Practice: Strength Training For Breathwork

Jenna Zaffino [00:00:07]: 

Hi, everyone. I'm Jenna. Welcome to your strength training for breathwork session. Now, in comparison to some of our other strength training workouts, we're not gonna be lifting weights with our breathing apparatus or our breath in general. Instead, we're going to use the active breathing as resistance with a few little tools to challenge our breathing apparatus, the muscles of our rib cage, our chest, maybe our neck and shoulders, hopefully our core, our pelvic floor, our spine. We're gonna challenge all those muscles to just work a little harder. And as always, I know all of you come to the table with a different level of breath on any given day, so please use where you are today as the foundation for beginning this practice. You are best served if you avoid comparing your breath to my breath or anyone else's for that matter. 

Instead, we wanna think about using today's breath as a means of checking in and just seeing, you know, where we can push the edges or where we need to hold back. This challenge should feel nourishing. Ideally, we feel stronger at the end of it. This challenge should not compromise your breathing or make you feel like it's harder to breathe. So if anything comes up in those realms, please back off. And as always, if you have not checked in with your healthcare provider before starting a breath work practice, now is the time to do so. I invite you to watch along and learn and maybe even show this video to them and see how you can approach it to best serve your needs. So for this practice, you'll need a seat, yourself, and if you don't have one of the props that I'm going to show you, then a simple straw or even just breathing, blowing through your mouth will be perfect. 

So the first little tool I'd like to show you is called a breath assizer. It was invented by Joseph Pilates and it is a Pilates tool. It's made up of a handle, a straw, and then a little pinwheel. And the idea is to prolong your breath Network on power and endurance. And we do this in 2 ways. and is just simply making the pinwheel spin, and another is using our spinal movement to enhance our exhalation. As always, we wanna be in a tall seated posture with lots of space up and down, side to side, really holding ourselves up on our spine. And then we hold the and, we'll take a breath in through the nose as big as you can, and then and the idea is to temper the amount of breath you breathe so that the pinwheel spins for a long time. 

So if I just blow out, it's gonna spin for a decent amount of time. But if I take that same amount of exhalation and slow it down, Then chances are I can spin the wheel for a bit longer. Another use of this particular tool is, again, using bending of the spine and getting into our abdominals to help that exhale really happen with some more extra force. So when we do that, we'll take our breath in, And then as we breathe out, move the spine. When we're at the bottom, we breathe in, opening the chest, lifting everything up, and breathe out. Now, remember, if your breath doesn't last as long as mine does, I've been practicing with this little baby for a long, long time so just know that meeting yourself where you are today is the most important part. I said you don't need one of these, but there is an alternative that is much less expensive and usually readily available and works just as well and that's a pinwheel. Something you can get at a dollar store, you might even have on your lawn or at for a birthday party. 

The same idea applies. We start with a breath in and then we breathe to spin the wheel. Trying to get it in the right space is hard. Let's try that again. There we go. So there's a little bit of coordination with this because it is so light, and then there's also this sense of needing to temper your breath, really pace it as you breathe out. Let's try one more time. Almost. 

So it does work just as Wellness. And, certainly, if you're breathing in a way that includes your, rounded back. That side's a little easier. You can bend down. Inhale. Open your chest. Exhale. Bent all the way down. 

So that's your pinwheel. However, if we wanna just use our straw, that's one final way that we can work on breathing out. What happens with the straw is that we're narrowing the aperture or the space around our mouth. So if we think of a balloon, if you blow up a balloon and you just pinch off the edge of the balloon and then let it go, It's gonna and all the breath out of the air from the balloon just goes everywhere. However, if you blew up that same balloon, tied off the end, and then put a tiny pinprick in it, not only would the air go more slowly out of the balloon, but there'd also be a need to use pressure, maybe pushing your hands into the balloon to make more air go out at a faster rate. So using the straw challenges our rib cage, our chest, our back, and our abdominals to press the air out at a more intense level than if we were just breathing out. Now again, if you feel like this is activating or it's not feeling great for you, then you don't need to use it. You can take what you need and always leave the rest. 

But as an example, I thought we'd explore this one. So we'll start with the straw in our mouth. We're going to breathe in through the nose, and then when you exhale, simply breathe out through the straw. Now the longer you try to breathe out through the straw, the more you might feel the muscles of your rib cage, maybe your abdominals, maybe your chest starting to contract a bit more. We'll wanna remember to expand them on the inhale. So let's breathe in through our nose again. And as we exhale. One more time. 

Now, for me, sometimes using too much of my rib cage muscles or too much resistance means that I'm gonna feel a little sore afterwards. So it is all a game of trying to figure out what the right exercise and what the right level of breathing is for you today. So if you feel like you've done enough, then let that be it. Our last little exploration will be using the bending and extending of the spine to see if we can push out a little more air or get a little more core work involved. So and more time with our straw. If you're not using a straw you can just blow. Take a deep breath in and when you're ready, as you bend your spine, you're using that compression to push more air out. And when you need to, inhale. 

And then exhale again. Push it out. Push it all out. Push it all out. Push it all out. And then inhale. And relax. All of these exercises are meant to be explorations. 

If you find that some of them are impossible, then you can put them away and maybe pick them up at a time that feels more possible. The mindset behind breath work is always best served when it's expansive, when we're not trying to be the best, best. When we're not competing. Although a little competition with our timing can sometimes help with motivation, ultimately it's up to you to just explore what do I have today. So if you were to weave this well-being tip into your weekly routine, I would suggest trying 2 to 3 breathwork sessions per week at first, just to check-in to see what the resistance feels like, to see what the activity feels like. Take a day or 2 to see how all of that movement reacted perhaps and perhaps you can do this on a daily basis. But this is really an upgrade to the breath Network practices that are in the library already. So know that this is a practice that is intended to build strength. 

Once you really have gained the awareness of how and where you're breathing and how that feels to your body. So play with this one. I can't wait to hear how it goes for you. Remember, you are strong and resilient and the small moments matter. I will see you in a practice very soon.