Breath Control

Transcript

I’d like to talk to you about controlling the breath, about pranayama.

About one of the sacred limbs of the Eightfold Path of yoga pranayama, the control of the breath or the restraint of the breath, and the breathing energy, the Chi, if you will, the prana.

I’ve talked about this many times.

And it’s worth talking about again, because breathing practice is just so powerful.

Is this connection between the conscious mind and the unconscious subconscious, these various factors of our self, this physiological process, which can very immediately bring under our control, and send these powerful messages to ourselves, to be peaceful, to relax.

I was just sending, I have this app on my phone, it’s called like, Kundalini something, let me look it up.

Kundalini chakra is a cool app.

And there’s a lot of these breath control apps that you can find on the Google Play Store, Apple Apple Store.

And they will provide you different breathing exercises, different ways of doing these things.

The classic that I’m a strong advocate for is the Nadi Shodhana, which is the channel cleansing exercise.

According to the yogic way of viewing the body, we have these subtle energy channels that go throughout our bodies.

I won’t claim to know if they are literal things that exist, or if they’re just a kind of consequence of the physical aspects of our body.

But that’s beside the point, because when we do this exercise, we can feel that there is something going on.

So with the Nadi Shodhana, we place the index and middle finger on our foreheads as if they were either side of the third eye.

And when you apply a little bit of pressure, you can start to feel something curious that this is pressure points and a forehand with the thumb and the ring finger we manipulate the nostrils.

So breathing in one nostril, holding the breath, breathing out on the nostril, breathing out, breathing in the other nostril, holding the breath and breathing out the first nostril.

In this way, we can settle down very quickly.

Now the classic breathing ratio is normally one for two.

So we breathe in for a count, for example, a count of four.

Retain the breath for a count of 16 and then exhale, for a count of eight.

The exhale the exhalation is longer and this helps us adjust the ratios of carbon dioxide and oxygen within our body.

So this is, you’ve seen in those cartoons like on The Simpsons and like an old TV shows people would breathe into a paper bag when they start hyperventilating because it’s a way to adjust those levels of chemicals or these gases within our body.

But we can do this with the more powerful way with the Nadi Shodhana or with any breathing exercise.

Start to improve this oxygen, this oxygen levels within our body, and naturally, we feel more relaxed, and at once more powerful.

A lot of people, athletes have this conception, that they need to feel a little bit on edge when they are beginning a match.

And it’s not necessarily true.

So there are some information about this.

While people believe that they need to have a little bit of nerves, or a little bit of agitation, that kind of nervous energy, they think that that will help them perform better.

But it turns out that the better thing is normally to be relaxed.

You can be completely relaxed, and completely giving it your all.

Well, everything that needs to be relaxed, is relaxed, and everything that needs to be activated, is activated.

And that’s a kind of conservation of energy or efficiency of energy that we can have.

There is that interview on Joe Rogan, I can’t remember the fellows name, it is a devotee of Krishna.

And this fellow talks about when Joe and he used to train together in an MMA gym, and this fellow, he would never do cardio, he would only do pranayama.

And Joe commented on it, saying that this, like, your cardio was great, like you would hardly ever get gassed out, you would have more energy, more durability or more endurance than a lot of the other fighters in the gym.

And he said, “Yes, that’s right. Well, that’s the power of pranayama.”

When we learn to control our breath, we know it intimately.

And of course, in the Yoga Sutras, Patañjali says that this is one of the key ways to quiet the mind, a great authority on yoga Patañjali tells us thatfor one thing, we should take that seriously.

And we can quite easily find it out from our own experiences.

Just slowing down the breath.

Now, when I first started this many years ago, I was 16, 17 years old.

And I would really try to force myself I would sit there with my wristwatch.

And I would try to do the these longer breathing exercises.

And it’s this auto exigence that I’ve talked about many times, I would try to, you know, I was pretty good at it.

But I was trying to be better than I was.

So I was trying to do, say, inhale for 20 seconds and exhale for 40 seconds, or retain the breath for 40 seconds or something like this for, you know, 15 minutes, 15 minutes going through these cycles.

And now maybe I can, maybe I can do that.

I don’t know, I haven’t tested.

But the thing was, I was getting very uncomfortable trying to hold the breath in or hold the breath out for such long periods.

And I didn’t have to be so hard on myself, it’s fine to do it at the level that you can comfortably do it.

And actually, now I find that that’s how I get the best results by doing it at a level that is comfortable.

And then you can eventually expand and you know, soon enough you’ll be maintaining a bread cycle of 30 seconds or 60 seconds.

And it will come easily and naturally to you.

You don’t have to struggle to improve.

Just allow yourself to do it at that level that is comfortable.

Because so many people out there breathe so shallowly.

And you can hear them just like their breathing cycle is only three or five seconds.

And of course, these people you know they probably have bad posture, hunched over and probably feel pretty anxious all the time.

But we can change this.

We can begin to change this today.

And it’s something so powerful it is this portal to our bodies, to contact our bodies, to come into intimate contact, intimate touch, intimate feel, intimate sensation with ourselves.

Those sweetest parts of ourselves, those cells and those limbs empowered, energized by the consciousness of our own breath.

Soon enough a situation arises that once might have been very difficult, very tense for us.

And in those moments we simply find ourselves saying, “breathe.”

Just as Natalia Doco tells us in her wonderful song ,“Respira”.

“Respira en cualquier momento.

Respira.

Y deja todo pensamiento.”

Breathe in any moment.

Breathe and leave behind any thoughts.

Breath

Let go of any pain.

Breathe and return oneself to the wind.

Thank you for breathing deeply, consciously in any moment.