how to guide a soft belly breathing practice to help your students relax more

Jan 6

Mentorship Moment for Yoga Teachers

Many of you are yoga teachers, yoga therapists, somatic workers, or working with students or clients in a healing capacity.

If you are a space holder, you can nourish the gut-brain relationship in your students and guide them to create a grounded sense of ease and safety by relaxing deeply from the center through a practice called soft belly breathing.

The Psoas-Digestion Connection

The psoas, because of its proximity to the digestive organs in the pelvic cavity, can play a role in digestion and elimination, as well as in the gut-brain connection. It acts as a shelf to support the digestive organs, together with the pelvis and the pelvic floor. Thus any force of the psoas (muscle contraction/tension) can stimulate organs such as the intestines, kidney, liver, spleen, pancreas, bladder, and stomach.

In yoga and Ayurveda, we believe that all things must pass—by moving through a digestive process. Not only our food, but also everything that our senses come in contact with; what we see, hear, taste, smell, feel, and think. Everything that is “taken in” must be “chewed on” and broken down. When we are genuinely relaxed, we assimilate what will contribute to well-being, and we release what would become toxic if built up. We are the end product of everything we digest—or don’t.

In order to have good health, and to be in a state where our body can heal, we must be able to be grounded and open—allowing things to flow through us. Absorbing and utilizing the nutritive, and releasing the non-nourishing or no longer useful. Restorative yoga, and conscious full relaxation, help set the tone for health and complete digestion. To help heal the WHOLE person.

The Vagus Nerve

“Vagus” means wandering. Also known as “cranial nerve X,” it is part of the autonomic pathway connecting the brain to internal organs. It is known as the “heart of the parasympathetic nervous system,” as it runs from deep in the brainstem through the lungs, heart, liver, stomach, pancreas, and intestinal tract into the belly, and sends information back from the gut to the brain. Yogis believe mastery over this nerve (the parasympathetic system) brings control over heart rate and digestion, as well as a high degree of control over pain. Many yogic techniques stimulate this nerve, including ujjayi breathing, chanting, listening, and several asanas.

In short, deep rhythmic breathing is often thought of as the quickest way to interrupt the stress response and initiate the relaxation response due to the stimulation of the vagus nerve.

Healing with Breathing

Helping your students to learn to breathe well is an essential aspect of healing. As a teacher, you have options to help your students activate the vagus nerve to initiate the neurological state of relaxation. (I share a lot more about the anatomy of rest and digest, as well as practices and techniques to activate the relaxation response in my upcoming Restorative Yoga Teacher Training which starts on January 24!)

In particular, I’d like to share with you a practice that can nourish the gut-brain relationship. In a feature for Mindful magazine, I share how to use Soft Belly Breathing to create a grounded sense of ease and safety by relaxing deeply from the center.