Our personal growth and spiritual development are based on expanding our awareness and raising our consciousness. If we are to evolve, we must break through our limited thinking. And we must transcend our survival-based programming. And breathwork is the best tool we have for doing exactly that.
Our nervous system acts more like a filter than a window. Our senses reveal a biologically useful sample of reality while excluding vastly more information than reaches consciousness. Dogs hear things we don’t hear. Cats see things we don’t see. Bees detect ultraviolet patterns that we don’t. Radio receivers and infrared cameras detect things our eyes and ears cannot.
Breathwork allows us to develop what I am calling “non-local awareness.” I’ve been teaching what we call a “Touchpoint Meditation.” To help us expand our awareness of the breath. And this expanded awareness carries over into everything else we see, hear, touch, feel, taste, or smell.
PRACTICE
We begin with the first touchpoint at the tip of the nose. Bring all your attention, all your energy to that single point. It is very important to be Zen-like in this practice. Apply beginner’s mind and be total!
The next touchpoint is further into the nasal passages—the bridge of the nose. Plant your attention there and track the breathing sensation from that point. Then we move to the sinuses and skull… then the throat… then up under the collarbones and upper chest…
Then we move down to the heart space at the center of the chest… then the lower ribs and the back… the upper abdomen… the lower belly… Sense the breath from all these points at the same time. Notice which points are easy to sense and which require more focus and training.
The idea is to develop a full body awareness of the breath—to infuse every cell with breath-energy and sense the breath from every cell in the body. This is the non-local awareness I refer to and that we want to develop. Practice until it is second nature!
The next ability is to deepen our relaxation, because when we think we are relaxed, we are not. We have simply settled on to our everyday baseline level of tension. And it’s not a matter of being relaxed or not. There are levels of relaxation, dimensions of relaxation.
How quickly can you relax? How deeply can you relax? How totally can you relax? In the face of what situations and in the middle of what circumstances can you relax?
And relaxation is not just physical: it is mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual. We must learn to relax more, and again, Breathwork is the perfect tool we have for doing this.
PRACTICE
I have been sharing this exercise/meditation wherever I go lately because this skill is producing so many gentle openings, releases and breakthroughs.
The first skill is snapping the exhale loose. We start with a very full inhale—opening and expanding as much as possible so that we trigger as much relaxation as possible with the exhale. Let the exhale go quickly and completely. Release it all at once. Set it free. Dump it out.
And when you do, be sure to focus on relaxing a muscle, releasing a joint. Release and relax a group of muscles, a collection of joints. Start with the jaw. When you release the breath, release your jaw at the same time. Relax the face muscle, the neck and shoulders, the limbs, the spine, the belly, the hips… With practice, you let the whole body go when you let the exhale go.
The next skill is when the air stops coming out to keep exhaling mentally. When you snap the exhale loose and let go you begin to drop down, fall inward… leaving the surface, the circumference and dropping down into the depths, toward your center.
Ride the exhale down to that still silent space at the bottom of the exhale. You are coming home to a place before and beyond everything that has happened to you in this world—a place free of everything you have accumulated—your habits, patterns, trauma, conditioning, history, your limited sense of self.
Linger in this place for a few moments. Before inhaling again. It should feel like coming home. You just made a cosmic journey through the inhale and the exhale, and you want to rest before beginning the next journey. Enjoy the spaciousness, the state of bright soft open relaxation.
The next skill is to learn to inhale without producing any tension, without using effort or a lot of muscular activity, because all that is the opposite of relaxation.
If you produce any tension with the inhale, even though you are good at letting go, the only tension you will release is the tension you just produced, and so you won’t get anywhere and you can’t go deeper. This takes practice.
It’s about “making space” for the inhale rather than “pulling in” the inhale. In a way, we want the quality of relaxation and spaciousness we touched at the bottom of the exhale to carry over into how we inhale.
The next and final skill in this exercise/meditation is to learn to breathe in not only without creating any new tension, but in a way that continues and deepens the relaxation you produced on the exhale.
So there you have it: two practices that when combined, produce an amazing shift, a new way of being and relating to yourself and your body, to your feelings and sensations, your emotions, reactions, to others and the world.
I have recorded several live versions of these meditation exercises. They will be packaged together and offered as a new Digital product, and they will be added to the Practitioner Member files.
Good luck in your practice, and many blessings on your path!
August, 2026
Breathmastery.com
