Breathing Meditation for Self Care

As you know, a person can live without food for a month, without water – for a week, without sleep – for a few days, and without breathing – for only a few minutes. Breath is life. So, if you know ‘Breathing Meditation’, you can live a long and happy life. The ultimate self care.

What is Breathing Meditation

Breathing meditation is a type of meditation in which attention during practice is focused on breathing. Use the breath as a support for meditation.

This is one of the easiest techniques, and it is very popular with beginners. At the same time, this technique is a powerful tool to calm the mind from worries, stop the flow of thoughts and get in touch with yourself.

At its core, this is an easy form of pranayama (yogic breathing); you can practice it either as a separate meditation or by combining it with other types of techniques. In this kind of meditation, you carefully focus on your breath and try not to fall into the thoughts that may come during the practice. 

Benefits of Breathing Meditation

We take 1,000 breaths an hour, 24,000 a day, and 9,000,000 a year. Imagine how much this figure increases with constant chronic stress when the respiratory rate increases. The faster and more often oxygen enters the body, the faster our body is depleted. Therefore, the calmer we breathe, the longer we live. For example. Dogs take about 40 breaths per minute; humans average 17; turtles take 1-3 breaths. At the same time, a dog lives 20 years, a person lives an average of 70, and a turtle lives 500 years. 

However, man is the only being in the world who can regulate both his breathing and his mind. 

With the help of breathing meditation, a person is able to get into a state of expanded consciousness, looking into an area that was previously unknown to him/her. Some benefits of breathing meditations are: 

• diagnosis of your body for blocks, clamps, their study and release; relieve stress and fatigue;
• improvement of hormonal levels;
• revival of stagnant processes in the body and mind;
• increase in efficiency, increase in personal potential, energy accumulation and energy conservation;
• restoration of physical and emotional state, improvement of mood;

How to Breathe For Meditation?

The following is “the best breathing technique for meditation”:

Watch Your Breath

“Some, in order to enter a state of trance, learn to control their breath, sacrificing the exhaled air to the inhaled, and the inhaled to the exhaled; they eventually stop breathing completely and go into a trance.”

(Bhagavad Gita 4.29)

Watching your breath means looking at yourself, tracking the moment of inhalation and the moment of exhalation. Feel that the body itself breathes without your efforts. Also, do not try to inhale or exhale with effort. Let the body breathe on its own. You are like an observer. Feel the air enter and exit through the nostrils. Watch this process.

Additionally, If you like, you can experiment with different ways of breathing. If deep breathing seems comfortable, keep working with it. Not the case; use any rhythm that suits your body. You can try short breathing, fast breathing, slow breathing, deep breathing or shallow breathing – whatever is most comfortable for you at the moment…

Once you have chosen a comfortable breathing rhythm in your chosen place of concentration, pay attention to the sensation of breathing in other parts of the body. Once you have chosen the best breathing technique for meditation, follow all the steps that are described below:

Breathing Meditation Steps:

1. Take a comfortable posture for meditation (the most popular position among practitioners is Lotus );
2. At will, eyes can be closed or semi-closed;
3. Transfer your attention to different parts of the body, starting from the top of the head;
4. Bring your attention to your eyes, relax them completely;
5. Relax your eyebrows, forehead and then the whole face;
6. Bring your attention to your ears and relax them;
7. Bring your attention to the tips of your right toes;
8. Gradually raise your attention higher to the foot, ankle, shin to thigh;
9. Do the same with the left leg;
10. Transfer the concentration of attention to the fingertips of the right hand;
11. Raise attention to the hand, elbow, and shoulder;
12. Do the same with the left hand;
13. Move your attention to the coccyx and gradually lift it up to the neck;
14. Feel complete relaxation and calmness;
15. shift your attention to the area of ​​​​the heart;
16. Start watching your breath;
17. Imagine yourself observing and not acting;
18. Breathing gradually becomes even and calm;
19. Watch your nose as air enters and exits through it;
20. Now just watch how the inhalation and exhalation take place (5-10 minutes)
21. Take a deep breath, open your eyes and come out of meditation.

Final Tips 

1. Feel distracted? Tighten your stomach a little and try to exhale more slowly. This technique will bring you back to meditation.
2. A quiet place for meditation. For example, if you live in an apartment building, you may be disturbed by noises from other rooms or the street. In this case, I can recommend that you use special music for meditation with noise-cancelling headphones. Compositions with long lingering sounds are best.
3. The exercise of prolonged breathing meditation at any time of day, but the most favourable is in the early morning hours and evening. You can start with 5-10 minutes and increase the time as you feel.
4. Success lies in regularity; do meditational breathing regularly, and then there will undoubtedly be an effect, but it will be much more challenging to achieve depth.

I also want to share a secret with you. If you experience pain or discomfort in one part of the body, exhale the air, transfer your attention to the problem area, and imagine that you are exhaling through it, putting your consciousness and love into your breath. Thus, the power of thought and breathing can eliminate some problems in the body. Finally, Breathing meditation is the ultimate self care you need today!

If you liked the article and would like to receive more helpful meditation tips from me, keep visiting our blog and youtube channel for more.