The Three-Part Breath, or Yogic Breathing, is an evidence-based way to build resilience. It’s a particularly helpful practice for anxious, shallow breathers.
Video: Using the Three-Part Breath to Build Resilience
Transcript: Using the Three-Part Breath to Build Resilience
If a breathing practice has ever made you feel anxious, this week’s Take Five is for you. Today we’re going to talk about the three-part breath, also known as yogic breathing.
Note: This is my fifth in the series of my favorite practices from James Nestor’s book Breath. If you like this content, check out the previous four 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
Lesson #4: How to Use Alternate Nostril Breathing to Feel Calm & Invigorated
How to Practice the Three-Part Breath
This is a simple practice. It’s foundational in yogic breathing, and it gets you in tune with where in your body you’re sending your breath.
- When you inhale, first focus on filling the bottom part of your lungs, so you are breathing down into your belly.
- Then, shift your focus up to the bottom of your ribcage, filling that part of your lungs second.
- Third and final, you fill the upper chest with your breath.
- Exhale in the opposite direction, releasing the air from your upper chest first.
- Then exhale air from your lower rib cage.
- Finally, exhale out from the bottom of your belly, sort of squeezing your muscles to get rid of all of the air that’s in your lungs.
- Repeat the process a few times.
So, you inhale down to the belly, up to the lower rib cage up to the chest. Exhale from the chest, lower rib cage, belly. And just repeat that a few times.
How the Three-Part Breath Builds Resilience
This is a great practice for those who get anxious when they try a breathing practice. It helps you focus on belly breathing. We can get anxious when practicing a breathing technique because we’re breathing right up into our chest. It’s a very shallow breathing, which ends up being much quicker. This rapid, shallow breathing sends a signal to the brain that we’re nervous, scared, or have a reason to be anxious.
Slow, Deep Breathing
Personally, I have found belly breathing to be one of the top two things that helped me break through a lot of my anxiety in the last few years. The idea here is that when we practice the slow belly breathing, we are sending the signal to our brains that we are calm, and we are safe.
When we breathe up into the chest, we have shallow, rapid breathing. We are sending the signal to our brain that we are stressed, we are nervous. We want to have the opposite effect by practicing this slow, deep breathing.
Mind-Body Connection.
This three-part breath, in particular, is helpful because it helps to make that connection between mind and body. You are forced to really think about your breath, where in your body your lungs are expanding. You can also place your hand on your body and actually make that connection even stronger.
That’s one of the tips I have for practicing this: Place your hand on your body to guide the location of the breath.
Negative Affect
It’s not only facilitating that mind-body connection, but there’s also some really good research behind the three-part breath.
It’s been shown to help decrease negative affect for people who are quitting smoking.[1] Affect is just a fancy word for your mood. You can imagine if you’re quitting smoking, you’re not in a great mood. This has been shown to help with that.
Stress
It helps to reduce stress and facilitates that mind-body connection like I just mentioned.[2]
Parasympathetic Activation
The slow deep breathing is what really helps activate that parasympathetic nervous system.[3]
I’ve talked about this quite a bit on the Working On Calm blog. For blog posts addressing the parasympathetic nervous system and techniques for calming it, read this, this, and this!
It sends the signal to our brains to calm down. The parasympathetic nervous system is the one responsible for those rest and digest functions. If we’re in the fight or flight mode, activating the parasympathetic nervous system can help to decrease that and get our anxiety in check.
Tips For Practicing
Again, this is a practice. Anyone can use this, but I particularly find it helpful if you feel anxious at times when you practice your breathing.
A couple of things to keep in mind when practicing:
- Obviously, if it makes you more anxious, stop and don’t do it anymore. Consider some other options.
- Whenever you’re learning a new breathing technique, always practice sitting down or laying down, not while you’re doing anything else or distracted.
- If you feel dizzy, stop, and don’t push it too far.
- Think of this as a gentle practice. You’re trying to focus on these areas, but you’re not forcing it.
- Placing your hand on your belly, on your lower rib cage, up on your chest, can be really helpful in guiding this practice.
- Try this with your eyes closed. I find it so much easier to focus on an area of my body when my eyes are closed so that all I can pay attention to are those internal cues.
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This is one of those simple, science-based strategies I share regularly. If you like this type of content, consider signing up for my Take Five newsletter here. I’ll deliver it directly to your inbox. Those who subscribe get my free guide, “Five Ways to Reduce Stress and Build Resilience In Five Minutes or Less.”
Give the three-part breath a try this week. Let me know how it goes!
Changing our habits, building resilience, managing stress and anxiety doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. These are small practices we can do every day in order to feel calm and be well.
Helpful Links:
James Nestor’s “Breath” Website
[1] Klinsophon, T., Thaveeratitham, P., & Janwantanakul, P. (2022). The effect of three-part breathing exercise on smoking cessation: A 6-month cluster-randomized clinical trial. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 32, 156-162.
[2] Singh, R. N. (1995). The effects of a specialized three-part breathing technique on human health: A psychophysiological-bioenergetic perspective (Doctoral dissertation, Saybrook University).
[3] Jayawardena, R., Ranasinghe, P., Ranawaka, H., Gamage, N., Dissanayake, D., & Misra, A. (2020). Exploring the Therapeutic Benefits of Pranayama (Yogic Breathing): A Systematic Review. International journal of yoga, 13(2), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.IJOY_37_19
