Breathe your way to Inner Peace …Your “Sacred Space”
Breathing is the essential process that allows life as we know it. As a physiotherapist, I have been teaching patients how to “breathe” correctly for more than 15 years.
Breathe Your Way To Less Injuries And Better Performance is a blog post my husband, Hudson, wrote a couple of years ago in our physiotherapy website.
“The correct pattern of breathing and core stabilisation are established early in childhood as part of our musculoskeletal development. However, through shortcoming in this development as children or later as a result of injury and bad habits we can lose the ability to correctly activate these key stabilising muscles leading to poor posture, dysfunction movement patterns and injuries…”
As a physio I use breathing techniques to improve sports performance, prevent injuries, etc. I emphasize even more to chronic pain patients, where I use a biopsychosocial approach. Scientific pain research shows that thoughts, emotions and beliefs can influence to a high degree the level of pain a person feels, despite the level of injury to the actual physical body.
Deep slow abdominal breaths facilitates the body to physiologically calm down thoughts, feelings and emotions… grounding us back to the physical body so the “mental body” can have a break!!!
Conscious breathing has been used for ages across different medical health modalities and also across ancient teachings, like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Yoga.
When I started studying Pranic Healing, I started to understand how breathing can also clear our energy system of all the “junk” we store on a daily basis – excess critical thoughts, judgements, irritation, anger and so many of the “lower emotions”. Thoughts and feelings are just energy and they can be flushed out of your system by simply focusing on your breath as a quick and effective solution.
Studying Advanced Pranic Healing by Master Choa Kok Sui, I was excited to read this paragraph called PROPER Breathing. It truly was a sign that I had found my energy healing modality. The physical visible body IS just as important as the invisible one!!! They complement each other .
“Basically, There are two ways of Breathing : The Correct Way and The Incorrect Way” – MCKS
I have been wondering on and off for years how the heck did people really start believing that they must breath IN their chest? Where did the phrases “Breathe in (to) your lungs, lift your chest up” come from? So many health professionals use that expression, which reinforces people to do the incorrect breathing!!!
Master Choa, goes on …
“The correct way is abdominal breathing and the incorrect is chest breathing. It is the diaphragm which enables the lungs to expand. The lungs by themselves do not have the capacity to expand in order to draw in air or to expel used-up air”
For the lungs to fully fill with air (prana), they must have space. So the diaphragm, the muscle responsible for breathing, sits under the lungs (where your solar plexus chakra is!). As we breathe IN, the diaphragm is contracting and IDEALLY moving down so the lungs will have the “space” to fill up with air completely. If the diaphragm doesn’t move down, then you are not able to truly fill the lower parts of the lungs fully. So, in simple words, physically, if you are a chest breather, you are NOT using your full lung capacity. Energetically, you will tend to congest your front heart chakra (and your solar plexus – which is the power house for emotional issues!!!)
How to breathe properly then? Well, AWARENESS is the first step.
Become aware of where you breathe. Can you expand your abdomen slightly as you breathe in? Does your chest move up?
Slowly focus your mind on the abdominal region as you breathe IN. Be relaxed as you do. Keep breathing in and out with awareness of where the breath is going … and how relaxed you are.
Remember that your brain doesn’t like changes but you are in control so you must overcome the resistance to change thoughts by focusing your attention on the CORRECT breathing pattern and repeat as many times through the day as possible. Focus attention and repetition are the keys to making changes … including your breathing pattern.
It is a process … be patient and persistent. It will pay off.
Love and Light,
Leia
