Easy ancient breathing technique can reduce stress in minutes
The secret to calm? Your nose knows.
Much has been made about how meditation and breathing exercises can reduce stress, but there’s an easy nostril exercise that proponents say can calm you down in a matter of minutes.
Marcela Christjansen, a yoga teacher and wellness expert at Bay Club, told The Post that the simple, ancient technique can leverage breath to control energetic flow, increase focus and reduce stress levels — all with the flick of a finger.
Known in Sanskrit as “Nadi Sodhana” — which translates loosely to “cleansing passage” — alternate nostril breathing sweeps stress away and extends inhalation and exhalation by breathing alternately through each nostril.
“Alternate nostril breathing helps regulate the nervous system, allowing us to feel calmer,” Christjansen said. “This practice can help us regain focus and feel more centered, less stressed in specific situations, and better able to concentrate.”
When we feel overwhelmed, she explained, the mind is overactive, making it difficult to center, concentrate, and feel present in our lives.
“By bringing our attention to the breath and using the nostrils to lengthen both inhales and exhales, it’ll allow the mind to slow down, at times even to be more still,” she said.
“This helps balance the nervous system and promotes a parasympathetic response that makes us feel calmer.”
You just need to follow six straightforward steps.
How to practice alternate nostril breathing
- Use your right hand’s thumb and ring finger. Bend the index and middle fingers into the palm of your hand.
- Exhale fully through both nostrils.
- Place your right thumb softly on your right nostril (by the cartilage) to partially lock the right nostril. Then breathe in through the left nostril for about 4 seconds. Pause and hold your breath for about 4 seconds.
- Place the right ring finger — softly — over the left nostril (by the cartilage). Release the thumb on the right nostril and exhale on the right for about 4 seconds. Inhale on the right for about 4 secs. Pause and hold your breath for about 4 seconds.
- Place the right thumb — softly again — over the right nostril (by the cartilage). Release the ring finger on the left nostril and exhale on the left for about 4 seconds. Inhale on the left for about 4 seconds. Pause and hold your breath for about 4 seconds.
- Repeat.
For beginners, Christjansen recommends aiming for two to three minutes of this type of breathwork, which can be done anytime and anywhere, save for when you’re operating a motor vehicle.
“It is great before a presentation, when feeling over tired, when feeling anxious, and having difficulty focusing and calming down. It can be a regular practice every morning and/or evening,” she said.
According to Christjansen, meditation is erroneously and somewhat intimidatingly billed as a practice to “quiet the mind.”
“That is practically impossible. The mind wanders whether we like it or not.”
Still, she assures readers that through meditation, mindfulness or simple breath-practice, “we can become aware of that wandering and ‘choose’ to focus our attention on what’s here in this moment and present.”
She notes that while many are resistant to the idea of meditation or mindfulness, we are all, to some degree, already practicing it.
“Every time we concentrate on something specific for any amount of time, or every time you feel you are ‘in the flow,’ or those few moments right after you wake up and before you get up, it can all be seen as a form of meditation and/or mindfulness,” she said.
She admits that maintaining concentration is a challenge, but assures that the more we use breathing exercises, the more we can hone the ability to consciously direct our attention.
“Breath-practices are in their own way a way to meditate, but more importantly, they are a practice to gain clarity, to reduce anxiety, to calm the mind (anymore) by bringing the focus momentarily to the breath,” she concluded.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
