Yoga Breathing Exercises

Yoga Breathing or Pranayama, is the foundation of your yoga practice. It begins with deepening your breathing with the 3-part breath, then moves into more advanced breathing exercises such as Kapalabhati and the Alternate Nostril Breath. Pranayama also goes hand in hand with the Asanas. These two Yogic Principles together are considered as the highest form of purification and self-discipline, covering both mind and body.

Long Deep Breathing and Breath of Fire

For those that have been doing Long Deep Breathing and Breath of Fire for many years, the breath is so natural and easy that unless one is also teaching one might not easily focus on what the difficulty could possibly be.
Quite often students will fill the lower abdominal area of the lungs, then as the try to fill the chest area, they shift the air from the lower area to the chest, as they try to lift the rib cage, and do not actually keep the downward pressure of air in filling upwards, but instead only shift upwards, so that a complete breath is still only chest breathing and not actually diaphragm breathing.
The conscious awareness of the diaphragm is not apparent to every one so some means needs to be provided to somehow allow attention to the sensation of the use of the diaphragm to come into focus until the natural rhythm of the diaphragm is felt and the effortless force and flow of prana takes over.