Welcome to first this, a short mindfulness practice and message for any time.

I'm Catherine Nikolai. Thanks for sitting with me today. And you can sit, but you can always lie down or be in any posture that

works for you. Take a second to relax your jaw on your shoulders and just step away from whatever else is happening right now.

It will all wait, truly.

Let's take a deep breath in and sigh through the mouth.

Again, breathe in and out.

Good.

Touch your lips together and breathe naturally through your nose.

Today we're headed back to breath school to work on a style of breathing that builds lung capacity, lung strength, energy, and focus.

But before we dig deeper, let's spend a minute or two, just attending to the breath.

When you breathe in, say in your mind, in.

When you breathe out, say out.

It may help you stay connected. Thank you. So, as always, when we do breath work, if at any point you feel like you should stop, just stop, no problem.

We're going to practice a style of pranayama called Ujjay.

Ujjayi means victorious, and it is a powerful feeling to breathe like this.

Not many things that energize us also soothe us, but this style of breath does just that.

There are, let's say, three components to it. First, it's a nostril breath. So unless you're just plugged up today and you can't,

take every inhale and exhale through the nose.

Nostral breathing brings nitric oxide to the front of your brain.

And that's a long story, but trust me, you want that.

The second component to this breath is that it is complete and even.

So start to bring your breath down into the bottom lobes of your lungs.

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