Something has been happening in me and around me recently… It’s difficult to describe or put into words, but it is becoming ever so real and unavoidable, inescapable ever-present and growing…
It’s a freedom. It’s a spaciousness. It’s an experience of breathing bubbles of light instead of molecules of air. It’s an overwhelming sense of love and clarity, of profound peace, of deep gratitude and appreciation, of causeless joy that needs no expression.
Often it comes as a sudden rush. It feels like waves that surge. Sometimes like an explosion. And sometimes it is so soft and subtle and silent—almost imperceptible.
It reminds me of the ten-thousand-hour rule to master any skill. And it reminds me of the Bruce Lee quote about not being concerned with someone who has practiced a thousand moves once, but the one who has practiced one move a thousand times.
And it reminds me of putting a hundred kilo weight on the end of a scale and then beginning to add one gram at a time to the other side. For so long it seems as if nothing is happening. We practice something every day, again and again, and yet it feels like we are getting nowhere.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, something begins to shift. And the careful conscious placing of each additional gram allows the scale to shift even more. It’s like when someone is an ‘overnight success’ because no one notices the years of hard work or the relentless single-minded focus.
I am talking about Heart Centered Breathing—about opening and expanding and relaxing and letting go—our breathing mantra! And it is about identifying and removing everything that is in our way—thoughts and feelings, ideas and attitudes, points of view, habits and patterns and beliefs.
And it is about deliberately practicing in the most difficult situations and remembering to practice in the most uncomfortable moments. It means practicing until it becomes automatic or unconscious—second nature. It’s about being total.
It’s about practicing ‘conscious, active, all-inclusive, unconditional love and acceptance’. It’s about learning to ‘be with what is as it is’. And remembering that ‘I am always already free’. It is about ‘truth, simplicity and love’.
It’s about forgiving yourself and others to the point of being a fool. And it’s about replacing all our miscellaneous urges with a single chosen response, replacing random reactions with a divine spiritual principle.
And it is related to a game I’ve been playing for a long time: when I feel personal love I need to make it universal. And when I feel universal love, I want to make it as personal as possible!
It’s a dance that honors my honest needs and current limitations even as I evolve and ascend toward my highest aspirations and my ultimate potential.
We need to be like that mad scientist who locks himself in his lab to work on his experiments for days on end and forgets to eat or sleep. Or the wild artist who locks himself in his studio, obsessed with his painting, and forgets to eat and sleep.
It’s about being total. It’s about enthusiasm and passion. It’s about being childlike and Zen-like. It’s about making breathing a meditation as well as an exercise.
It’s about infusing every cell in your body with Breath Energy and sensing this Breath Energy with or from every cell in your body.
When you inhale feel the expansion side to side, top to bottom, front to back. And feel the energy rise up from deep within you even as you feel the air pouring in from all around you.
Imagine yourself as a little tiny person standing in your heart and pushing on the walls and the floor and the ceiling of your heart, making it bigger with every breath.
Feel yourself actually expand on the inhale and imagine yourself continuing to expand on the exhale. Radiate as you melt into your center and fall into your center as you radiate outward in all directions.
Use your heart to breathe Energy into to every cell of your body with your inhale. And then fill your heart with Energy during the inhale and distribute it to every cell in your body with the exhale.
Which feels easier? More natural? More real? Which do you enjoy more? Practice it all the time, every chance you get, whenever you remember.
Use every breath to open your heart. Or better yet use every breath to open yourself around your heart with each breath.
Practice taking breaths and practice receiving breaths. Go back and forth between doing the breathing and being breathed—between breathing the breath and letting the breath breathe you.
Whenever something gets your attention, breathe. Whenever you have a strange feeling in your body, breathe. Whenever you get upset, breathe. Whenever you get excited, breathe. Whenever you feel pleasure, breathe. Whenever you feel pain, breathe.
Whenever anything arises in consciousness, meet it and greet it with heart centered breathing. When you look at a sunset, don’t just look at it, breathe it in. Whenever you hear something, don’t just listen, breathe in what you hear.
Make breathing equal feeling and make feeling equal breathing. Make every breath a prayer and make every breath a blessing. This is Spiritual Breathing. It is heart centered breathing.
Practice, practice, practice, practice… And something amazing, beautiful, powerful, ineffable will begin to happen in you and around you.
Good luck in your practice.
And many blessings on your path.
May, 2026
Breathmastery.com
