Please read Tips For Home Practice and Introduction to Breath Work before beginning this sequence.

Undertake breathwork only with the consent of your medical practitioner.

Prana=Life Force or Vital Energy

Preparation:
Fold a pranayama blanket: Take a half-folded yoga blanket and, starting at the long end, accordion fold 3 or 4 times, making each successive layer a bit thinner than the previous layer. It will look like a long flat pyramid.

 

–Begin lying on a pranayama blanket or bolster.

Sit with your hips on the mat in front of the bolster. Slowly recline back. Support your head with a folded blanket if necessary.

Strive to feel as balanced as you can. Imagine a cord running through the center of the face, torso, and between the legs. Do both sides of the cord feel even? Open the arms so that the palms face the ceiling and the shoulders fall away from the blankets. There should be space in your armpits. Allow the legs to flop away from each other. If your hips feel uneven, squeeze the buttocks tight and then release them. If the lower back is uncomfortable, place a bolster or folded blanket beneath your knees.

Use an eyebag to help the eyes relax and sink into their sockets. Feel the eyes become wide luminous pools. Open your inner vision.

–RELAX and SURRENDER to the security of being completely supported on the floor.

Soften the face; release your tongue so that it rests on the lower palate; let the cheeks become light and the ears drop towards the floor. Feel the lines and creases of the forehead melt into the skin of the face, the eyebrows soften and drift away from each other.

Take some time to scan your emotional, physical and mental selves for any places of clenching or holding and send your breath to those areas. Feel them lengthen and widen with the breath.

–When you feel relaxed, bring your awareness to the breath.

As much as possible, turn off your “language” mind and turn on your Sensorial Mind. This is a training in feeling and sensing rather than thinking and judging.

Let your awareness melt into the breath. Allow yourself to become Breath. This is a sacred process. Your individual breath becomes part of the Universal Breath. Enjoy the connection and sense of belonging.

–Begin close observation of the body.

Place your hands lightly on your abdomen and feel the way it rises and falls with the breath.

Place your hands on your lower ribs and observe any movement there as you take several more breaths

Place your hands on your upper chest and sense how it lifts with the inbreath and lowers with the outbreath

Observe with your sensorial mind how the back body moves in relationship to the breath.

Place your fingers lightly on your side ribs. Can you feel any expansion or contraction as you breathe?

–Place your hands alongside your body again as you begin close observation of the breath itself now.

Can you observe when the breath first enters the nostrils?

How far into the body can you follow it? When do you lose track of the inbreath?
Can you sense when the inbreath transforms into the outbreath? Is this a smooth transition?

Follow the outbreath. When can you first sense the exhalation in the lungs? Can you trace its path up through the windpipe, nose , and out of the body?

–Is there a pause in the breath, either after the inhalation or after the exhalation? Without extending the pause, if there is one that you can sense, observe it closely.

What happens during the pause?

Is there tension or peace here?

–Bring your awareness to the end of your nostrils and let your awareness be filled by the breath.

Without following the course of the breath now, simply watch as it enters and exits the nose. Do not force your consciousness there, rather let it touch the breath at that point.

Watch how each breath has its own unique qualities. Every single breath is different from the breath that came before and the breath that will come after.

Allow each breath to connect you to the moment as it turns into the next moment

As thoughts come to you, honor them, and then let them drift away as you again invite the consciousness to be filled with the breath.

Cultivate awareness of the present moment

Continue for as long as you feel comfortable

NOTES:

This is the most important breath practice you can do for yourself.

Try practicing this close reading of your respiration while walking, while shopping, while eating, while watching a movie.

Whenever you think of it, do a Breath Check.

Begin noticing your mental and emotional states while performing the Breath Checks.

Eventually you will connect these states with your own particular breath patterns, including if there are times when you habitually hold your breath or hyperventilate. Most likely, when you are tense or angry, your breath will circulate only in the upper portion of the torso. When you let go in a relaxed state, you’ll probably notice a deeper breath pattern.

Dariel Woltz:  “When you are tense, the breath moves in the upper body.When you relax, the breath moves in lower body, So the first step is to RELAX and let go.”

Here is Thich Nhat Hanh’s spin of breath meditation: