Bee Breath | Bhramari Pranayama

Howdy, pals. Welcome to Yoga With Adriene. I'm Adriene and today we have a wonderful breath practice video for all ages. Today we're gonna learn bee breath, which is a beautiful, calming breath that really helps you relax and stay chill. Let's get started. Alright, my sweet honeybees or bumblebees, what kind of bee are you? Let's begin in a comfortable seat. You can choose whether you wanna be cross-legged or sitting on your knees or on a bolster or a pillow, a block, a towel, a cushion. Wherever you are, sit up nice and tall. And the humming bee is actually what we are going for in this practice, where we inhale in through the nose and on the exhale, we seal the lips and we create a little hum like mm or mm or mm. You can pick any tone. I tend to like to pick a lower tone so that it really calms me and grounds me. The bee breath is really good for stimulating that rest and digest in us, that beautiful parasympathetic nervous system that when activated helps us to feel calm and safe and at peace. So like I said, this is a great one for everyone, for all ages, and one of the things I really like about it the most is it's not too fancy. You can practice it anywhere. So just for starters, practicing at home, everyone just practice a little hum, mm, good. Now we're gonna do it together, but a couple things we're going to focus on this time is sitting up nice and tall. There's an invitation, an option to close your eyes, which I really love because it helps me, again, allow my body to tap into that calm, that state of feeling safe and at ease. It's just a wonderful way to chill out. So feel free to close your eyes or soften your gaze down gently past your nose. Let's see, another thing that you can think about is really taking a full, smooth, deep inhalation so that you can really extend your bee breath, your buzz, your humming sound, the vibration for a longer period of time. When you run out of air, you simply take a deep breath in again and you begin. And it's really fun to do this with family or other friends because you start to notice this beautiful overlap of all the hums. Of course, I'll just be in here with Benji doing mine, but I appreciate you joining me. So let's begin by taking a deep breath in together and an exhale, just a natural exhale, out together. And then we'll inhale to begin. Inhaling in through the nose, maybe closing the eyes, sitting up tall, and we begin to hum. Finish out your last hum and then bat your eyelashes open and just take a break. All right, so we're gonna go in for round two. We're only doing two rounds, but just notice how you feel a little goes a long way here. And once you feel comfortable, especially if you're someone who practices Pranayama or breath technique a lot, you can really extend the amount of time that you do this and just know that if you ever start to feel like tingly in your body or ungrounded, it's always a good idea to just take a little break and feel the ground underneath you. And there's no need to push, right? Okay, so we're gonna go on for round two. We're gonna do a little bit longer. I invite you to find stillness. Notice if you're gripping in your face or in your hands or your feet and see if you can keep everything soft and relaxed as you participate in the breath. And again, like I said, if you start to feel a little funny or you don't feel grounded, you feel unsafe, you simply take a break. You might even feel some emotion come up in this practice and that's totally okay. Most of the time when I feel emotional and it just feels like it gets to be too much, I just take a little break and then come back to it whenever I'm ready. Okay, here we go. Inhale in to start. Exhale out, just normal breath. And inhale in to hump. Let's do one more round wherever you are. And after that round, just pause with your eyes closed or your gaze soft. Allow your breath to return to natural rhythm, easy flow. Notice how you feel. And slowly bring your palms together. You can start rubbing them together as you open your eyes, just coming back into the room or whatever space you're practicing in. All right, so this is a little taste of deep breath. This is something that I encourage you to do on your own, although I love practicing with you in the video. And I wanted to leave you with a couple of pro tips from a friend. So this is a great practice to do in bed or lying down. Because you can really just allow everything to relax the weight of your body into the earth or into couch or bed. Another wonderful thing to do is practice this breath with your hands gently placed over your ears or with the index finger gently pressing up against this front cartilage. There is a pretty cool mudra that traditionally goes along with this practice, but we're not gonna do that today. But I just wanna give you some options to play with. Of course, covering the ears gently, I feel like it's just like the kind of safest easy one to actually let's all do it. Let's all do a quick workshop of this. So you can pick index finger, pressing into the cartilage or hands on the ears. And we'll just do one little practice breath. You're together, inhaling deeply, exhaling to hum. I find sitting with my hands on somewhere in my body or laying on the ground is my favorite way to practice this calming breath. And even in this session that we did, I found different hand placements to kind of suit what I was feeling in my body. So feel it out, find what feels good. And thank you so much for joining me for Be Breath. Maybe share this video with a friend and I'll see you next time.