools teach that only experienced practitioners should attempt yogic breathing practices. There is wisdom in being careful, as pranayama done incorrectly—and especially if it's done too aggressively—can lead to problems with the nervous system and, in extreme cases, to psychological decompensation. But there are a few basic pranayama practices that I have found are safe for virtually everyone, and I'll be writing about them in this and my next few blog posts.

I'll begin today with one of my favorites: Bhramari [pronounced brah mah REE], which means the "buzzing of the bees." Although, in my experience, this is one of the pranayama techniques that's rarely taught (at least in many traditions), it's simple, safe, and has tremendous therapeutic potential.

To do a simple version of Bhramari, sit in a comfortable upright position as you would for meditation. Keeping your mouth closed, with your exhalation make a low- to medium-pitched humming sound in your throat. As you make the sound, which should last the entire length of the exhalation, tune into the literal vibration of the sound waves in your throat and even in your skull and brain. Then inhale through your nose, and if you're comfortable, repeat. Try to make your transitions into and out of each humming exhalation as smooth as possible.

At first, you might try Bhramari for a minute, but if it's goes well you can progress to a few minutes at a time. Depending on your breath capacity, the exhalation might vary from short to quite long. I'd suggest doing as long an exhalation as feels completely comfortable. At all times, each subsequent inhalation should be smooth, without any breath hunger. If you are feeling at all short of breath, you've likely pushed harder than you should, and if so, simply take a catch up breath and then resume Bhramari. If you feel at all agitated, I'd suggest you suspend the practice for the day and try it again another time with shorter exhalations.

Most people who do Bhramari as I've described it above will find the practice soothing. Since you will be lengthening your exhalation relative to your inhalation, the Bharmari breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and within a few breaths can bring you to a greater sense of relaxation and calmness. According to the classic text Hatha Yoga Pradipika, "with regular practice of bhramari, bliss arises in the heart."

A recent study Immediate effect of a slow pace breathing exercise Bhramari pranayama on blood pressure and heart rate suggested that the practice can lower blood pressure. In my yoga therapy work, I've found it useful for stress and various stress-related conditions, including insomnia (try a low-pitched sound). It's also useful for nasal congestion due to colds, allergies or sinus infections (use a slightly higher-pitched sound so that you can feel your nose and sinuses vibrating).

I even sometimes recommend Bhramari as a meditation alternative for people who find their minds so distressingly busy when they sit that they can't do the practice. It's harder for the monkey mind to go wild over the racket the buzzing of the bees makes internally, allowing you to settle in something moving in the direction of meditation.

Next up: Alternative Nostril Breathing.

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Friday Q&A: Breath Practices for Anxiety

Bhramari Pranayama with Mudras

Pranayama for Everyone: Bhramari Breath Practice