Three Part Breath Technique

Three part breath is a powerful yoga breathing technique that helps you revitalize your body. Breathing exercise does this by mobilizing your vital energy that in Sanskrit is called prana or life force. Moving this prana around in your body has a cleansing and balancing effect on you.

In order to live fully you have to breathe fully. The thought behind the three part breath exercise is that when you are an infant you do this naturally. Your body as so evolved that it knows how to breathe the way that is best for you. However, as you grow up you unlearn this pattern and start to breathe with your chest. Not breathing fully contributes to stress anxiety and a feeling of tension in your body.

The purpose of the three part breath exercise is to help you unlearn the unhealthy pattern of taking in slow sips of breath through your nose or even worse through your mouth. If you do this your belly becomes too tense and as a consequence your whole body becomes too tense. Also, your mind becomes anxious as a consequence of shallow breathing.

As opposed to the above, three part breathing is deep and full breathing. It ventilates all of the lobes in your lungs allowing for an adequate exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. This in turn helps dispel anxiety and induces a sense of mental calmness.

Ten minutes of doing the three part breath exercise a day gently contributes to a happy and healthy lifestyle. Also, learning this technique is the first step in learning a series of even more advanced breathing techniques that can accomplish many things for the practitioner, from managing emotions to consciously changing body temperature.

I offer you two ways to do this exercise properly. First, I spell out the steps you have to take, then I show you a video that makes it even easier to learn how to do three part breath in a beneficial way.

Instructions:

1. Stand / sit keeping your spine straight.
2. Take a deep and steady breath through your nose.
3. Fill the lower part of your lungs letting your belly push out as you do so.
4. Fill the middle part of your lungs letting your ribs and breastbone push out.
5. Fill the highest part of your lungs letting your upper chest push out.
6. Complete the breath by exhaling twice as slowly as you inhaled.
   

Don't worry, - relaxing your belly won't cause you to have a sloppy girth. Just on the contrary.

Have you mastered the Three-Part Breath? Try taking it one step further. Look at my hub about Alternate-Nostril Breathing.