Ancient spiritual and physical practices use breathing exercises. Yoga combines prana or pranayama (life force or breath) with asanas or postures. Qigong from China uses breath to move qi or life force, energy throughout the body.
Psychotherapists heal emotional trauma by using breathing techniques (Ley 1999). Breathe enhances healing from cancer and chronic diseases (Manon et al.2003). From the beginning of time breathing has been part of the birthing process. In the 1970s women started using Lamaze breathing techniques to focus and breathe for each stage of labor.
Concentrated breathing cycles in meditation brings the life force into your cells
Breath with movement stimulates your muscles, organs, cells, and neurotransmitters. It balances hormones and keeps you youthful. Increased brainpower, elevated moods are benefits of movement with breath.
It also can help you to stay calm and relax when feeling stressed, tense, or pressured. Breathing is a way to nurture yourself. The military teaches a breathing technique when they get into a critical situation. This technique is belly breathing which is one of the breaths I use daily. Inhale life and exhale to let go is a great way for you to start using breathing techniques. I would like to share one of the many ways to use your breath to stop stress, tension, pressure, and pain. As soon as you feel any of these things coming on use this breath.
You also can use it to help you focus and stay in the present thus making you more productive in your daily life.
One Minute Mindful Breathing Daily Practice
1. Sit in a comfortable position with the spine straight
2. Feet flat on the floor
3. Close your eyes
4. Breath in through the nose like you are sniffing a rose
5. Breath out through the mouth like you are blowing out a dandelion
6. Continue this breathing for at least 1 minute building up to 3 minutes
7. If any thoughts come in let them go with the breath
Give this a try and let me know how you do with it. Please share with me what kind of breathing techniques you use. I love to learn.
Learn how to use this Mindful breathing technique with Emotional Healing.
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Reference:
Ley, R. 1999, The modification of breathing behavior. Pavlovian and operant control in emotion and cognition. Behavior modification 23 (3) :441-79
Manon, R. R., Patel, T. Zhang, D. Henderson, W. Tome, J. Fenwick, B. Paliwal, and M. Mehta. 2003 CT based analysis of free-breathing vs. maximum inspiratory breath-hold techniques for 3-D conformal radiation therapy and intensity radiation therapy in lung cancer: A potential basis for dose-escalation. International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics 57 (2 Suppl.) : S417
