Breathing Technique for Relaxation
This technique can be done in most positions but the easiest is lying on your back.
- Lie flat on your back in a quiet peaceful location. (Do the best you can to find a location like this).
- With your eyes closed, focus your attention on your heart. Imagine that you are taking the breath in through your heart. With your mouth closed, breathe in through your nose slowly. Take approximately
4 sec. to inhale. - As you are inhaling, use your diaphragm. You will know you’re doing it correctly if your stomach rises and your chest doesn’t move. NOTE: To help you re-integrate your brain and the diaphragm muscle, put one hand on your chest and a book (or the other hand) on your belly. As you breathe in, make sure the book on your belly raises. If you must, forcefully push your stomach out as you breathe in. Almost automatically you will create a vacuum in the lungs and they will fill with air. (that’s how the diaphragm works).
- Next, as you exhale, slightly open your mouth and let the air out slowly taking 6 to 7 sec. As you do this, your stomach should go down gradually pushing the air out of your lungs. Imagine that you are blowing on a candle flame without blowing it out.
- As you are exhaling, focus your attention, with your eyes closed, on your solar plexus area. That’s
right above your stomach where your rib cage meets. Imagine that the air is going out through that area.
To get the positive effects of this activity, you’ll need to do this for a minimum of 5 min. At first you may experience some dizziness due to the increased O2 in your system so start at a short duration and work your way up in time. You will get even greater benefits if you continue to do this for longer periods of time. 10, 15, 20 mins.
Don’t be discouraged if you fall asleep, keep trying the breathing and eventually you won’t fall asleep. As you improve you will experience a wonderful relaxed state of stress free consciousness.
This activity will actually improve the frequency at which your brain functions which will have global positive effects for you and your health. Your hearth health will improve and your brain will have the opportunity to rest and recover. In order to get these changes, the activity needs to be repeated daily, even multiple times a day in order to change the habit pattern of your brain and reset the brains resting rate. A fairly permanent resting rate of brain function seems to be achieved around the 4th to 5th month of repeating this activity.
Caution: don’t make doing this activity another stressful thing in your life. It’s about learning to calm your entire system.
Blood pressure will lower if it’s too high, immune system function will improve, digestion will improve, life in general will not seem so stressful.