Ep 131: How Breathing Helps the Nervous System

The breath is one of the only functions in the body that is both automatic and within our conscious control, which makes it one of the most accessible tools for shifting the nervous system in any of your yoga classes. This episode breaks down how breathing helps the nervous system, why this matters especially for anxious students, new students, and students in pain, and explains specific breath practices you can start using in your very next class.

I'll discuss:

• The Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous System, Explained Simply
• The Role of the Vagus Nerve
• Why This Matters for Anxious Students, New Students, and Students in Pain
• Four Breath Practices You Can Use Right Away

Mentioned in the episode:

The Nervous System Toolkit 

If this episode has you thinking about how much breath can do, the Nervous System Toolkit gives you practical, ready-to-use tools for working with the nervous system, including breath-based practices, Yoga Nidra, and 10 Common Yoga Pose Modifications.

Transcript

Monica 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Monica, and I'm so glad you're here. Here, we talk about the anatomy, the injuries, the nervous system insights, and all the real-life knowledge you wish had been included in your yoga teacher training. I'm a yoga teacher who specializes in helping teachers work confidently with students who have pain and injuries. I focused my continuing education in biomechanics, human movement, pain science, and the nervous system, and a lot of what I share with you comes from real experiences, both my own and the students and teachers I've worked with over the years. Today, we're talking about breath, specifically how breathing helps the nervous system and why this might be one of the most powerful and underused tools you're sharing in every single class you teach. I wanna tell you about something that happened recently because it really brought this whole topic home for me. A friend of mine asked if I could come teach a private session for her and her mom, who has dementia I knew going in that I had a very short window to help her mom feel comfortable with me. She didn't know me. She didn't necessarily have the capacity to follow a long explanation of what we were doing or why. So I leaned into breath. I taught her some breathing with intention, just slow and steady, nothing complicated. And we did some other things as well. And by the end of the session, she said she was so relaxed and so open that she was asking when we could do it again. Her asking that told me everything I needed to know about what our breath can do, even when nothing else about the situation we might be in is familiar or comfortable. And I think about that session a lot because it's such a clear example of something that happens in smaller ways every single time you teach breath mechanics to your students. People feel it, and they notice the difference. And today, I wanna help you understand why. let's talk about what is actually going on when you change the way you breathe because this is what you really should understand as a teacher. Your nervous system has two main modes that are relevant here. There is the sympathetic nervous system, which is your activation system. This is the part of you that gets ready for action, that responds to stress, that puts you on alert. And then there's the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest system. This is the part of you that allows for recovery, for digestion, for the body to settle and repair. Now, most of your students are walking into your classes with their sympathetic nervous system more activated than they probably realize. Not in a dramatic fight or flight kind of way necessarily, but in a low level, background, always on kind of way. Maybe there's traffic on the way to class or a stressful email they read right before they came into the room and laid down their mat. The general pace of their lives, our lives, all of our lives, is that our nervous systems have been quietly running in a slightly elevated state, maybe for hours, maybe even for days. The breath is one of the only functions in your body that is both automatic and under your conscious control. Your heart rate, your digestion, your blood pressure, these things happen without you thinking about them, and you cannot just decide to change them directly. But the breath is different. You can breathe without thinking about it at all, and you can also choose to breathe in a specific way right now. That dual nature is what makes the breath such a powerful entry point into the nervous system. When you slow your breath down, particularly when you lengthen your exhale, you are sending a direct signal to your nervous system that it is safe to shift out of that activated state This happens largely through something called the vagus nerve, which is the main communication highway between your brain and many of your organs, including your heart, your lungs, and your digestive system. The vagus nerve is a key player in your parasympathetic response, and certain kinds of breath can stimulate it directly. So when a student rests in Shavasana at the end of your class and you guide them through some slow, intentional breathing, you are not just giving them a moment to relax in a general sense. You are actually engaging a specific physiological pathway that shifts their body out of activation and into recovery. This is huge, and it's part of the reason why we stress the importance of staying for Shavasana to students. This is something real happening inside their body in real time because of something you're teaching them to do. I do wanna talk about who this matters for because I think it's almost everyone just for different reasons. Anxious students often have nervous systems that are running in that heightened, activated state much of the time. Their minds are busy. Their bodies are bracing and engaged. And one of the things that can happen for anxious students is that their breath becomes part of the problem without them realizing it. It gets shallow, and it gets fast. It stays mostly in the upper chest, that pattern of breathing actually reinforces the activation because the body reads rapid, shallow breathing as a sign that something is wrong, even if nothing is actually happening. When you teach an anxious student to breathe more slowly with a longer exhale, you are giving them a tool that works on the actual mechanism of their anxiety, not just a distraction from it. And this is so important. Now, new students often come to yoga because something in their life feels overwhelming, even if they would not necessarily say it that way. For a new student, the breath is often the very first thing that feels different about being in your class compared to the rest of their day. Nobody else in their life is asking them to slow down and notice their breath. When you do, even briefly, it can be the thing that makes them feel like this practice is actually doing something for them even before they have built any kind of strength or flexibility. And students in pain, this is a population I think about constantly. They often have nervous systems that are in a more vigilant, protective state, which we have talked about in other episodes. Guiding the breath is one of the gentlest ways to invite that nervous system toward a little more ease without asking them to do anything additional of their physical bodies. You do not need a student in pain to move in any particular way for the breath to be helpful. They can be completely still and still receive the benefits of breathwork. So when I think about anxious students, new students, and students in pain, what I see is a shared thread of general nervousness, a nervous system that is a little too on alert, a little too ready, and guiding their breath is one of the most accessible ways to meet all three of these groups at the same time. Okay, so let's get practical. I wanna take you through a few breath practices that I use and teach because I think it helps to have specific tools rather than just the concept, right? The first is simply lengthening the exhale. This is so simple, it almost feels like it shouldn't work, but it does. You can cue students to breathe in for a count of four and breathe out for a count of six or eight. The exhale being longer than the inhale is what really activates that parasympathetic shift. You don't need students to hold their breath or do anything complicated, just a longer exhale than the inhale. Repeat it for a few rounds, and you will often see their shoulders relax and their faces soften right in front of you. Now, you can make the number be whatever it is. Give students the freedom to let the depth of the inhale write for them, and the length of the exhale also write for them, just being mindful that it's longer than the inhale The second is diaphragmatic breathing, sometimes called belly breathing. A lot of your students, especially those who carry a lot of tension or who deal with anxiety breathe primarily into their chest without realizing it. Guiding them to feel their belly expand on the inhale and soften on the exhale brings the diaphragm fully into the breath. This is a deeper, fuller breath, and it tends to naturally slow things down. You can have students place a hand on their belly so they can feel this happening, which gives them immediate feedback. The third is breath counting, where you give students a specific rhythm to follow, like in for four, hold for a moment, out for six. Giving the mind a task like counting can be really helpful for students whose minds tend to race because it occupies the part of the brain that would otherwise be generating thoughts while the body settles into the slower rhythm. And the fourth one, which I think ties in beautifully with what we've talked about with the vagus nerve, is humming or sound-based breath. When you hum on the exhale, the vibration created travels through your throat and chest, and this can stimulate the vagus nerve in a really direct way. I love offering this one because it's almost playful. I've witnessed and even invited students to laugh the first time they try it, and that's fine. Laughter is also a parasympathetic response. But after a few rounds of humming on the exhale, you can really feel a shift in the room. I want you to try to teach it and notice what happens. It's one of those things that sounds almost too simple to actually work, and yet it consistently does. Now, let's bring this back to something practical you can do starting with your very next class, 'cause I'm all about action here. I'm all about giving solutions here. You do not need to build an entire breathwork section into your sequence to make a difference. Even just a minute or two at the beginning of class where you guide students into a few rounds of longer exhales or some gentle belly breathing sets a tone for the entire practice. and at the end of class, before Shavasana or during it, a few minutes of intentional breath, whether that is breath counting or humming, can deepen the sense of rest that students take away from your class. What I find so meaningful about this is that it does not require any special equipment, any extra training beyond what we're talking about today, or any change to your physical sequencing. It is something you can layer into what you are already doing, and the effect on your students is real time and often immediate. You can see it and they can feel it, and that feedback is exactly what happened with that session that I told you about earlier with my friend's mother. A short amount of time, a few rounds of intentional breath equals a nervous system that feels safe enough to settle. if this episode has you thinking about how helpful breath can be and you want some ready-to-use tools you can bring into your teaching right away, I have something called the Nervous System Toolkit. It's a low-cost resource that gives you practical tools for working with the nervous system, including breath-based practices like the ones we talked about today. It is a great next step if you want to build out your toolkit without a big investment. You can find it in the show notes below. And of course, the nervous system is something we go much deeper into inside my Teaching Students with Injuries mentorship, including how breath fits into the bigger picture of working with students who have pain and injuries. But the toolkit is a perfect place for you to start. All right. I hope this episode helped you think about how effective teaching pranayama and breath mechanics can be with your students, no matter what style of yoga you're teaching. Remember, the Nervous System Toolkit is where you discern how to apply what you learn about pranayama practices as well as yoga nidra and a modification guide for 10 common yoga poses to your actual students in your classes. More information is linked in the show notes, and thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next week. All right, bye.