The Conscious Breath

The conscious breath is one of the tools we have in this life to clean out our body-mind system before we drift into the natural death spiral.

The more work we do to free our body-mind energies the easier it will be for us to let go of our attachments in the end.

Freedom is all we want. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. Practicing the conscious breath gives us all of these in abundance.

Breathing appears to be a simple process and it is most natural. We have been doing it since the moment we were born.

What we haven’t been doing is combining our conscious will with the breath. We also have not been paying close attention to the variations in our breathing.

In order to progress on a path that leads to purification of body-mind, we must fully master our breath.

Energy is flowing through the body-mind system all the time. Stagnation or blockages result in either physical or emotional discomforts.

Consciously breathing into these blockages will help dissolve them and thereby ease the discomfort.

Deep conscious belly breathing leads to deep relaxation of the body-mind system. Sinking deeper and deeper into the lowering breath brings more and more relaxation and a spreading sense of ease.

Relaxing the abdominal muscles allows us to sink deeper and deeper into this widening and opening conscious breath. We fill our lungs with the breath of our existence, and we are thankful for it.

We find our sense of identity in this natural function of the in-and outbreath. We are conscious of every nuance of it. We get to know our bodies by following the breath into every part of our bodies. We discover where there are blockages, where there are tensions, where there is discomfort. And we honor those blockages, tensions, and discomforts. And then we see if we can find ways around them, or gently through them, so that our energy can flow freely once again.

This free flow of energy is the way to experience true comfort, true physical and emotional health. Our will and our intention are directing the flow of this energy. We can send it to our head when we have headaches, or our toes when it hurts there. The way we do this, is through the breath. We breathe in consciously into our deep belly, and then on the outbreath, we direct the energy where we want it to go either inside our body-mind system or even outside of it into our environment.

In other words, we can use the energy for healing ourselves or for healing others. Our intention is what determines where the energy goes. First, we store it up in our deep belly, and then we direct it with our intentions and will.

During a physical workout we can direct the energy into our muscles on the outbreath. We breathe in and on the out-breath we contract our muscles and breathe energy into them. Then we hold for a while, then breathe out and relax the muscle. We can choose any of the various muscles or muscle groups of our body.

Another way to use the conscious breath in bodywork is to breathe into each of these muscles or muscles groups while contracting them. We can start at our toes and work our way up to our head, muscle by muscle. This wakes up the muscles. This is a good exercise to do in the morning while still lying in bed.

We need to do all physical exercises while practicing the fully conscious breath. It is important that we adjust our physical exercises so that we can keep breathing slowly through the nose.

Agitated breathing is not what we are striving for. Deep, conscious breathing is our goal. And our intention is always to bring tension release and relaxation to the body-mind system. We want to dissolve stress. We want to bring comfort and ease.

This does not mean that we don’t tax our muscles. We can hold a yoga pose for several minutes until we begin to shake a bit, and still breathe in a calm and relaxed manner, being fully aware of what we are doing.

The intent is always towards clarity, towards opening the energy flow in body-mind. Finding those blockages and actively dissolving them. Sensing the buildup of energy in body-mind. Filling up the body-mind with this energy until we sense the bliss of being, the ecstasy of existing. And then we realize that life is truly exquisite. Every conscious breath brings us to the bliss of existence. We load up on bliss every time we take a breath. We breathe. We exist. We are alive. We are thankful for being. We don’t know how we came to be, but here we are, and we are thankful.