How To Do Middle Breathing Video

Middle breathing in yoga expands the lower ribs. Learn how to do middle breathing in Yoga poses with this video lesson.

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Get into seated position
Breathe into mid-section of chest
Inhale & allow ribs to expand
Exhale & allow ribs to contract

About this Author

Cindy Mastry has practiced yoga since the age of eight, and also has a background in Jazz and Ballet. Active in the fitness industry for nearly twenty years, she teaches aerobics, kickboxing, and yoga at many fitness centers in the Tampa Bay area. Cindy trained with 84 year-old Master Yogi Monk, Baba Hari Dass at the Mt. Madonna Center in California and owns/operates "Yoga Etc Studio" in St. Petersburg, Florida. Cindy teaches yoga to people of all ages and experience levels and at very competitive rates.

CINDY MASTRY: Namaste. My name is Cindy Mastry, and in this clip Faith is going to help me demonstrate middle breathing. Breathing is one of the most important things in yoga, so it's important to breathe correctly. In middle breathing, you're speaking about ribcage breathing. So we're going to have Faith take a nice comfortable seated position. She's going to lengthen up from her tail to the crown of the head and we're going to think about just breathing into the midsection of her lungs. So she's not going to allow her abdomen to come out her back. She's not going to breathe through the chest. So a way to check this is we're going to ask her to take her hands to her ribcage. Good. As she inhales in, she's going to draw the air down to the middle section of her lungs allowing her ribcage to expand, both front and back, so the air actually moves the bones outward. As she exhales, she's going to allow the ribcage to come back together, the whole time keeping her heart nice and open. We don't want to collapse our heart when we pull the ribs together. So inhaling in, allowing the air to fill through the midsection of the lungs, allowing her ribcage to expand and then as she exhales allowing the ribs to move closer back together, releasing the air from the midsection of the lungs. So remember, middle breathing, you bring the air just to the midsections of your lungs, so that we don't breathe into the abs or into the chest.

How to Do Middle Breathing Video

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