key points breathing expand cycle

7.3. Key Points: Breathing - Expand Cycle — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Hi again, welcome to another Key Points lesson.

Here we are going to talk about the details of the breathing pattern of our Expand Cycle in Baseworks.

So the pattern is very simple.

We are performing five cycles of inhalation and exhalation without really thinking very much about which part of the body or muscles we are using.

The goal is just to slowly inhale as much as we can, and then slowly exhale as much as we can.

When we practice, we usually have different durations, but we’re going to try in the next lesson, it’s going to be eight seconds of inhalation and eight seconds of exhalation.

Most people can do it comfortably.

We also sometimes do it for longer for 10 seconds for 12 seconds, but we’ll start with eight seconds, because most people can do it not any problem.

And we do five cycles of this deep inhalation, deep exhalation, then we inhale again deep, and then after that, we exhale normally in return to natural breathing.

So that’s the Expand Cycle.

It’s called Expand, because we want to expand our lungs as much as possible.

And expanding our lungs means that we want to lower our diaphragm, which will result in the stomach coming a little bit out, but don’t focus too much on it when you do the expand cycle.

But also the rib cage will open and maybe this part like the shoulder, the collarbones, maybe in the upper spine, everything will extend and lift a little bit to allow more space for the lungs to open.

But we don’t really think about too much.

We’re just trying to inhale as much as possible, and then exhale again completely as much as possible.

The important thing is that if we do eight seconds in eight seconds out, we don’t want to do it too quickly.

So you have to spread the entire inhalation and the entire exhalation for eight seconds.

So for example, if it’s eight seconds, you don’t do it like this.

You know, that was too fast.

You do it slowly.

Maybe you spend like five or six seconds inhaling that you almost a little bit hold your breath at the very, very top.

And then when you exhale, Also you do it for about eight seconds on the exhalation.

And when we exhale, we will exhale out from the mouth.

But again, it’s not like that, not fast, but really, really slowly, right?

So maybe it’s gonna look like this approximately.

And then exhale.

And then again, inhale.

In this Expand cycle, which is our simplest breathing exercise, we are exhaling from the mouth because generally it is easier to completely empty the lungs when you exhale from the mouth, than when you do it from the nose.

Before we actually transition to the breathing exercise, we do a short body scan.

So first we sit as discussed in the previous key points lesson, then we will close the eyes if you’re comfortable, if you don’t feel comfortable with your eyes closed, you can keep them slightly open and then just look down somewhere.

And then as your eyes are closed and you’re ideally still, we are going to do a short body scan, scanning the body from top to bottom.

So you will try to focus on the top of the head, the forehead, the eyebrows, the space around the eyes, maybe your cheeks, your mouth, then the neck, the shoulders, the space between the shoulder blades, the chest, the stomach, the legs, the arms.

So everything from top to bottom will slowly scan the body looking for tension.

And if you notice any tension, you just try to imagine that it dissolves, try to somehow let it go.

Sometimes just by noticing tension, it helps to get rid of it.

Or if you cannot get rid of it, no problem, you just notice that it’s there and then you continue scanning.

So we do this one scan from top to bottom, then we just pause for a little bit.

And then after that, we do the Expand cycle.

So five times, we’ll inhale, deep exhale out from the mouth to five times, five times, then inhale again, and then as we exhale, we return to natural breathing.

And after that, we will have maybe about a minute of stillness practice with your eyes closed when you have the opportunity to observe your current state of the body.

And then sometimes after that, we’ll lie down for the rest with the spinal extension.

Or sometimes we will perform a movement with our arms that I’m going to show you.

So we’re sitting with our eyes closed.

And then while our eyes are still closed, what we’ll do is that we’ll interlock the fingers, and we will press the arms up and then gonna press up, move a little bit to remove any residual tension.

And then on the inhalation we’ll release the fingers, arms up and then as we exhale we’ll bring the arms to about shoulder height.

And then from here we are going to stretch the sides of the neck and it’s gonna look like this.

As I tilt my head a little bit in this case to the left, I with my opposite arm, with the right arm, I try to stretch in the opposite direction.

So you should feel stretch in this case, the right side of the neck.

And then you return to center and then the head goes to the right, the left arm stretches in the opposite direction.

And again, we’re trying to really extend the arms in both directions and maybe move the neck a little bit to release any tension.

Then we return to center and then we slowly bring the arms down.

So sometimes if we don’t go into supine rest after that, to conclude our stillness practice, we will do that short dynamic movement sessions, again to separate a little bit movement, moment of stillness from the more active daily life.

So it’s a little bit of a transition in the very end.

So in the next practice lesson, you are going to try to connect this.

First we’ll be instructed how to sit, then there will be a body scan, then there will be the Expand cycle, and then you will do these arm movements to come out.

So give it a go, and we’re doing this so that when you encounter these sequences in practice sessions, you know what to expect.

And rather than thinking over what am I supposed to do, I’m gonna open my eyes and check what’s going on on the screen, rather you will be prepared, you know what to do, and you can just follow the cues without worrying too much about what they mean.

So give it a go in the next practice lesson