Yoga’s Cleansing Techniques – Shat Kriyas – Cleansing techniques
There are 6 cleansing techniques taught to yogis to help balance the body, prevent and even help to remove disease. When one does yoga and/or pranayama regularly and works with the necessary shat kriyas, a brightness or vitality develops in the face and body. These practices assist the body in detoxing, along with strengthening the gastric fire improving digestion.
For someone who is out of shape or diseased it is recommended to practice these cleanses prior to starting pranayama. They are mostly for kapha imbalances but are meant to balance all 3 doshas.
Not everyone needs or should practice all 6 cleansing techniques, but there are a few that are recommended for everyone.
If you were to look at a seated body from an overhead view, the human body would look like a doughnut, a round blob with a hole in the middle. The hole is our digestive tract. Below is a picture of a fertilized ovum.
The hole of the doughnut (the endoderm) is our digestive tract and the tubes that make up our respiratory system. Our digestive tract is considered to be outside the body. What gets through our digestive tract is what the body allows to enter inside.
Our respiratory tract is also considered outside the body. We don’t “digest” all the oxygen we breathe which is why we can give someone CPR. Our cilia and alveoli capture pollution and other irritants and try to remove them through phlegm and mucus, not allowing them inside the body.
Many of yoga’s cleansing exercises are mostly about cleansing our these tracts.
- Dhauti – cleansing of the upper digestive tract.
- Tongue scraping -First thing in the morning upon awakening scrape your tongue. For all the mints and strips you stick in your mouth, the single most effective cure for bad breath is tongue scraping. A tongue scraper helps dispel the bacteria that accumulate at the back of your mouth and form the root cause of halitosis. In clinical tests, tongue scraping has been proven to reduce odors and bacteria by 75%! It’s the safest, most effective way to get fresher, cleaner breath in just a few seconds a day. Scraping your tongue can also help reduce cavities, refine tastebuds and improve overall oral hygiene.
- Using a copper tongue scraper, scrape from the back of the tongue forward, going as far back as you can without gagging. Repeat 5-7x. Then swish with water.
- Next step would be teeth brushing ensuring you also brush all the gums and tissues inside your mouth. In the evenings I focus on cleaning my teeth and in the morning I focus on all the other tissues in my mouth.
- Oil pulling – Every morning – swish sesame oil in your mouth for a few minutes or up to 15 minutes each morning. You can add a few drops of clove bud essential oil for extra microbial action. While swishing your saliva will mix with the oil, saliva is good for your teeth too. Then spit it out into the ground, trash can or toilet. Oil pulls toxins from your mouth tissues. In Western herbalism they do this with saliva only, its called jade juice. You work up some saliva than pull it in your mouth for a similar amount of time, except you can swallow if its just saliva. This is healthy for your teeth and gums year round.
- DO NOT USE MOUTHWASH! Short-term clinical trials have shown that antibacterial mouthwashes deplete oral nitrate-reducing bacteria, and decrease systemic nitric oxide bioavailability. The main ingredient tested was chlorhexidine, an antiseptic used in mouthwash that kills of nitric oxide producing bacteria. These studies showed both an increased risk of high blood pressure and pre-diabetes/diabetes. Typical mouthwashes disrupt your oral microbiome.
- It is important to keep your mouth bacteria in balance. The mouth is the gateway to whole body health. Most now know our gut bacterial balance influences overall health, and so does our oral bacteria. Medical News Today reported on a range of studies that linked gum disease and the buildup of unfavorable bacteria in the mouth with Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory conditions. The friendly or commensal oral bacteria are necessary for maintaining whole body health.
- Other options to freshen breath? 1 drop peppermint essential oil in a a little water, swish and spit. OR gargle with a hydrosol of choice, I like rose geranium, but peppermint would be a nice minty hydrosol option too. I swallow the hydrosol after gargling. Essential oils kill the bad bacteria, while preserving the good bacteria. They are intelligent 🙂
- Daily dental cleansing between teeth with neem sticks (ayurvedic style) or daily flossing. This is best done at night. I use dental floss and like to put 1 drop of an essential oil blend (diluted in almond oil) on my finger and rub it down the length of my dental floss just prior to flossing. My favorite synergy for this is a synergy of cinnamon leaf, peppermint, spearmint, clove bud, and myrrh, essential oils in sweet almond oil or jojoba.
- Neem does have additional benefit but it’s quite bitter. In Ayurveda they use neem sticks, chew them til they are they split and soften and then use that as a toothbrush. I’ve tried it … you have to stand outside as it takes a bit of time to chew the neem stick to get it ready and it’s so bitter your mouth froths. It didn’t appeal to me.
- And finally dhauti is the swallowing of cloth and pulling it up – I’ve never done this and have no desire … I assume it would be quite a cleansing of the upper digestive tract. In extreme disease there may be some benefit here, but this is not a practice that should be done regularly or when not necessary.
- Vasti / Basti – enemas — which are cleansing of the lower digestive tract. These can be done with warmed herbed water (tea) or warm oil. This practice should NOT be done often, but reserved for extreme conditions. Too many enemas will disrupt the microbiome. Though warm oil enemas are relaxing and also quite therapeutic for lower back pain. And can also be helpful in deep lung infections, there is some connection between the colon and the lungs. In my aromatic medicine course we learned how to make rectal suppositories for deep lung infections, and they have been used quite successfully.
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Neti – Cleaning the nasal passages. This is recommended for everyone to be done in some sort of way every day —even twice a day, morning and night. At the bare minimum cup some water in your hands and gently snort in a little water and blow it out to cleanse your nasal passages. I snort water to cleanse my nostrils in the morning and at night.
The full neti practice can be done with water called Jalaneti or a string called sutra neti. I do jala neti 2-3x per week, and always the morning after a day I’ve been around a lot of people. Jalaneti should only be done in the morning, if you don’t properly clear the water from your nostrils and then go to bed, the water would make its way to your eustachian tubes.
- Best practiced first thing in the morning. The entire process, after learning, will take less than 5 minutes.
Why? Jala neti helps remove mucus and pollution from the nasal passages and sinuses. It helps prevent the common cold and other viruses, which lurk in our mucus. It can also help relieve allergies, and sinusitis, help manage asthma, pneumonia, and other respiratory tract diseases.
The water from doing neti runs over the optic nerve, cleansing this nerve. I can feel that, you can feel water massaging the back of the eye as it passes in one nostril and out the other.
Neti helps maintain a fresh appearance. It has a cooling and soothing influence on the brain and is beneficial in the treatment of migraines. It can help alleviate anxiety, anger, depression, and drowsiness. It makes your nasal passages feel clean and helps you breathe better.
Neti also helps balance between the right and left nostrils and the corresponding right and left hemispheres of the brain inducing a state of harmony and balance throughout the body. Most importantly however, neti helps to awaken ajna chakra.
Jala Neti, how to perform:
It is important first to figure out the amount of water you need.
The addition of salt ensures the osmotic pressure of the water is equal to that of the body fluids, thereby minimizing any irritation to the mucus membranes. If a painful or burning sensation is felt, or a feeling of stuffiness–it is an indication that there is either too little or too much salt in the water. Most often it is too little salt. I personally like a full 1/2 tsp of salt.
Use ¼ – ½ tsp salt in copper or stainless steel neti pot and fill with warm water (approx. body temperature).
- Take the neti pot, stand squarely and lean forward keeping long spine. Close the eyes for a moment and relax.
- Tilt the head slightly to one side and back make sure your nostril is the lowest point, breathe through the mouth.
- Gently insert the nozzle into the uppermost nostril.
- The nozzle should make a seal against the inside of the nostril so that no water leakage occurs, but do not be forceful.
- Tilt the neti pot in such a way that the water runs in the nostril, not down the face, adjust your body position to let the water run out the other nostril. IF you feel like water is going up your nose, readjust the position of your head, or if you feel the water run down your throat or out your mouth, readjust. It takes a few times of playing around with the exact position you need.
- When half the water in the neti pot has passed, remove the nozzle and gently blow through the lower nostril, then both.
- Repeat other side.
Drying the nostrils:
Softly blow and snort into the sink, do not use a tissue as this will push water in the Eustachian tube. Use your belly as in kapalabhati pranayama and pump to help clear out mucus and water.
Bend forward in a forward bend, relax and snort (more water will come out). Turn your head to one side and snort, then repeat on the other side (while in the forward bend).
Finish with Nasya oil each morning – I make a naysa oil you can use, or just plain organic unrefined (NOT toasted) sesame oil in a dropper bottle. Alternatively you could use a Q-tip or even your pinky finger and massage a little oil in your nostrils.
Start with a few drops in each nostril, if you tolerate you can put up to a 1/4 dropper full in each nostril.
- Tilt your head back, drop in oil drops and sniff the oil into your nasal passages, and with your head still tilted back massage the oil around your eyes where your sinuses are.
You want the oil in contact with your sinuses and nasal passages.
This lubricates the nasal passages and allows the cilia to do their job better; filter the air we breathe!Why a Copper neti pot (and tongue scraper)?
- Copper is an essential nutrient required by the body
- Copper is an anti-plaque and anti-bacterial agent
- Copper sterilizes water by killing microbes
- In oriental cultures, the ancient Egyptians, and even the Aztecs stored water overnight in copper pots to sterilize the water.
Resources (no affiliation):
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Nauli – Abdominal Churning THE #1 RECOMMENDED YOGA PRACTICE IF YOU CAN DO ONLY 1 – more important than even pranayama. I do nauli in the morning when I first awaken (not during pranayama practice). It is better done in the morning with your morning routine.
- Nauli (in Sanskrit Nauli = Churning) The Hatha Yoga Pradipika states that Nauli stimulates the digestive fire, thereby removing toxins, indigestion, and constipation. It is an internal cleansing to aid with excess phlegm, mucus, or fat. It is one of the most highly recommended yogic exercises to do daily. In addition, Nauli strengthens the abdominal muscles and massages the internal organs. This practice needs to be done on an empty stomach.
To learn Nauli first learn uddiyana kriya —similar to uddiyana bandha but sustained; bend your knees slightly and put your hands on either leg just above your knees, bending forward.
Take an inhale and look up slightly arching your back, then round your back exhaling slowly as you completely empty your lungs **this is important**. Holding your breath out while keeping your glottis closed act is if you are going to inhale (but don’t!). The action of inhaling but not inhaling in any air will suck your diaphragm up under your ribs creating a big hollow under your ribs.
Hold as long as possible (no straining) then release the belly and diaphragm before you breathe in. Work this for a several weeks to a several months before progressing. If you are having problems “sucking” your belly up, make sure you are relaxing your abdominals, the “suck” comes from the vacuum you’ve created, not from lifting up with your abdominal muscles.
Uddiyana bandha/kriya will not only strengthen your abdominals but will stretch the diaphragm allowing you to take deeper breaths and breathe more comfortably. It also keeps the zone between the diaphragm and chest wall healthy and slippery allowing the diaphragm to move freely.
If you have been practicing the uddiyana lift and are starting to feel the abdomen sucking up, you can try the next step, which is to lift and drop the stomach repeatedly, also known as agni sara.
Agni Sara: This too is done on an exhale hold, but instead of creating a vacuum to suck up your diaphragm you are using your abdominal muscles to pump.
Standing tall take a deep inhale, exhale bending forward. Use your abs to pull up your abdomen, then release/relax it and let it drop (no effort to release it). Firstly try a couple rounds slowly maybe getting three to four lift/drops per round; then try to do it a little faster. When you are comfortable with it, you can do it repeatedly until you are ready to inhale.
Remember to release the stomach before you inhale (at the end of each round), and to not hold your breath out so long that you feel faint or dizzy.
This practice will help you develop control of your abdominal muscles and diaphragm.
The next step is to practice gaining more control and manipulation of your abdominal muscles.
Begin by first exhaling fully then doing the uddiyana lift as above. Begin by pulling in and contracting the sides of your abdomen making your rectus abdominis muscle (the top most layer of abdominals) pop out like a fibrous band running from your xiphoid process to your pubic bone, creating a hollow on both sides of the muscle. The contraction to do this involves contracting the obliques (abdominal muscles that run diagonally over your torso) while you push out the rectus abdominis muscles.
This practice is a step toward Nauli that helps give you control and teaches you how to isolate your abdominal muscles.
Image from forrest.yoga
Finally, to work in to Nauli suck up your abdomen as in the uddiyana kriya and then try figure out how to roll your abdominal muscles side to side (going both ways; right to left and left to right). You can begin this motion with a little lunging movement side to side to use momentum to help get the motion rolling. After some time you want to make it smooth as in a wave like motion. This may take months or years to figure out, but eventually you will realize you have control of your abdominals to do this!
If you are having a hard time finding this, try it lying supine but don’t roll the stomach. Lie down with your knees bent, fully exhale then press your lower back toward the floor, lift your ribs and do the action as if you were tucking your navel up under your ribs. Relax to inhale. Repeat again and try to pull in both sides of the obliques popping your rectus abdominis out. One you start to feel it lying supine you can try it again standing.
To enhance the detoxification I first massage my abdomen with my third chakra stimulating blend of:
Ginger – 14 drops
Lemon – 13 drops
Clove Bud – 5 drops
In 1 oz of carrier oil (5% dilution), I like jojob -
Tratak (gazing) – to purify the eyes.
Track is holding a soft stead gaze until your eyes tear. Keep your eyes soft and not fully focused, don’t look at what you are seeing. Instead gaze off into some other realm of existence.
It is traditionally done gazing at the sunrise, but can be done with a candle flame or just staring in one spot. It is recommended to do anywhere from 2-12 minutes, but I find even holding a steady gaze without blinking for 2 minutes to be quite challenging. Try not to blink or jerk your eyes — its not easy and will take some time to get used to.
End with palming — vigorously rub your hands together until they are warm then lie them over your eyes.
Tratak and eye exercises need only be done 1-2x / week And you can do them anytime morning, noon or night, and even on a full stomach.
Try tratak near a waterfall or stream or moving water of some type; stare at the moving water for about 2 minutes. Then look at the banks or mountain — it will look like its moving upward.
This is a lesson in understanding how the senses can fool your brain. You can’t believe everything your brain tells you about what your senses are sending in, obviously its not the land that is moving.
Tratak in general improves attention, and memory. It is helpful in giving one cognitive flexibility.
The tears from tratak are also very cleansing to the eyes. Their chemical composition is different from emotional tears which carry more hormones and protein.
Tears are made from water and electrolytes, mucus, and oil. Our tears also contain natural antibiotics called lysozymes. Lysozymes help to keep the surface of the eye healthy by fighting off bacteria and viruses.
Because the cornea has no blood vessels, the tears also provide a means of bringing nutrients to its cells.
There are three types of tears:
Reflex Tears From Irritants
When your eye is irritated, it produces reflex tears to wash out the irritants.1 You’ve probably shed a few tears when chopping onions or when you get dust in your eyes.
Emotional Tears
The tears you shed when overcome with emotions have a higher protein content than the tears shed from irritants. Emotional tears have been found to have more hormones, including prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and leucine enkephalin.2
Tears When You Sleep
When you sleep, your glands add less water and protein to your tears, and they increase the number of antibodies present, while infection-fighting cells also migrate to the conjunctival sac.3 This is why you wake up and need to wipe your eyes, the tears are a little more gooey. If your tear ducts are working overtime filtering something out of your eye they will produce more goo leading to the sandy eyes you sometimes feel when you wake up.
Lets learn a couple other eye exercises that I find to be beneficial for a number of eye problems, including:
- Reducing eye strain
- Strengthening the focusing muscles that control eye alignment
- Improving eye-tracking problems
- Stimulating blinking can reduce dry eye symptoms associated with computer viewing
These are fairly new to my practices. Through the practices of pranayama I learned some eye exercises to stimulate the vagus nerve, and that led me to adopting these eye exercises. I don’t always stay consistent with them, but I plan to!
Eye exercises involve exercising and stretching your eye muscles. They may improve vision and delay the need for glasses or contacts in some people, however there is not a lot of credible resources showing eye exercises can correct underlying conditions that affect eyesight.
Vision is affected by a number of physical and environmental factors—some must be treated with corrective lenses and others can benefit from eye exercises or vision therapy.
I do these practices with a cup of saffron sunlight water. Saffron is a rich source of carotenoids —specifically crocin and crocetin that maintain healthy retinal cells. They are powerful antioxidants that protect the retina from exposure to intense light, and heal retinal cells that were damaged by oxidative stress or age related macular degeneration.
In 10-12 oz of water, place about 10 strands of saffron and let it infuse for at least a half hour and up to overnight. Your water will look like sunlight 🙂 Before doing the eye exercises I do a brief meditation sipping my saffron sunlight water and putting my attention on my eyes. Tasting the sunlight in the water I feel my body absorbing sunlight into my being. I feel it migrate to my eyes and then permeate throughout my entire body. By being mindful of this we can increase our absorption of the carotenoids. Where the mind goes, prana flows.
Eye exercises for all 6 sets of eye muscles, in between each exercise squeeze your eyes shut for a moment then release and blink.
Holding head steady:
- Eyes only moving up and down. Start slowly, seeing everything you can within your periphery improving your awareness of how much you can see. Then pick up your pace for 30 seconds – 2 minutes.
- Repeat as above: left to right keeping eyes in the horizontal plane and parallel to the floor or ground
- Repeat as above diagonal – Up Right Down Left
- Repeat as above other way diagonal – Up Left Down Right
- Clockwise, do these slow and try not to cut out your corners: Up, right, down, left
- Counterclockwise, do these slow as well: Up, left, down, right
End with palming by vigorously rubbing your hands together to build heat in your palms, then lie your palms over your eyes for a moment.
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Kapalabhati – Cleansing to body and brain. Especially good at removing phlegm.
Kapalabhati means forehead shining, Kapala = skull and bhati = shining or cleaning. This is very different how we normally breathe, here we are doing short quick exhale puffs while relaxing on the inhale. The opposite of how we normally breathe.
Kapalabhati helps microglia clean out your brain much like sleep does, kapalabhati is like your brain on sleep, and it energizes you just like a good sleep does.
Air enters our 2 nostrils in 3 streams the first two streams go downward to the lungs, the third stream is a little stream that goes upward delivering oxygen to the brain. This is the stream that “sniffs” as this stream pulls the scents across our olfactory organ where we can smell them.
Kapalabhati helps to propel the breath upward through this 3rd stream toward the skull where it helps to detox the brain through the glymphatics. In the process, due to the pumping action of our abs the lymphatics in the abdomen also get a massage helping them to move and detoxify as well.
During normal breathing processes you want most your air going down the 2 main streams into your lungs and only a thin stream going to your brain. Here we are pulling more air upward.
Purposeful forceful breathing helps to use all 5 lobes of the lungs and especially helps us to use the lower lobes of the lungs where we can access more oxygen rich blood; increasing oxygenation which helps with detoxification and fat burning, and increasing vascularization in the lower lobes of the lungs.
The pranayamas that use forceful breathing such as Kapalabhati and Bhastrika are particularly beneficial for our lung health; they help to clear pollution, smoke, and other irritants from our alveoli — alveoli are tiny little air exchange sacks in our lungs, they look like a bunch of grapes hanging on a vine. When pollution or dirt sticks to them they collapse and can not effectively exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. These forceful pranayamas help to open them up. In other times they collapse momentarily; for example during sobbing or when breathing stressfully — you know when you involuntarily take a little double inhale? That’s your body re-inflating your alveoli. And sometimes your body does the double inhale during normal breathing to clean your alveoli.
Also these pranayamas improve our VO2 max, or our respiratory health — our cardiovascular system. You are breathing like you are running hard … except you’re not! This seems to bring about similar benefit due to their effects on our lung flexibility. With pranayama you get the benefits of more intense exercise without the wear and tear on your joints. Which is why in yoga philosophy it is said that as you age pranayama becomes even more important to “move energy” in your body.
Pranayama is yoga for your breathing apparatuses! What exactly are your breathing apparatuses? Your nose, throat, trachea, bronchial tubes, lungs, diaphragm, rib cage, intercostals and even your abdominals.
Photo from Namarupa / Robert Moses notes
Basically you breathe from your nose to your navel. All these breathing apparatuses need to be flexible, one of the actions of benefit to our cardiovascular system from these pranayamas is how they stretch and strengthen all our breathing muscles. We need to have flexibility of our lungs, rib cage, diaphragm, and even our bronchial tubes — they need to be able to dilate and stretch to allow sufficient incoming air in.
With that being said, then it comes to reason stretching and expanding, filling your lungs to the brim with air before doing an inhale breath hold helps to improve the flexibility of the bronchial tubes, lungs, diaphragm and rib cage allowing them to make more room for more air and thus more oxygen — oxygenating your entire body better.
Pay attention to your inhales as you perform this breathing exercise, as you go faster you will notice more of strengthening effect and less of a stretching effect. As a beginner its better to take this pranayama slower and allow a little more time to expand your lungs on the inhales to get the flexibility enhancements.
How to perform:
Kapalabhati is a cleansing practice called “kriya”- it is not a pranayama. To me it feels like we’re using breath to clear out the debris of the mind. Sweeping the mind clean.
- It should not be done if you are pregnant, have had recent abdominal surgery, a hernia, menstruating, glaucoma, after food, or have uncontrolled high blood pressure
Sit tall, beginners can sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor, or you can sit on a mat or bolster. Your posture should be comfortably straight, without slouching or leaning forward, shoulders relaxed. The only movement is the pumping of your abdominals, the rest of your body is still.
To do kapalabhati, pump your diaphragm and abdominals sharply and quickly on the exhale and relax on the inhale –let the inhale be passive. In a normal breath our diaphragm works on the inhale and relaxes on the exhale. Instead here, we pump the diaphragm on the exhale, which will help to strengthen your diaphragm as it’s working on both the inhale and exhale.
You can practice this by coughing — we do a similar contraction of the diaphragm when coughing — except a cough is through the mouth — we are keeping the breath through the nose here.
- Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth — this is Jiva Bandha. Keeping your tongue on the roof of your mouth during these more forceful pranayamas is important to protect your eustachian tubes.
- To start the first inhale is a slightly deeper inhale; exhale pump at a steady rhythm for about 30 exhales, just relaxing on the inhales and letting the air effortlessly come in. Pace does come into play, I like a steady pace of about 15 seconds give or take, to do the 30 pumps. Some like a faster pace, and some even slower.
- If you are new to this, start with less. To progress you can increase your pumps in each set (I have seen text books recommend as many as 500! -that is a bit much for me but under certain circumstances it may have a powerful healing effect).
- Take a recovery breath or two or 5 …
- Repeat for a total of three rounds.
Kapalabhati helps to clear your mind and calm your thoughts, reducing stress. I literally feel like its sweeping debris from my brain.
Play with pace
In the ‘how to’ I recommend just a common steady pace, however sometimes play with your pace; for example I like to do 10 quite slow, after the initial relaxation of the inhale following the “blast” continue to lengthen your inhale – do this for 10 slow breaths, then slowly increase pace to slightly faster with shorter inhales for 10 breaths, then normal pace for 20-30 breath/blasts where your inhale is just passive. Take a few breaths and repeat for a total of 3 rounds.
This looks like:
- 10 slow forceful exhale breath/blasts with a longer inhale
- 10 slightly faster exhaling breath/blasts shortening your inhale
- 10-20 normal pace breath/blasts just letting your inhales be passive.
- Take 5 slow normal yogic breaths and repeat for a total of 3 rounds.
To progress in this pranayama we had a inhale retention:
- Take a nice deep first inhale, exhale pump 30x with a passive inhale — just working the exhale.
- Take 1 long slow inhale
- Take 1 long slow exhale
- Take another long inhale and hold in for as long as is comfortable (no straining in pranayama!)
- Slowly exhale
- Repeat for a total of at least 3 rounds or more.
Alternate Nostril Kapalabhati
As you do your 30 or more pumps, with your right hand in vishnu mudra alternate your exhaling nostril beginning and ending of the left nostril, take your short quick inhales with both nostrils:- Take 1 big inhale through both nostrils, exhale pump quickly and sharply alternating your exhales through your left and right nostril taking your short inhales with both nostrils 33-55x. You want to do an odd number so you start and end on the left nostril.
- Take a big chesty inhale with both nostrils, retain your breath for 30-45 seconds, slowly exhale through your nose.
- Take 1 full inhale and exhale yoga breathing style.
- Repeat for 3 – 5 rounds total.
Working with pranayamas helps to make you aware of your breath; and in these breathing exercises you want to be aware of each breath you take! Hear each breath you take. Over time you will notice you will become more conscious of how you breathe all day long.
This in turn makes you more conscious in general — especially about your subconscious behaviors — those patterns we repeat as adults that we did when we were kids because they got us what we wanted. For example; someone who angers easy is basically an adult throwing a childlike temper tantrum because they did not get their own way — thats a subconscious behavior. Being aware of each breath you take helps you to recognize when you are falling into a subconscious behavior that is not serving you — the more conscious we become about our behaviors and why we do what we do, the more evolved we will
