This month I would like to focus on the highest benefits of Breathwork and the ultimate goal of Spiritual Breathing. Our Breathe India Tour has reawakened my original inspirations and has helped me to reconnect with the ancient roots and source of this practice.
Breathwork has finally entered the mainstream, and that is wonderful news. In fact, for me it’s a lifelong dream come true! But I am sad to say that today, many so-called elders, experts, leaders, and many people who profess to be ’breathing masters’ are not at all suited to this sacred work.
And so, one of the first things I want to say is that Spiritual Breathing and the Path of Breath Mastery is not for everyone. It is not for those who buy into or support victim mentality or indulge in spiritual materialism. It’s not for ‘wanna-be therapists’ or self-righteous, high-horse people with guru complexes.
Countless medical and scientific studies prove that Breathwork is a game changer if you are a health and fitness junkie, or if your goal is to increase performance, productivity, or success in business, sports, or the healing arts. But if your end goal is to be faster, stronger, smarter, or believe that you are better than everyone else, then you are missing the point!
If medical science is your religion, and priests, politicians, or so-called experts and authorities are your gods, then you are in the wrong place. If you want to use Breathwork to enhance your ego, or to fix people, or to increase your followers on TikTok or Instagram, or to satisfy your need for more attention or significance, then you are missing the point.
Spiritual Breathing is about finding God in the Breath. It’s about awakening to who you really are–your real true self. It’s about being more conscious and alive, about transcending ego and duality. It’s about self-liberation and selfless service. It’s about oneness and wholeness. It’s about awakening inner peace and promoting world peace. It’s about living in truth, simplicity, and love.
Spiritual Breathing is about taking 100% responsibility for everything that happens in you and blaming no one for what happens to you. It’s about learning to breathe energy and not just air. It’s about using the Breath to generate or connect with healing and creative energies. It’s about uplifting yourself and others. It’s about walking your own path and living your purpose.
On a practical level, Spiritual Breathing is about combining heartfelt intention, subtle body awareness, and conscious breathing. It’s about embodying spiritual principles and applying universal forces, such as rhythm, circles, cycles, polarities. And it’s about creatively using sound, movement, visualization, and affirmations.
Here are some of the Spiritual Breathing Exercises, Techniques and Meditations I have been teaching, and that our India group has been practicing on our journey. Try them. Play with them. And use them to create your own unique spiritual breathing practices.
Recall and reflect on a time when someone was expressing love to you, or something that causes you to feel very grateful. Use the breath to take you into those times, or to awaken the memory of them. Visualize the feeling of love and appreciation as a ball of light growing and expanding with every breath.
Be conscious of each breath with your whole body. Use the breath to clean and sweep up and down through your body. Inhale upward to reach and connect to spiritual energies above, and exhale downward to ground and anchor yourself to the earth.
Bring subtlety and relaxation into your practice. Sense the prana in the air. And don’t be afraid to use your breath to hammer away at your blockages and limitations.
Focus on your heart when you breathe. And incorporate fire purification into your breathing practice.
Practice de-reflexive breathing to dissolve the illusion of separateness. Be warmed by the inflow of light with every exhale. Deliberately and quietly breathe heart energy out to others.
Create a smooth, graceful, elegant quality in yourself with in each breath, and in the flow of your breathing.
Look for and create symbolism in your breath. Translate breathing patterns into high psychological and emotional states.
Focus on subtle sensations in the body produced by the breath. Use micro movements to soften your structures and make space in yourself.
Practice Co-Meditation and practice connecting to others with the breath. Link your heartbeat to your breathing.
Go back and forth between big fast powerful breathing patterns, and soft gentle subtle patterns.
Use the simple yet profoundly effective pattern of two small breaths and one big one, in a continuous rhythm. Dial up and dial down the speed and intensity.
When you are in a high energy state, meditate. When you are in meditation, breathe.
Good luck in your practice.
And many blessings on your path.
September 2023
