4-7-8 Breath into Sitali Breath. This is one of my favorite breath stacks to tranquilize the nervous system for better sleep and deep rest.
Video Transcript
Morris (00:26):
All right, my friends. Welcome back once again. My name’s Morris. This is Olivia, and we’re going to bring you two more breaths that you can stack back-to-back, and bring into your daily life to help manage stress and anxiety. Okay? So this is 4, 7, 8, Breath into Sitali Breath. You can use just one of these breaths, stand alone at any time, but we’re going to use them together so we can amplify the effect. So the first one is actually slightly elevating to your nervous system. So we actually take the nervous system up just a hair before we come back down into a balanced or calm state. 4-7-8 Breath is a yogic breath and it’s very powerful. You’ll do it anywhere from four to eight breath cycles. So I’m going to demonstrate it for you now. Okay? It’s gonna be an inhale through the nose to the count of four.
(01:31):
Taking a big breath, filling into the upper chest, hold the breath at the top for a count of seven seconds. Then exhale through purse lips to the count of eight. And halfway through that exhale pretend like you’re blowing out a birthday candle that’s two or three feet away. I want you to make it whoosh sound as you exhale every bit of air out of your lungs, before beginning again. So it’s four seconds in through the nose. Hold for seven, eight-second exhale through pursed lips, and then repeat. And we repeat that anywhere from four to eight rounds. If you can’t exhale for eight-seconds, fine, let your exhale be five seconds, six seconds. But you want it to be deep and forceful. You really want to empty your lungs. That’s very important. So deep exhales, big inhales. Seven second hold. So then we’re gonna move into Sitali Breath. So this breath is in through a curled tongue. So it’ll look like this.
(03:16):
Then exhale through the nose. Just a gentle exhale through the nose, not trying to control it, just letting the air flow out. Notice that it’s a really long extended inhale through that curled tongue. And I want you to focus the on the air flowing across the tip of your tongue. Feel the coolness of the air. It has a meditative quality to it. This breath will really bring you down quickly and calm you down.
Okay, so 4-7-8 into Sitali. Okay, so setting up nice and tall, go ahead and close your eyes. We’re going to take one big clearing breath. So take a big breath in through your nose. Gentle exhale through the nose. And now begin. Big inhale through he nose to the count of 4, hold for the count of 7, exhale through pursed lips to the count of 8. Inhale again back through the nose. Filling up to the count of four, hold at the top for 4. Exhale back through per lips to 8. Beautiful. And continue for 8 rounds in total.
(05:18):
When you finish your eighth and final round, just simply exhale and come back to a nice even breath in and out through the nose. Now calming the breath, slowing down and feeling the sensations of your body, feeling the quality of the body. What does your head feel like right now? What does your heart feel like right now?
(06:53):
Sitting and noticing the sensations of your body. And now curling the tongue and beginning a Sitali Breath, stretching the breath long and full through a curled tongue. Remember your chin comes up right at the end, and then we gently exhale back through the nose, letting the air just spill out gently finding a smoothness, a sense of ease in the breath, flowing with the breath, lengthening each inhale and feeling the cool air on the tip of the tongue. Calming, soothing, slowing with every breath. In the yogic culture, this is a breath for pregnant mothers to soothe and calm.
(07:56):
Sitali has a cooling quality to it. So I typically stretch this inhale to anywhere between 10 and 20 seconds, really slowing down. And then remember, it’s a passive, gentle exhale through the nose. So just a couple more of these. Doing great, stay with it. We can’t overdo this breath. This brings us way down, balancing the nervous system and getting us deep into the parasympathetic. So you can continue on for as long as you would like. But here and now, we have just one more opportunity, one more big, long Sitali Breath before we gently exhale through the nose and come to a rest. Once again, feeling the sensations of the body and returning the breath to a nice, gentle rhythm, in and out through the nose, relaxing the shoulders, relaxing the hips, relaxing the belly, letting everything come to a single point of rest. And we can just gently open our eyes. Now, coming back, how do you feel? Great work. Love you guys. Thank you so much for your time!
