Alternate Nostril Breathing

Alternate nostril breathing, otherwise known in sanskrit as Nadhi Shodhana, is a pranayama technique designed to help you slow down your breath and balance your autonomic nervous system (ANS). You often do this using your right hand, with your index and middle finger resting in your palm or on your third eye, whilst your thumb is used on your right nostril and your ring and pinky finger are used on your left.

A round starts by breathing into the left nostril, and ends by breathing out of the left nostril. If you lose track of which side you’re on, just restart by breathing in to the left nostril. I recommend starting this technique with 10 rounds of breath, and build upon it as you see fit (mostly people let go of the technique by this point and continue without using the hand (just imagining breathing in and out of alternate nostrils) or you may use this technique to bring balance to prepare for a calmer meditation practice.

You can do the movement a lot more subtle than I demonstrate here, and you can support your arm but using your left hand or resting it on a pillow.

As always, if you have any questions about alternate nostril breathing, please contact me.