The team at TSTM have been setting sustainable monthly challenges and we’re hoping you’re joining in and feeling the benefits. Hopefully, the monthly challenges to date have been helping you through these self-isolation times. Have you been working on your squat mobility with the daily squat challenge? Are you resetting your diet with a paleo reset? Maybe you decided to increase your spinal health with the cat-cow daily challenge? So what's next?
Our next TSTM monthly challenge is going to be useful for both stress management and performance. We are going to encourage you to experiment with Nada Shodhana Prānāyāma, otherwise known as alternate nostril breathing.
Why Nada Shodhana?
We’re not going to cite all the amazing research behind breathing and the positive impacts it can have on your health and wellness. If you Google breathing, focus, performance, stress, with PubMed, we guarantee you’ll have pages of research to digest. Many different breathing practices have shown to affect the two branches of the autonomous nervous system (ANS), the parasympathetic (rest and digest) and the sympathetic nervous system (fight-and-flight). The ANS controls many of our bodily functions including heart rate, heart rate variable (HRV), breathing rate, mood, hormones, cell signalling, and our ability to focus and recover.
Breathing is connected to our emotions, mood, ability to focus, sports performance, and more. Shallow breathing is linked to stress and anxiety. Shallow breathing can elevate stress levels and have detrimental impacts on our health, recovery, and life expectancy.
Nada Shodhana or alternate nostril breathing is one way we can balance the ANS and move our body towards a more parasympathetic state. Left nostril breathing has been shown to stimulate the right side of your brain, this is the side that controls visualisation, imagination, intuition, holistic thinking and the arts (or your creative side). Right nostril breathing has been shown to stimulate the left side of your brain, sequencing, linear thinking, mathematics, facts, (or the logical side). As both sides of our brain are for different tasks, we can use breathing to improve certain aspects of our life.
Tip: if you're looking to relax and control stress and anxiety, breathe through your left nostril. If you’re looking to increase focus and physical performance, breathe through your right nostril.
Out TSTM coaches provide breathing exercises to all of our individual design clients. We use breathing pre and post-workout sessions to shift the body towards more sympathetic or parasympathetic states. Some of the benefits include:
Lower blood pressure
Reduce heart rate
Relax muscles
Decrease stress
Increase energy levels
Improve cognitive function and enhanced memory recall
Help intense sensations, experiences, and emotions feel less threatening
Grounds us
Speeds up recovery
Many people don’t take the time to think about their breathing. We go through the day on autopilot, unaware of our breathing rate and the health impacts. When we learn to engage our minds and focus on our breath we can gain a better sense of our physical and mental health. Mindful breathing for as little as 5-10minutes per day can have a huge impact on our state of mind and overall wellbeing.
TSTM July Monthly Challenge
Let’s get into the challenge. When trying to create new sustainable behaviours its best to start small. Trying to commit to 20-30mins of mindfulness breathing from day one can be difficult. We recommend shrinking the change and start slow. As you begin to build the habit of breathing, you can slowly start to increase the duration or frequency of your practice.
You can add a breathing practice into your morning routine, pre-workout, post-workout, before meals (to help digestion), before a stressful event (presentation or interview), when you are feeling stressed our anxious, or before bed. The main thing is to have a daily breathing practice and to make time for parasympathetic activities in your day. Many of us are running from one stressful sympathetic activity to the next and we do not take the time to invest in our rest, digest, and recovery state.
We suggest starting with a 5mins daily practice. Once you feel comfortable with your new breathing habit you can either choose to increase the duration of your breathing session or you can implement multiple breathing sessions throughout the day. During this July the TSTM challenge is to:
Week 1: Spend 5min per day practising Nada Shodhana (either 1x 5min session, or multiple shorter sessions)
Week 2: Spend 10min per day practising Nada Shodhana (either 1x 10min session, or multiple shorter sessions)
Week 3: Spend 15min per day practising Nada Shodhana (either 1x 15min session, or multiple shorter sessions)
Week 4: Spend 20min per day practising Nada Shodhana (either 1x 20min session, or multiple shorter sessions)
How to perform Nada Shodhana?
First, come to a comfortable mediation position. Sitting comfortably with your back straight. It may help to sit on a folded cushion to tilt your pelvis forward, strengthening the position of your back. If this is too uncomfortable then to begin you may sit with your back against a wall or in an upright chair. Take some time to make sure you are comfortable so that you may sit in this position for several minutes.
To alternate the breath you will be using the right hand to obstruct the alternate nostrils. Bring the middle and index finger together and place the tips on the point between the eyebrows. You will be using the thumb to block the right nostril and the ring finger to obstruct the left nostril. The hand will remain in front of the face like this throughout the practice. The left hand is resting on the left leg.
Now release your right arm for a moment, shifting your awareness away from the position of the body and become aware of the breath. Don’t try to control the breath, simple watch. Notice the qualities of the breath; whether it is shallow or heavy, steady or wobbly… notice how by simply watching the breath it becomes softer and steadier. After a few moments of observing the natural breath bring the right hand up in front of the face to the position described in step 2 above.
(Stage 1) Begin by using the thumb to block the right nostril and inhale softly through the left. Unblock the right nostril, block the left and exhale gently. Inhale back through the right nostril, and then alternate the nostrils to exhale through the left. This is one complete round.
Repeat the practice for 5-8 more rounds in your own time or for a total of 5 minutes (set a timer).
After completion of your Nadi Shodhana practice, spend a few moments in silence to notice the effects of the practice. I always feel quite spacious and more centred in my body-mind, compared to before I began the practice. How does it affect you?