Breath Practice:
The Balloon Breath

Balloon Breath

Balloon breath is an engaging diaphragmatic, deep breathing practice. During this practice, children use their imaginations to help them visualize a balloon in their bellies. When they are able to imagine the balloon in their belly, they can more easily anchor and focus their attention on directing the air they inhale, elongating and deepening their inhales and exhales. Children place their hands on their body as they breath in this way to deepen their awareness of the breath.

  • reduces stress and anxiety

  • strengthens the diaphragm

  • improves stability in the core muscles

  • slows down the breathing rate

  • lowers the heart rate and blood pressure

  • promotes relaxation

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. Place one hand on the middle of the upper chest and one on the belly.

3. To inhale, slowly breathe in through the nose, drawing the breath down toward the stomach. The stomach should push upward against the hand, while the chest remains still. Imagine the breath to fill the stomach like air in a balloon filling up in your hand.

4. To exhale, tighten the abdominal muscles and let the stomach fall downward while exhaling through pursed lips. Again, the chest should remain still.

5. Pause to notice how you feel.

  1. Place your hands on your belly and notice your belly rise with your inhale and lower with an exhale

  2. Slowly inhale and filling your belly like a balloon

  3. Slowly exhale and deflate your balloon and feel you belly button come closer to your spine

  4. Take several round completely filling your balloon belly and deflating your balloon belly

Teaching Cues for Students

Implementation & Development

See our Child Development Page for more information to help tailor your instruction to best meet the needs of your students.

All children learn best given clear, concise, instructions, trying to reduce directional cues down to 4 steps.

Enjoys learning through games, songs, and stories. Cues for Balloon Breath can be incorporated into a song or a rhyme to make it more playful.

To help focus the attention on the belly, it may be helpful to use an object such as a small stuffed animal or a soft small prop such as a pillow to help younger children notice the object rise with the inhale and fall with the exhale.

Keep cues limited, simple, and be consistent with your language to help build a predictable routine. Modeling and pointing to the body parts you are engaging is useful. It may be helpful to teach and support younger students to feel inhales and exhales in their bellies. It may be useful to bring in books involving balloons and/or to create an imaginary scenario in which students are blowing up balloons to help prepare for a party.

You can also model exaggerated body language to help support the breathing, such as standing up big and taking up a lot of space with the inhale and deflating and shrinking down to a small shape with the exhale.

Still enjoy routine, learning through games, group activity.

Appreciates praise and being noticed. After you teach the Balloon Breath, and students are comfortable and familiar, you may engage student leaders to guide the group.

Slightly longer attention spans, may be able to take in more instructions and longer practices. You might invite students to notice the connections between the Balloon Breath practice, how they feel, and the quality of their minds, and feelings.

You may wish to incorporate more of the explicit benefits of diaphragmatic breathing into your lesson to engage middle-aged students. You may invite students to think of other examples that mimic Balloon Breath to help expand their imagery while practicing the Balloon Breath.

As adolescence begins and continues, students will start to feel preoccupied with body image. It is important to cultivate a safe space for students to practice the Balloon Breath where they don’t feel singled out and they have the option to close their eyes or to soften their gaze.

As Balloon Breath is more playful, you may use Complete Breath in place of Balloon Breath for Older children.

As students assert a greater level of autonomy, it is important to build in more opportunities for choice and agency. If possible, give students options as which breathing practice they would like to explore, or choices within that practice. This can be as simple as choosing to focus their breathing in one particular part of their body in which they feel it most acutely or the integration of all three parts.

 

Video

 

Helpful Hints

Placing hands on the body may be helpful in supporting children to understand and be in tune with where their breath is in their body. Before exploring the Balloon Breath, you may lead children to take deeper natural breathes, using their hands to feel the belly, ribs, and chest rise and fall with the inhale and exhale. This soft introduction may make the focus on the belly during Balloon Breath easier to anchor on to.

Options

The Balloon Breath can be done sitting, standing, laying down, or during a yoga posture.

Precautions

Respiratory inflammation: practice moderately

Sinus congestion: breathe through the mouth as needed

  • Content from NYCDOE YMTP² curricular materials