Stress is one of the most significant contributors to ill health in our day and age.

It affects our physical body, mental health, a sense of purpose and ability to experience joy.

Learn how the 3-part breath can help you to shift out of the stress mode and lead you back to a more relaxed life, more restful sleep, and better relationships with your family, friends and colleagues.

This is relevant to everyone, from secondary school teenagers to stay-at-home mums to corporate high-flyers to retirees.

In this blog post, we’ll explain why the 3-part breath helps, and offer step-by-step instructions on how to practise it.

What is the 3-Part Breath?

When my students ask me which asanas (Yoga postures) to practice at home, my recommendation is ‘put your legs up and practice the 3-part breath or at least deep belly breathing’.

The 3-part breath, also known as Dirgha Pranayama, is the foundation of all breathing and Pranayama techniques.

Dirgha Pranayama uses three breathing spaces:

Abdomen – navel and below.
Ribcage – mid ribs.
Upper chest – collar bone area.

When one breath fills all three areas, it is the 3-part breath.

The Benefits of Dirgha Pranayama

The 3-part breath works on all layers of our being.

Physical body

Practising the 3-part breath strengthens the breathing muscles, such as the diaphragm, the intercostal muscles (in between the ribs) and the abdominal muscles.

You can argue that we breathe all the time, on average 12 breaths per minute, which would be sufficient to keep our muscles strong. However, our day-to-day breathing is not challenging the breath-related muscles. When we start practising conscious breathing, most of us need to start waking these muscles up.

Strong muscles naturally perform better than weak ones, which makes our breathing in general more effective and efficient. When we breathe deeper the release of waste material, such as carbon dioxide, is more effective, too.

Our blood is fully oxygenated and with this, all cells are benefitting from a good supply of nutrients.

In short, the entire body works better, is healthier, more resilient and recovers faster from illnesses.

Mental benefits

The physical benefits are already very helpful and easy to notice.

However, it is the mental level where the 3-part breath shows the most impact.

To understand this, we need to look at our nervous system. The autonomic nervous system has two branches, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

The sympathetic nervous system triggers the fight and flight response, the answer to us feeling in danger. Historically this was triggered when our life was endangered by let’s say a sabretooth tiger and we needed to decide on the spot to either run or fight. Therefore, the response of our nervous system was to release adrenaline which increases heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate making us alert and feel less pain, at the same time all functions in the body are not needed at that moment in time like the digestion, for example, are decreased.

When the danger is over, the sympathetic nervous system calmed down and switches back to the parasympathetic nervous system our rest and digest mode. Which used to be our base mode which occasional spikes of the sympathetic nervous system.

Now we are not fighting any sabretooth tigers any longer, but deadlines, fear of losing our job, at the moment very acutely, the fear of looming energy price hikes which leads to stress, anxiety, and worries.

These situations are not coming and going like the sabretooth tigers, they are staying with us, day in and day out. In addition, other worries are added to the existing ones.

It seems that the sympathetic nervous system has become our new base mode rather than the occasional one, as nature intended it. This means that elevated blood pressure, heart- and breathing rate are rather the norm than the exception and our digestion is impaired most of the time, leading to malnourishment of the body, not to be confused with underweight, but rather overweight where at the same time the body’s tissues don’t receive the much-needed nourishment.

How can we leave this vicious cycle?

Here is where breathing really makes a huge impact.

Deep breathing naturally activates the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest mode, which lowers heart rate and blood pressure, and stimulates our digestion and elimination, to balance out the effects of the parasympathetic one.

This reduces stress and anxiety, which is the number one reason for illnesses of the heart and digestion, insomnia, depression and many more.

But this has wider implications, when we are relaxed and calm,

we make better decisions.
we are less reactive, judgemental, and argumentative.
our relationships with our family, friends, and colleagues are better.

The impact that these few points have on our life, speaks for itself.

How to do the 3-part breath

As with everything new that we learn, so too learning to master the 3-part breath might need a little patience. Although we breathe constantly, when it comes to conscious and directed breathing, we might hit some obstacles in our way.

Always stay within what feels comfortable. Breathing practice should never feel strained.

One day you might be able to breathe deep into your belly, the next day it might not happen. The reason for this is that when stress, worries or anxiety come up, our body shifts into fight and flight mode with tightening areas, including the breathing spaces. The busyness of the day is held in certain areas, such as the tops of the shoulders, intercostal muscles, and the belly.

Therefore, practising Dirgha pranayama in the evening is wonderful, as it opens the breathing spaces and enables the body and mind to let go of the day, which in return enables more restful sleep.

The best is to start off on the floor in seme-supine, with the knees bent and some support at the back of your head.

Join this easily accessible practice:

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Add Mudras to enhance your Practice

Mudras are hand or body gestures which have an energetical effect on different areas, you can think of them as energy circuits.

Here are some mudras, which support the individual breathing spaces of the 3-part breath.

Try out Chin Mudra by breathing into the abdominal space.

Chinmaya Mudra supports the thoracic space, feel the ability to expand.

Aadi Mudra helps to supports the clavicular space.

There are a few more that you can use when practising 3-part breath or any other pranayama techniques, the one above are a very good starting point.

Mudras work on an energetical level. In the beginning, you might not notice anything at all when using the mudras, which is absolutely ok.

To summarise

You might have already experienced or felt the effect of the breath just now when following the above video.

Deep breathing always helps the body to shift into rest-and-digest mode. The more often you practise the 3-part breath or even only the abdominal breathing part, the faster your body rebalances itself.

We can’t avoid stress and our body has developed this amazing way to gear us up if needed and to relax again. We just need to remember the second part.

If you would like to learn to practise the 3-part breath and apply it to other breathing techniques, our Monday evening Breathing Space, 7.45-8.45 pm, is a breath-focused session.

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