Breathing for life

Since I started studying many different areas of both human and personal development including NLP, Hypnosis, parts of Hinduism, parts of Sikhism, Yoga, Western and Eastern energy systems and much more, there has been one area that consistently jumps out at me and seems to be the basis of so much of each of these things.

That area is breathing.

I remember having a friendly debate at work one day and deciding to use it as an opportunity to sharpen my Sleight of Mouth skills. Throughout the conversation I switched between the different patterns and back again noticing how each was affecting the direction of the debate. At some point I started to notice that I was getting frustrated and that the other person seemed to be gaining some ground on their side of the debate and I couldn’t quite figure out why. My voice started to become higher, I was straining to speak and my arguments seemed to be getting more and more irrational as I tried to defend my position. It was at this point that I noticed something odd. Throughout the entire debate I’d hardly breathed. In fact not only had I not breathed much, I’d been holding my breath for the last 5 minutes.

If you’ve ever worked with a client in a hypnosis session or something similar, you’re probably aware of what happens when the person first comes in. To begin with they’re usually somewhat flustered, possibly a bit nervous about what’s to come and they’re usually ready to bombard you with every problem they’ve ever had since birth in the hope that you’ll work your magic and fix everything in one session. At this point you have a couple of options; you can either entertain their manic bombardment of issues and problems or just do something more productive. This is something I like to do even before the session “begins” because it’s so important and so integral to the way everything else will work that to me, it just makes sense to do it straight away – I get the person breathing.

In western society and in the general day to day running of our lives, breathing has become something that many of us have pushed to the back of our minds in placement of much more important things like worrying. The thing is, when you start to breath, really breath, things begin to change automatically. Your lungs open up, blood begins to flow more freely around your body and up into your head, the muscles in your stomach begin to relax, oxygen starts to enter your blood stream in the correct quantities and suddenly the world seems like a different place.

For centuries people have been meditating and at the heart of meditation is breathing. At the heart of doing Yoga is breathing, at the heart of almost all spiritual practices and energy practices breathing is where it begins and at the heart of being alive we find breathing.

“I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.” – Sir Nathan Rothschild

Here’s an exercise taken from the Sodharshan Chakra Kriya pranayama:

1. Sit with your spine straight and your chin lifted slightly so that your neck lines up with your spine.
2. Place your left hand on your left knee
3. Cover your right nostril with your first finger of your right hand with the rest of your fingers pointing upwards
4. Take in a deep breath through your left nostril, first expanding your stomach and then allowing your lungs to fill and finally allowing your shoulders to rise with the breath.
5. Hold this breath for 10 seconds as you mentally chant the phrase “Wahay Guru” (Wa Hay Guru) in your head.
6. Place your right hand on your right knee and cover your left nostril with the first finger of your left hand with the rest of your fingers pointing upwards.
7. Breath out of your right nostril

You can repeat this as many times as you feel is right for you. If you’ve never done this before, give it a go a couple of times then stop. Notice how different you feel and what effects this has had on your physiology.

As well as this you can also practice taking in deep sucking breaths as if you’re drinking the air, hold it for a second or two and then breathe out with the words “Wa Hay Guru” as you elongate them to fill the entire out breath. The words themselves are used to create a type of vibration that, along with the breathing, begins to open up your lungs, blood flow and other energy systems.

This kind of breathing is something I’d recommend doing every day and you can also work on more subtle ways of doing the same thing for use in meetings or on the train.

I’d love to hear about your experiences giving this a go so please leave a comment.

Love, Jamie