This page provides you with basic guidelines for enacting healthy, conscious breathing.
- Narrow your breathing down to your nostrils only – inhale and exhale with the mouth closed unless instructed to do otherwise.
- Sit with your spine straight. Don’t strain any muscles in your body. You can sit with your eyes open or closed, palms facing up on your lap or down if you prefer.
- Breathing on DoAsOne.com in quiet surroundings is recommended.
- Never force inhales or exhales but rather allow all motions of breath to happen as you instruct them. Forced breathing feels very unnatural so pay attention to finding a natural flow.
- Breathing should be smooth and naturally rhythmic, never erratic or choppy.
- Let go of your abdominal muscles and breathe deeply and slowly into your lower lung area filling up and expanding your tummy. Your navel area/lower abdomen expands first. Then your ribs and mid-lung area fill up next. Finally, the upper lung area fills without straining any parts of your body.
- Touch your tongue lightly to the roof of your mouth a half inch to an inch up from the back of your front teeth. This completes an electric charge in the body. It is very grounding.
- Allow natural pauses to happen between the breaths. Our anatomies are all different and we must celebrate that difference by simply allowing our breaths to flow with the rhythm of the exercise and feel our way through it. Yogis have for centuries commented about a very peaceful state of being found between the breaths. Search and you will find this peaceful feeling attained between the inhales and exhales of your life.
- Never go too deep too quick when enacting conscious breathing. Conscious breathing happens as soon as you think to yourself, “breathe in” or “breathe out.” When this thought happens and your body answers the call-to-action, it is important that you don’t force it by going too deep too quick. Because breath moves energy, this can unearth old emotions and stuck energies that are lodged in your body.
Many people that are new to conscious breathing discover that they have a heavy feeling in the stomach or a slightly overwhelming feeling coming over them. Always give yourself permission to stop if this happens. This means that old, stuck energies and emotions need to be released before breathing can be relaxing and flowing freely. One can go out in solitude and literally laugh out or scream out these energies, you could sing them out in song, breathe deeply through the feelings, paint them into art or release them in virtually any way you wish. The preferred way is to let the feelings exist and slowly breathe through them. When you do this you are removing the stuck energies from their root. When you shake them out by any of the means of catharsis mentioned above, then you are getting yourself through the moment but not removing the root yet. Breathe through and find your way to freedom again!