My dad has deviated septum. Another person I know, his left nostril passage has been closed all his life (he just had surgery to fix this so learning to breathe from it now).
Do you have any tips for alternative nostril breathing for people who have difficulty breathing through the nose?
Also, are there sets of pranayama for people who has difficulty breathing with ease?
Thank you so much.
Many blessings
—Jasmine, Japan
Dear Jasmine,
I too have a deviated septum. In my case, it doesn’t prevent my use of alternate nostril breathing: in fact, that pranayam helps the passage to be clearer. Here are some suggestions:
With a blockage it is important to do any pranayam VERY SLOWLY while engaging the calm POWER of the diaphragm. Diaphragmatic breathing involves three distinct phases;
1) The “stomach” expands in front and to the sides; do this very, very slowly like pouring water from a pitcher into a glass as slowly as possible; then as the inhalation proceeds slowly,
2) The ribs expand outward to the sides, left and right, from the rib cage (much less than the “stomach”); finally,
3) To “top it off,” the area around or below the throat has a very small lift. it is important that with a blockage that there be NO STRAIN, either muscular or mental, with the inhalation.
Make no attempt to have the maximum possible breath: just a nice, slow, “happy” inhalation with a calm holding period, and a slow, gentle exhalation. Smile with mouth closed while inhaling!
Consider alternatives such as either or both: Sitali or Sitkari pranayam. With these cooling pranayams, inhale through the mouth and exhale through the nose. Do you know these two?
A powerful pranayam to try but be careful with (it may not work for you or whomever): Kapalabhati (breath of fire): repeated inward thrusts of the diaphram pushes the breath out through the nose (up to 24 consecutive thrusts); after each thrust the diaphragm returns outward to its starting position; when it does so, a small amount of breath is taken in naturally without conscious effort. The powerful thrust pushing the breath OUT tends to push past any blockage, while the gentle, natural intake that happens when the diaphragm returns to normal is not usually a stress upon most partial blockages.
If you do not already know Sitali, Sitkari, or Kapalabhati, you may want to find a teacher. They are not difficult.
A wonderful pranayam given to us by Paramhansa Yogananda is done through the mouth: the DOUBLE BREATH. It is excellent. It need not be done as energetically as it is normally done when there is no blockage. But it goes as follows: through the nose, and as a result of pushing the diaphragm out in two distinct outward thrusts, INHALE.
Then VERY BRIEFLY hold the breath in while you tense the arms, legs, back, throat, neck, then forcibly exhale through the MOUTH with the reverse “double” huh-huh. Both the double inhalation and the double exhalation are repeated without the benefit of an intervening inhalation or exhalation. It sounds odd, but it’s very easy to do and VERY energizing to the system.
Try some of these suggestions. Then learn the Watching of the Breath technique called Hong Sau. See its linked explanation and use the links on that page for further exploration. Okay?
Blessings,
Nayaswami Hriman
Seattle WA USA
