This exercise helps you unlock rotation through your spine and hips while lying on your side, letting your breath do the turning.
Crocodile Breathing Partner Assist
This exercise helps you learn to breathe into your lower back first, with a partner's hand on your back giving you a target.
- Starting Position:
- Prone
Start: Lie face down with your forehead on your hands, palms down, one over the other. Chest, arms, and neck relaxed, body as flat as it gets. Your partner places one hand on your lower back and one on your upper back.
Action:
Breathe in through your nose and feel the air travel past your chest into your belly — it should press into the floor on its own.
Aim the breath at the hand on your lower back. That hand should lift first; the upper hand only at the very end.
Your partner adds a little gentle pressure to the lower back so you have something to breathe against.
Take big inhales — 80% or more of a full breath — and long exhales. Breathe out fully before the next breath. Exhaling through the mouth is fine.
Feel: Lower hand first, every breath. If your shoulders rise or the upper hand moves first, the breath went to your chest.
Related Exercises
-
-
This exercise helps you learn and practice breathing with your diaphragm, using ankle weights on your back to feel where the breath lands.