Three-part breath (dirga)

How to do it

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent, or sit with your back long. Rest one hand on your navel and the other on your chest. Close your mouth: everything goes through the nose.
2. Let your breath out through your nose, without pushing.
3. Breathe in for 2 seconds into your belly: the lower hand rises.
4. Without letting any air out, keep breathing in for 2 seconds into your ribs: they widen out to the sides.
5. Keep breathing in for 2 more seconds into your upper chest: the top hand rises a little, and your shoulders stay still.
6. Breathe out through your nose for 6 seconds, all in one go, slow and even, until your belly settles back down.
7. That's one 12-second cycle. Repeat for 5 minutes, which is 25 cycles.
8. To finish, let your hands rest at your sides, breathe at your own pace for half a minute and get up slowly.

What three-part breath is

It's a 6-second inhale spread across three areas, from the bottom up, 2 seconds each: belly, ribs, chest. The exhale lasts another 6 seconds and is continuous. All of it through the nose, with no pauses, at five breaths a minute.

The three parts aren't three breaths: it's one movement that rises like a wave. That's the difference from belly breathing, which stays in the first area, and from viloma, which breaks the inhale up with pauses. Here the air never stops; it just changes address.

Where it comes from

Dirgha is a Sanskrit word meaning long, and also deep when it describes a sigh. As a three-part technique under that name, we didn't find it in the classical hatha yoga manuals we checked, so its exact origin isn't clear.

The idea of filling the lungs from the bottom up does have a well-known written ancestor. In the early 1900s a book called The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath came out in Chicago under the name Yogi Ramacharaka, a pen name of William Walker Atkinson. It separates high, mid and low breathing, and proposes a complete breath that fills the lower part of the lungs first, then the middle, then the upper, in one continuous movement.

Today many yoga schools teach it. The Kripalu yoga center presents it as dirgha pranayama and says it's taught in most yoga classes.

What people use it for

Mostly to learn to breathe with the whole torso. Many people find out through it that they nearly always breathe with the upper chest alone, while the belly and ribs barely join in. Hands on the body make that obvious.

It's also used to open a yoga or meditation session, as a way of arriving, and in bed, since lying on your back is its most comfortable position. Singers and wind players will recognize the wide intake of air their craft asks for.

What the studies say

We found no studies of this exact pattern. What exists is research on its two families: diaphragmatic breathing and slow breathing.

A pilot trial published in 2017 in Frontiers in Psychology worked with 40 healthy adults from a company in Beijing. One group did 20 sessions of very slow diaphragmatic breathing, about four breaths a minute, over 8 weeks. The other did nothing. The group that practiced improved more on a sustained attention test, and its salivary cortisol went down. For negative mood, the difference between groups was only marginal.

A 2018 systematic review gathered 15 studies of breathing at fewer than ten breaths a minute in healthy people. It found higher heart rate variability and more reported relaxation and well-being. It also noted that none of the studies was a randomized trial and that several had very few participants. The evidence is encouraging and limited, and none of it is about dirga specifically.

What it feels like and what to notice

At first the three areas feel like clumsy stair steps, and the chest often wants to rise before the belly. With your hands in place, the movement starts to link up around the third or fourth cycle. The ribs are usually the hardest part: it helps to picture them widening sideways, like an accordion.

If you fill to the brim on every inhale you may feel dizzy or tingly: that's a sign you're taking in more air than you need. Breathe smaller, through the same three areas. If the dizziness stays, or you feel short of breath, stop and breathe normally.

Variations

• Easier (two-part variation): breathe in for 3 seconds into the belly and 3 into the ribs, then out for 6. Save the chest for when the first two happen without thinking.
• In stages (learning variation): this is how Kripalu teaches it. First several breaths with the belly alone, then belly and ribs, and finally all three areas.
• Exhale in order (class variation): as you breathe out, let the chest drop first, then the ribs, then the belly, within the same 6 seconds.
• Longer (10-minute variation): the same pattern for 50 cycles, lying down.

Common mistakes

• Lifting your shoulders. The third part widens the chest; the shoulders and neck stay out of it.
• Starting at the top. If your chest moves first, go back to the lower hand and begin there.
• Forcing your belly out. The belly rises because the diaphragm moves down, not because you push it.
• Cutting the air off between parts. There are no pauses: the air keeps coming in while your attention moves up.
• Filling to the max. Three parts doesn't mean three times the air. About 80 percent is plenty.
• Dumping the air. The exhale takes its full 6 seconds, even from start to finish.

How often and how long

Five minutes a day for a week or two is usually enough for the movement to stop being an exercise and start feeling natural. After that you can use it as a lead-in to other breathing practices, or by itself whenever you want to loosen up.

It's better to practice at a calm moment than to save it for when everything is tight. What you learn calmly is what's available later.

Before you start

• If you feel dizzy, tingly or short of breath, stop and breathe normally. It nearly always means you're taking in too much air.
• Don't force the inhale or the exhale: no area gets filled under pressure.
• If you're pregnant, have had recent surgery on your belly or chest, or have a heart or lung condition, check with your care provider first.
• This is a practice for adults, and it doesn't replace any kind of health care.