What happens in your body that makes you take that next inhale?

You need both your inhale and your exhale. But what stimulates your body to inhale? The triggering mechanism isn’t that you are “low in oxygen”. After you take in air through your nose, it travels through your trachea, bronchioles and alveoli, finally making it’s way into the bloodstream, where oxygen binds to hemoglobin. For your body to make use of the O2 so it can provide cellular energy, the hemoglobin and oxygen have to break free from each other, which happens when there is a buildup of CO2.

Slower breath is more beneficial than rapid, shallow breathing because MORE of the CO2 is building up, which means more O2 gets released from the bloodstream into the cells. Hyperventilating as part of a deliberate breath work practice (e.g. holotropic breath work) is valuable when done with guidance for different intentions and specific outcomes.

In yoga we focus on breathing in every class, so that we improve our use of oxygen (our life force, or prana). When we are more oxygenated we think more clearly, have more physical and mental energy, and can sustain our physical bodies for longer periods in both movement and stillness. In moments of stillness, with slow and controlled unconscious breathing, we are able to enter deeper states of consciousness, the true intention of yoga 🧘✨.