Breathing Techniques for Meditation
Breathing techniques are considered an essential part of meditation in most spiritual schools. Controlling one’s breath or adjusting it is part of the discipline that forms part of most meditation methods.
In addition, breathing is considered a sort of gate between the conscious and subconscious states of the mind. Unlike other body functions, breathing can be done in a subconscious way, without us even noticing it, or we can make a conscious decision to control our breathing. Because of this, many meditation schools believe that it’s crucial to learn breathing techniques in order to connect our conscious and subconscious and put them in synchronization.
There are many breathing techniques and all of them start by having you select a comfortable position. You can sit in a comfortable chair or lie down. Some spiritual guides will even let you lie down on your side or even on your stomach. The position doesn’t really matter as long as two conditions are met: first, your spine must be really straight; second, your body must be as comfortable as possible to avoid any discomfort that could distract your mind.
One of the most basic breathing techniques used in meditation is the control of one’s own breathing. It usually involves the relaxing of the body in order to stop fast breathing, and then slowly reducing the pace of the inhaling and exhaling to the point that it seems to the observer that you’re hardly breathing at all.
There are also breathing techniques that are aimed at beginners. One of them consists in recognizing the body’s natural breathing speed and just following it with the mind. The principle behind it consists on training the mind to eliminate every thought and just focusing on observing a non-stop natural process of your own body. When the mind is trained to eliminate “noise,” the practitioner can then move on to more difficult meditation exercises.
Other breathing techniques involve the integration of elements into the flow of the breathing. This allows the practitioner to focus his or her mind in an element that is not his or her own breathing, such as a mantra. Some guides, however, prefer to have their students start with numbers, rather than mantras. Numbers are considered more “neutral” and are better for introducing meditation to people that might object mantras due to religious beliefs.
Meditation breathing techniques that use numbers usually follow two patterns. The simplest one consists on counting the number of times you inhale and exhale until you reach a certain number, at which point you start counting backwards. The second one requires you to count a short series of numbers, let’s say from 1 to 4, for example, as you inhale. Then, you hold your breath while you count again.
Finally, you exhale while you count the series one last time. Sometimes you’ll have to count a bit more while you’re exhaling.
Finally, take into consideration that it may take you a while to get used to using breathing techniques for your meditation sessions. It’s quite normal to feel a bit dizzy or to experience some discomfort after practicing certain breathing techniques. However, if the discomfort is big, long lasting, or painful, you should speak with your meditation guide.
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