The following is an excerpt from the "21 Day Beginner Yoga" on-line course. If you would like to enroll in the course, click here.

BELLY BONFIRE BREATH:

Benefits: detox, pelvic and core strength, heating, optimizes digestion and metabolism.

The core of any successful yoga practice is your breath. In fact, integrating breath, intention and movement is the hallmark of what makes it yoga.

Today I want you to spark a more powerful inner belly bonfire as you learn my Belly Bonfire Breath technique.

The breath activates all three of your innermost spinal muscular diaphragms--the vocal, breathing, and pelvic diaphragms, in the way your natural anatomy is built to breathe.

Yogis call these "bandhas" (bun-d'has), which translates to 'support' or 'lift'. We'll use your bandhas in a healing, empowering conversation that will light up the dark inner body, bring new circulation, lymph and nerve flow there, to help you optimize cardio, digestion, detox and reproductive health too.

BELLY BONFIRE BREATH:

* Come to sit up in an Easy Seat.
* As you breathe, create a little resistance at the back of the throat:
* Open your mouth and pretend you're fogging up a window as you sigh out through the mouth.
* Keep the throat action as you breathe in.
* Close your lips around the sound and do this same breath in and out through your nose.
* Close your eyes, and imagine a golden flame sitting in the center and base of your pelvis. GPS it: two inches behind the navel, two inches down.
* Inhales:
* Your spine gently lifts deep inside your body, like seaweed rising from the ocean floor.
* Let the flame warm and widen your pelvis as you relax the muscles of your low belly, pelvic diaphragm and pelvic floor muscles.
* Let this action soften your belly and pelvis and infuse it with heat. Imagine torching all that old stuff in your 'basement' that's holding you back!
* Your inhales are a wave of space from the spine outward, and from top of the chest downward to the belly, then pelvis.
* Exhales:
* Contract the 'bathroom' muscles at your pelvic floor, and also the higher ones, the ring of muscles inside your pelvic bones
* Lift them in and up, as if to lift that pelvic flame up behind the navel, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the bottom up, and at the top is your breath, pressing out of your nose.
* Repeat inhales (belly softens) and exhales (pelvic floor muscles and low belly pull in and up) as much as you can in your daily practice.

ENJOY EMPOWERING UP!