If you are suffering from serious respiratory problems like yoga or recovering something as minor as a cold, there is a lot that yoga can do for you. Yoga can work immensely on your lungs and help you improve your breathing. While yogic breathing works on your respiration system, yoga poses has a positive influence on your chest and lungs. If you want to target lungs with yoga then you must know which yoga poses to practice.
Strengthen your muscles around the rib cage
To improve lung function, you should practice poses that strengthen your shoulders, neck and upper body. Since these muscles surround the rib cage, strengthening them can improve your lung function tremendously. To strengthen your shoulders, neck and upper body you can practice poses like inversions, shoulder stand, head stand, bridge, feathered peacock and bridge.
Open your chest
For better breathing and respiration, you need to open your chest. Opening your chest is essential for you to improve your depth of breath. To open up your chest poses such as cat and cow pose, cobra, half frog and king pigeon pose will prove beneficial. Practice all these poses on a regular basis. These poses will not just open your chest but also remove blockage, if any, that can cause illness.
Stretch the abdomen
Along with practicing poses that open your chest you also need to practice poses that stretch the abdomen. Though there are some chest opener poses that will help you stretch your abdomen but some additional poses will help. Practice the low lunge, upward facing dog, wheel pose and upward staff too. Create variations in your chest opening and abdomen stretching exercises to keep your yoga regime interesting and more beneficial.
Stretch the intercostals muscles
Since intercostals muscles make an essential part of your respiratory system, you need to work on them too for better breathing. Practice yoga to strengthen your intercostals muscles too. Side bends would be apt for this purpose. Though there are several side bends in yoga, go in only for the ones that are appropriate for strengthening your intercostals muscles. These include half moon pose, the gate pose and the revolved side angle pose.
Improve lung function
Nothing can help more than yogic breathing to improve lung function. Yogic breathing for five to ten minutes a day can prove to be of great help in bettering your lung function. for best results it is advised that you practice your yogic breathing only at the end of each session. You can sit in any pose you would want to- lotus or bound angle pose or any other to practice yogic breathing. |
