How To Teach Children Yogic Breath

How To Teach Children Yogic Breathing

Proper breathing

In yoga, we breathe primarily through the nose (both inhalation and exhalation), and we try to use our abdomen as much as we can. If you observe babies lying on their backs, you’ll see that their stomachs expand when they inhale and relax down when they exhale. If you look at your dog you will see that she breathes in the same way. Abdominal breath is our natural breath. As we grow up, many of us start to breathe primarily with the chest and forget how to breathe with our abdomen. 

Since the lungs have a more or less triangular shape, with the wider part at the bottom, when we breathe using our chest only, our breath is very shallow. Also, because there is more space at the bottom of the lungs, there are more air sacs (alveoli) there to receive oxygen from the air and bring it into our bloodstream. 

There is also a higher blood concentration in the lower part of the lungs because of gravity. Therefore, abdominal breathing, in addition to massaging our inner organs and heart with the movement of the diaphragm, is a deeper and more efficient breath. 

The breath is connected to our nervous system

There is one more very important reason why we should breathe with our abdomen. We all have two parallel nervous systems in our bodies. One is called the parasympathetic nervous system which operates when everything is normal and we are simply living our lives. The other is called the sympathetic nervous system which kicks into gear when we are in a ‘flight or fight’ mode, this can occur under threat or when we are stressed. When the parasympathetic nervous system operating, we naturally breathe using our 

abdomen, and when the sympathetic system works, we automatically switch to chest breathing. 

Sometimes we keep breathing with our chests and get stuck in the sympathetic nervous system, meaning that we keep feeling stressed and tense even though we are safe. So here is the most important reason why we should breathe using our abdomen: it simply switches on the parasympathetic (relaxed chilled nervous system) and helps us to relax and bring our body back to harmonious function. 

Abdominal breathing should continue to be our natural breath throughout the day. 

I usually don’t even mention it with children under the age of six because they usually still retain the natural abdominal breathing we are all born with. Older children are often beginning to forget how to breathe abdominally, so teaching them how to breathe correctly becomes an important part of the class. 

Learning to breathe correctly

The following are breathing exercises for ages six and up to assist in learning abdominal breath: