Take a deep breath. Hold it for just a moment then let it out.
What do you feel in your body as you do this?
Do it again. Inhale deeply, expanding your ribs and up under your shoulders, down into your belly. Fill up as much as you can, then let it out.
What do you notice? What do you feel?
This time take a smaller breath in and then let all of the air out of your lungs. Exhale completely. Take a moment there. Slouch over to push that last bit out. Now sit up again without breathing in, to create a vacuum. Then open your windpipe and let the air flood back in. Fill all the way up.
Now settle back into normal breath.
What do you feel in your body? How deep into your belly did the breath go? Could you feel your upper lungs expanding the space between your clavicle and your shoulder blades?
Notice how many sensations you feel in your body just from exaggerating your breath. How cool is that? How cool is it that even if you have taken deep breaths a million and a half times in order to slow down it still works? It still connects you into your body. It still oxygenates your brain. It still puts your ego's attention onto your body for a moment and away from its vigilance on your social life.
Taking a deep breath has to be the simplest and most universally known method for slowing down.
Let's do a little exploration. Take another deep breath. Pay attention to the sensation of your ribs expanding. Exhale. Feel your ribs relax. Breathe into different parts of your ribs. Where do they expand easily? Where do they resist?
For contrast, try to use your muscles to expand your ribs. Can you feel the air moving into your lungs? Exhale with your muscles squeezing your ribs. How much effort does it take? How much air actually moved in and out of your lungs?
Here's another experiment. Exhale just by collapsing your body. Curl your body down, starting with your head to your chest and keep going, letting the air push out as much as you can. Now sit up again, letting the air come in. How much air does this move in and out of your lungs?
Try expelling the air from your lungs by contracting your diaphragm. Pump the air in and out just by moving your diaphragm.
Okay. Now breathe a normal, deep inhale and exhale, letting your ribs relax and ride the movement of your lungs. What do you feel in your body? Where are your thoughts?
Slowing down into the moment means quieting your ego. The ego does not have any jurisdiction in the present moment. It exists in the future and the past. You could say slowing down into the present moment gets you out of your ego. Or you could say getting out of your ego brings you into the present moment. It's the same thing.
Bringing your attention to your breath makes your ego focus on your body, which takes its attention away from its social conditioning. Any time you bring your attention to your body it slows your ego down. It has to, because taking care of the body is the ego's primary job. This gives you a chance to pay attention to what you are feeling underneath your ego's attempts to distract you.
Spiritual and spiritual/physical disciplines like meditation and yoga teach many, many breathing techniques. They have wildly different focuses, from quieting your mind to building up energy, from cooling your body to heating it up. Some focus on bringing your awareness more into the divine, some more into your body. As practices they all serve to open you to more of your Self. They're also quite fun to explore. And, remarkably enough, every one of them will serve to slow your ego down.
Pranayama is one of the most basic meditation breathing techniques. It is a simple technique which opens the connection between your physical body and your Divine Self.
Simply put, Pranayama consists of breathing in one nostril, holding your breath, and breathing out your other nostril, then breathing in the second nostril, holding your breath, and breathing out the first. By focusing the breath to the different sides of your body it balances the two sides of your brain.
Want to give it a go? Great.
Make yourself comfortable sitting up. Place one hand in front of your face, with your thumb next to one nostril and your middle finger next to the other. Place your index finger between your eyebrows, the resting tip putting slight pressure on your third eye. You can close your eyes or not.
Block off one nostril by pressing your finger against the side of your nose and breathe in through the other nostril. Let your inhale take about 4 seconds – slow and steady. Hold your breath for 4 more seconds. You can kind of sit your breath down, resting your ribs. Now release your finger, opening that nostril, and press your thumb against the other side of your nose, blocking that nostril. Let your breath come out the opposite side from where it came in.
Rest after the exhale for a count of four. Now breathe in through that same nostril. At the top of your inhale rest in your fullness, switch sides again, and breathe out through the other nostril.
Repeat this for as long as you like, inhaling on one side and then the other.
If you find you can only breathe easily on one side just be gentle with yourself. Do it a little bit and let it go. Our bodies naturally make one side of the nose more available to breathing than the other at different times of the day. It has to do with which side of your brain is most active at different times. Pranayama aims to connect the two sides of the brain to bring them more into balance. I have found that a few days of practicing this technique tends to balance out my sinuses, too, so that they are both more open.
You can choose your focus while doing Pranayama. I learned it as a spiritual practice to open to my God Self. My teacher taught us to focus our physical eyes towards our third eye. This puts pressure on the pineal gland, which lives right there at the front of your brain behind your third eye. We were also taught to contemplate the mantra Om (Universal Love).
You don't have to do this, but of course you can. It can help to remind you of how much more of you there is than just what is apparent in the 3rd dimension.
Now, after reading this and maybe playing with your breath a little bit, how do you feel? Do you feel calmer than when you opened this page? Do you feel more connected with and available to yourself? Take a moment here. Give yourself this treat. In this moment let your connection to yourself be the most important thing you can do. Breathe.
Posts
