The effects of stress, busyness, or overwhelm can leave us feeling lethargic, distracted, and unmotivated. Alternate nostril breathing is an easy way to clear our head and reset for the rest of the day. Try this technique when you want to feel calm and invigorated.
Video: How to Use Alternate Nostril Breathing to Feel Calm & Invigorated
Transcript: How to Use Alternate Nostril Breathing to Feel Calm & Invigorated
Feeling stressed out, burned out, or just overwhelmed and want a quick practice that can help to reset you, calm you down and make you feel invigorated? Then today’s “Take Five” is for you!
Note: This is my fourth in the series of my favorite practices from James Nestor’s book Breath. If you like this content, check out the previous three posts:
Lesson #1: The Perfect Breath: How to Use Coherent Breathing to Calm Down
Lesson #2: How Humming Improves Wellness
Lesson #3: Nasal Breathing to Improve Wellness
Today we’re going to talk about something called alternate nostril breathing. This is a practice that I find very calming, but also invigorating. It’s great as one of those middle-of-the-day practices in which you don’t want to get so calmed down, you’re sleepy. You just want to leave behind the baggage or the exhaustion and go forward in a clearheaded manner.
How to Practice Alternate Nostril Breathing
The way that you practice is to simply sit down in a comfortable, upright position.
Tip: Ordinarily, when I talk about breathing practices, I say you can do it anytime, anywhere, no matter where you are. However, with this practice, you need to be sitting, not driving or anything else that requires your hands.
As a side note, anytime you’re trying a new breathing practice, you want to try it either sitting or laying down in case you get a little bit lightheaded, which occasionally happens when practicing a new breathing technique.
Hand Placement for Alternate Nostril Breathing
For alternate nostril breathing, we use our right hand. The way it’s traditionally taught is to cover your right nostril with your thumb and your left nostril with your ring finger. You can allow your index and middle fingers to relax between your eyebrows.
The way that I have found it works easier for me is to use my thumb and my index finger to alternate between nostrils. I have better dexterity that way, and it’s easier for me. But know that you can give it a try and see what works for you.
Alternate Nostril Breathing Steps:
- Cover your right nostril with your right thumb.
- Inhale through your left nostril.
- Cover your left nostril with your ring finger (or index finger).
- Exhale through your right nostril.
- Pause.
- Inhale through your right nostril.
- Cover your right nostril.
- Exhale through your left nostril.
- Continue alternating between inhales and exhales from each nostril.
This may sound a little complicated, and you might need to practice a few times. Then you’ll see how simple it really is.
I recommend trying alternate nostril breathing for maybe two to three minutes to start out with, working your way up to a five-minute practice if you have the time. It’s a really great way to calm down and refocus.
Benefits of Alternate Nostril Breathing
So, what’s the science behind this?
Well, alternate nostril breathing is really helpful for practicing nasal breathing, which I talked about here. In general, alternate nostril breathing is a great practice if you’re trying to build up that skill. I know it sounds silly to say nasal breathing’s a skill. However, a lot of us aren’t breathing in the most efficient or effective manner.
As I mentioned in the last post, nasal breathing can have a use-it-or-lose-it aspect. Alternate nostril breathing helps to train you to use and focus on this healthier form of breathing (versus mouth breathing).
What does nasal breathing do for us?
Nasal breathing helps with our lung functioning and capacity. It is more efficient than mouth breathing. It also lowers our heart rate and our blood pressure, and it helps to relieve stress.
The idea behind alternate nostril breathing, which is a specific type of nasal breathing, is that it activates different areas of the brain. This goes back to old yogic breathing techniques, something that’s admittedly outside my wheelhouse, but something I find fascinating.
When we breathe through our right side or our right nostril, we activate our sympathetic nervous system. This is our fight-or-flight response, the one that gets us prepared and ready to tackle life.
Breathing through our left nostril has the opposite effect. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which I’ve discussed quite a bit on the Working On Calm blog. It’s important for relieving stress and anxiety and rewiring our brains when we’ve been stuck in a fight-or-flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system activates a rest-and-digest function.
For blog posts addressing the parasympathetic nervous system and techniques for calming it, read this, this, and this!
The idea behind alternate nostril breathing is that we are balancing out these two nervous system functions instead of getting stuck in a fight-or-flight mode.
Recommendations for Alternate Nostril Breathing
Try to give it a go, and see if you like it. Like I said, I recommend trying it for a few rounds for just a couple of minutes to get started. This is particularly great for a midday breathing practice.
I have worked with a number of clients who struggle to transition from one sort of responsibility to the next.
For example, I had one client who was working from home and wanted to develop some techniques for leaving behind work mode and transitioning into family/home mode. Similarly, I talked to a mom earlier this week who was struggling with coming home at the end of the day. She wants to be present and enjoy her family, but finds it hard to shake off the stress and burdens from what happened throughout the day. She feels exhausted from the stress of the day.
Alternate nostril breathing is a great technique for these transitional times. It doesn’t leave you feeling sleepy so much as calmed, grounded, centered, and present. It helps you enjoy and tackle the next task of the day.
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Changing our habits doesn’t have to feel quite so overwhelming. We can make small changes to prioritize our wellness and build resilience. Alternate nostril breathing is one of these practices. I encourage you to give it a try this week and let me know how it goes!
