Title: Breathing for a Healthy Heart
Hey it`s Vanessa here, and I'm going to chat to you today about a few breathing exercises.
Breathing is super important for our heart health because it helps to oxygenate our lungs and if we aren`t breathing correctly, it means that we are getting enough oxygen where we need it to go and also means our heart has to work harder.
So, here are a few little exercises that you can do, aim do ten breaths of each however, don't hyperventilate and we don't want you to get dizzy.
If you do take to stop take a breath literally and just start again.
So the first thing we find out is that a lot of people are either upper diaphragm or belly breathers.
So as pilates instructors we generally breath into the lungs expansion. So just by putting your hands on your ribs and you can just breathe into them and then just exhaling out and pulling in the tummy.
See if you can get your ribs to meet. Inhale.
And exhale.
So do that 10 times and then also look to see are you breathing into your belly?
So can you relax and breathe, bottom breathe into the lower part of your lungs?
So you want to put your hand on the belly just below the belly button and keep the chest still and breathe out and push into your bottom hand.
So, and just do 10 of those.
The other thing that you can also do is little puffs, so a similar motion and then you're going to push the air down.
So you're going to push into the lower part of the lungs which you may not be using so
And you want to feel the breath underneath the belly.
Also you can do crisscross breathing so trying to also use the brain to connect from the right rib cage down to the lower part of the left lung and see can you push the air and sensation of pushing the air down.
So, excuse my funny facial expressions and reverse as well.
You can also try and then breathe the reverse of on the bottom up, takes a lot of practice and likewise the other way around.
So that's it, just a few shorter breathing exercises get the blood flow going really get into the whole capacity of your lungs and keep your heart healthy.