Breath Practice:
Take 5 Breath

Overview:

The Take 5 Breath is an excellent practice to provide balance, offer an opportunity to build focus and concentration, and is concrete enough for those new to yoga and mindfulness and younger children to easily grasp and master. The breath practice can be done discreetly, in any setting to help calm and relieve stress and anxiety and focus on the breath in the present moment. Using the hand as a tool of support for this practice, you use the tracing of the fingers to help provide a sense of balance between the inhales and exhales.

Potential Effects:

 

Reduces stress and anxiety

Positively effects emotions and mental well being

Increases mental clarity, energy, and focus

Instructions:

 

1.     Find an alert but relaxed posture in which you can extend the spine long to breathe deeply and fully. Relax the shoulders down from the ears. Take a few rounds of mindful breathing to settle in.

2.     Stretch your hand out wide making space between your fingers, with your palm facing you.

3.     Extend the index finger of your other hand to be the tracing finger.

4. Inhale through your nose, trace your finger up the outer edge of the thumb to the thumbs’ top.

5.     Exhale out from your mouth, tracing from the top of your thumb down to the base of the index finger.

6. Continue this pattern of breathing as you trace your hand completely, inhaling on the upward tracing through the nose and exhaling out the mouth on the downward tracing.

7.     Continue for a second round or onto the other hand if you wish.

8.     Let this pattern of breathing go. Let the breath breathe naturally.

 
 
 

Precautions:

 

Respiratory inflammation: practice moderately

Sinus congestion: breathe through the mouth as needed

 

Helpful Hints:

 

While introducing to children you may benefit form visual representations of the practice. Children can create a palm print with paint and write in with directional arrows the inhales and exhales along the fingers.

While introducing to children, you may want to first teach them how to breath in through their nose and out through their mouths, before layering on the tracing.  

Variations:

 

Take 5 Breathes can be done sitting, standing, laying down, or during a yoga posture.

Content from NYCDOE YMTP² curricular materials