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Strategies for Integrating Breathwork into Existing Yoga Practices

  • YSR Team
Looking for a way to get more out of your yoga practice? Perhaps you’re needing a way to reach deeper into yourself during introspection or you are hoping to improve your mental or physical health. The answer to creating a more dynamic and beneficial yoga practice is simple —breathe.

While almost every single yoga class you’ve ever been to has included at least three cycles of the “breathe in, breathe out” cues, you’re missing out on so many benefits by not exploring what your breath can do for you and the results are truly mind-blowing.

Why Is Breathing Important in Yoga?

Breathing is the most basic part of human life. Breathing brings in the oxygen for the blood to carry to the heart and nurture the entire body, keeping us alive, safe, and healthy. Just like how breathing is vital for life, breathing is vital in yoga.

Yogis believe breath is so important it is one of the 8 limbs of yoga set out in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. But if you didn’t know it’s Sanskrit name, you would miss it. Pranayama is the fourth branch of yoga and comes right after the asanas (the physical yoga poses). While most classrooms in the western world focus more on the physical postures of yoga, nodding to breathing as cues for moving from one position to the next, pranayama is a deep and integral part of the yoga system.

Pranayama contains a myriad of breathing techniques. Some are soothing and calming used to slow down our central nervous systems while others are more fast-paced and exhilarating, often used as a cleansing technique.

Entire classes could be taught just on different pranayama and when to use them. Oftentimes, pranayama is something that is done off of the yoga mat and not during our asanas.

What Is Breathwork?

If pranayama is focused breathing during yoga, what is breathwork?

Breathwork is the intentional manipulation of a breathing pattern to create a desired outcome. Breathwork techniques range from slow and calming to vigorous and rapid with each technique designed to help you achieve your goals.

Using these breathing techniques, we change the rate at which oxygen and carbon dioxide enter and exit our bodies.

How Is Breathwork Different Than Yoga?

In yoga, the breathing techniques are classified as pranayama. Prana meaning “breath”, is the center of this limb of yoga. Just like how asanas are the physical movements of yoga, pranayama teaches practitioners the importance of cleansing breath.

While breathwork does have its roots in pranayama and utilize some of its techniques, breathwork and pranayama are two different things. Breathwork is not tied to any dogma, religion, or culture while pranayama is. These practices have similar foundations, but entirely different applications.

Pranayama is generally taught alongside asanas inside of a yoga studio and usually is overshadowed by the physical postures, especially in Western classrooms. Sometimes, you may also find a few breathing or meditation techniques to start or end class with. However, for breathwork, the entire focus is only the breath.

Adding breathwork into your yoga practice can offer you a deeper level of peacefulness, tools to help you conquer whatever life has to throw at you, and can increase your health and wellness. Breathwork can also provide you with advancements on your spiritual journey. Using breathwork as a way to unlock deeper levels of consciousness has been utilized by both Eastern and Western medicinal facilities.

Breathwork Training Benefits

Beginning a breathwork journey is the start to a healthier life. Breathwork training is very trendy right now, but the practice itself has been utilized for thousands of years due to its numerous benefits. Creating a calm and quiet mind, creates a calm and more manageable world. Today, the stressors of day-to-day life seem more intense than ever. Adding just 15 minutes of breathwork exercises a day can greatly improve your physical, mental, and spiritual health.

We have been asked to take a deep calming breath whenever we’ve experienced strong emotions. Generally, when we oblige, we are able to slow our racing minds, take control of our physical bodies, and think more clearly. Now imagine we intentionally did this through tried and true exercise regimes to create a new reality for ourselves.

Scientific Benefits of Breathwork
Breath is the spirit of all living things. We all need to inhale oxygen and remove toxic gasses like carbon dioxide from our bodies. Focused breathwork has been formulated to optimize and utilize this survival mechanism to create a way to increase our physical and mental health.
Studies have shown that consistent breathwork sessions have been linked to:
  • Lower Cortisol Levels
  • Increased Mood
  • Lowered Symptoms of PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression
  • Improved Cardiovascular Health
  • SLowered Blood Pressure
  • Balanced Blood Sugar
  • Improve Alertness, Focus, and Memory
  • Improve Quality of Sleep
Certain types of breathwork, like holotropic breathwork which requires the practitioner to breath in and out rapidly over the course of hours which creates an almost psychedelic effect, has been used in mental health facilities to help treat addictions.

Taking care of our physical bodies is much deeper than just working out and eating well. We need to take care of our stress levels. High stress has been associated with increased risks for diseases, poor health, obesity, and may lead to premature death.

Using breathwork in addition to nutrition and exercise is a great way to help take care of your body and mind and set yourself on the path for a healthy future.

Experience Breathwork

For those looking to take their breathwork practice to the next level, immersive breathwork retreats offer a unique opportunity to dive deeper into the practice. These retreats provide an environment designed to help you focus on your breathing techniques, relax, and reduce stress in a profound way.

How To Become a Breathwork Coach

Do you have a strong desire to help inspire others to change their lives with the power of breath? Are you looking for a side gig that allows you to be a part of raising the vibration of society instead of just feeding into the noise? Are you a certified yoga or meditation instructor looking to deepen your practice? If you answered yes to any of these questions, learning how to become a breathwork coach may be right for you.

It’s hard to deny the benefits of breathwork, especially once you’ve utilized it for yourself and see how great you feel. Learning how to become a breathwork coach doesn’t need to be hard or complicated, the journey should be joyous and inspiring.

Choosing an online breathwork facilitator certification allows you to learn from anywhere and on your own schedule. Being a breathwork coach opens many doors, creates new opportunities, and allows you to deepen your own practice while helping others.

We all head to our mats for different reasons during our yoga sessions but we all seem to want to be bettering ourselves. Whether we are hoping to destress, increase our physical health, or meditate, adding breathwork into our yoga time supercharges our practice creating a healthier and more peaceful person in all of us.
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YSR Team

YSR Team

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YSR Team

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