Embrace The Flow of Breathing - Audio

With this sutra, we are invited to attend with tenderness to how we embrace the breath. There are many yuktis here. One is to consider the lungs to be a pot for holding the breath. Kumbhaka has the connotation of a jug of elixir, a chalice, a vessel used in ritual offerings to the gods. We revere the air flowing in and out of our lungs as if it is an elixir, and we hold the breath as we hold a chalice of some precious substance we are imbibing.

In pranayama, you may hold the breath in the sense of stopping it. But in meditation, holding the breath can mean holding it as you would a lover. Holding is an embrace, a welcoming touch, contact skin to skin. In lovemaking, we hold the other person in order to allow them to move and allow ourselves to move. In certain sweet moments, the action pauses. Holding and embracing do not mean stopping the flow of movement. Embrace the flow of breathing as you would something infinitely valuable, and you will know peace. There is a world of skill in the way we receive, hold, embrace, cherish the breath.

How do you hold a baby, a cat, a lover? How do you hold a note when singing? Develop a light touch in your practice, so you can hold a thought, a mantra, a breath, as lightly as you would a hummingbird that has landed on your finger. It alights on you. There is no sense of capture. It is a miraculous meeting. Many meditation techniques emerge from your skill at holding, embracing, and cherishing your relationship with the world.

Meditation enhances our capacity for aesthetic perception and rapture. Put yourself in situations of such joy and surprise that your breathing pauses spontaneously in awe—“it takes my breath away.” As your capacity for this type of kumbhaka develops, fill it with the beauty of nature and great art, whatever is so beautiful you want to drink it in.

The Joy of Breath

There are moments when we stop taking life for granted and inhale deeply of the beauty that is around us. A cleansing breath drawn at glorious dawn; savoring the bouquet of a glass of fine wine before dinner; or, nestled in a lover's arms, surrendering to his or her smell-at such moments, you take life deeply into yourself and are intimate with something great. In the time it takes to breathe in and breathe out, you touch life and are touched by life intensely.

Miracles happen if you continue this appreciative awareness beyond the 3 or 4 seconds that such a moment usually lasts. To spend even 15 seconds in the same state, or 60 seconds, seems like a lifetime. And it can transform you.

Breath is a gift from God, a gift from the oceans and forests, from the universe. Breathing is, in fact, a relationship you are having with the natural world-a physical exchange with the sea of air surrounding the Earth. When you cultivate this relationship by attuning yourself to it, you are developing a gift that can bring you a lifetime of joy.

We can be interested in breath taking, fascinated by it, in the same way we are charmed by food, enchanted by sex, amazed by music. Most of the skill of aware breathing is in finding your pleasure circuits, those sensory pathways that light up when you breathe. Work at this; make a conscious effort to engage in your favorite activities with extra gusto and attentiveness. The more you link your adventures in breath to what you love--whether it is food, sleep, kids, horses, dancing, sex, or music--the better.

In my life, I am greatly inspired by yoga in all its forms. I draw on it deeply. But I don’t always use yoga terminology, nor imitate its methods to teach about breath. Rather, I present explorations you can do on your own, in the midst of your everyday life, so that you can develop your own yoga-- what works for you to develop harmony between body, mind, and spirit.

Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning "union," or joining together. The discipline of yoga is concerned with joining together all the elements of human life into one seamless, harmonious whole. The word is derived from an ancient Indo-European root, yeug, which occurs in English in the form of yoke, jugular, conjugate, subjugate, conjugal, enjoin, injunction, juxtapose, and syzygy.

The yoga tradition of India is astounding in that followers for several thousands of years have made a dedicated effort to notice and record every possible breathing technique and have accumulated a vast repertory of methods. They have cherished each insight into breath they have come across and formulated it into a short pithy statement, or sutra, so that it can be memorized and passed on from generation to generation.

Yoga techniques have been developed for every human activity. There is the yoga of work, the yoga of war, the yoga of eating, the yoga of meditation, the yoga of sex, the yoga of devotion to God, and thousands more. There is more to yoga than can be explored in one human lifetime, or even a hundred, and there is more variety than any one human being can comprehend.

There is, however, one overall impression of yoga that predominates in the popular mind: that of the reclusive yogi, celibate, poor, living apart from society in a cave or ashram on a mountainside. There is a lot of truth to this archetype, and indeed yogi monks have done much great exploration. Their work has been so powerful that their approach--denying life, denying sexuality, and in general doing the things that monks are supposed to do-- permeates all of yoga. In other words, subjugation has been emphasized over conjugation.

As a meditation instructor, the approach I favor is to help people focus on becoming intimate with their own breath. When people tune in to their unique ebb and flow, they either invent the techniques they need to stay focused, or they are instinctively drawn to those that already exist and that naturally speak to them. This method of learning about breath may or may not be slower, but it's definitely more gentle than attempting to forcefully discipline your respiration.

The best things in life really are free. And if you are breathing easily while doing them, then they are even better. As we move through this mystery we call life, we are smitten often with different cravings: we want relief, stimulation, good food, companionship, a real vacation, and much more. It seems as if we would have to spend a lot of time or a lot of money to get these things. Maybe so. But first you should explore what is right here, free for the taking, ready to enhance your health and your life right now.

For millennia, people all over the world have found breathing to be invaluable for inspiring and healing. This is the message from all the ancient traditions, from Buddhism and the Sufis to Zen and the Vipassana monks with their beautiful walking meditations. Even today, singers and athletes testify that they can do what they do because they are centered in breath.

Breath is everyone's birthright. Its secrets are out in the open, under your nose, and inside you. I am convinced that the more people who know the secrets of conscious breath taking, the better. So take a deep breath--and let's begin.

From Breath Taking by Lorin Roche, PhD

We will offer a special workshop on breathing on October 3-4, 2020.

Click here for more details.

Getting High on Breath - Video

A chat between Dr. Lorin Roche and Tania Kazi about the wisdom of meditation and how it can lead to greater insights into our lives. This episode is on the magic of breath, and how to create breathing meditation practices that are unique to you.

We will be offering a special workshop on breathing on October 3-4! Click here for more details.

Photo on banner by rosario janza on Unsplash

GETTING INTO BREATH - BEGINNER'S MIND

A yoga teacher I know remarked that for the first 3 years she practiced yoga she had little interest in pranayama, the breath aspect, and that she felt uncomfortable with the techniques. Then one day when her back hurt and she couldn’t do her ordinary moves, she discovered that breathing meditations elped. Lying on her back, taking ibuprofen, and humiliated, she found a new world opening up to her. Each breath massaged her spine and rejuvenated her. She did not have to force anything; rather, she finally surrendered to her natural instinct to breathe and found herself letting go as never before in her adult life.

Prior to getting into yoga, this friend had gone through a difficult divorce and had called upon her willpower to help her forge a new life. Even after yoga had become a sacred refuge for her, she was unable to relax and truly let go. Striving, exercising her will, was what had saved her. Then that day, feeling how the breath was massaging her belly, her heart, the front of her spine, she relented. Now she teaches breath techniques enthusiastically, yet she knows from experience that it may take her students years to appreciate them fully.

Another time I was sitting with a wine merchant and I had him sniff the air, not so much for scent but just in appreciation—as the carrier for all the wonderful smells he had ever smelled. He instantly got what breath awareness is about and went into deep meditation, really enjoying himself.

One of the things students have taught me over the years is that there is no hierarchical organization to talent or intimacy with life. Beginners often know more than experts, and experts are often at their best when they come around to being beginners again.

If you want to meditate with breath, start with what you know. Everyone has something they do well, whether it is carpentry, keeping babies happy, or quickly sizing up a roomful of people. If you really know how to enjoy a freshly baked cookie, a glass of fine wine, or the scent of hay, then use that as a gateway into breath awareness. Life tends to specialize us. Our senses become shaped by what we do. But humans are not ants. We were not born to be specialized. We ache to explore and see life afresh. This possibility exists for you in every breath.

THE GIFT OF BREATH: Virtual Workshops With Lorin and Camille

Camille Maurine and Lorin Roche will be teaching two virtual workshops on breath in meditation on October 3rd and 4th (each class is 2 hours). Join us on either day - we would love to meditate with you. Early bird price (until Sep. 25th) is just $35 for each class.

Click here to read more

Breath Meditation - Audio

Breath has sound, it has texture, it has motion. As your body moves with the inflowing and outflowing breath your body balances automatically. Breath even has an impact on the visual field; there are subtle differences to notice.

Breathing with awareness is one of the essential meditation techniques cherished the world over. Simply pay attention to the flow of air with appreciation for the gift of each breath. Doing this even a few minutes a day will bless your life. A human being develops senses for whatever she pays attention to. If you pay a lot of attention to wine, you will learn to identify what type it is just by a sniff of the bouquet. If you watch a lot of baseball, you will learn to see what type of pitch is coming at the hitter earlier and earlier in the wind-up or release. Mothers can tell the state of their babies at a glance. If you pay attention to breath, your body will over time evolve the senses to really, really enjoy it as one of the Fine Things of Life.

Breath has to be mostly automatic and out-of-awareness by default, because our life depends on it every minute. We each breathe many times a minute, whether we are awake or asleep. In a day we breathe more than twenty thousand times. Each of these breaths connects us to the entire planet. Appreciating this connection is joyous but optional — it is what you do after survival is assured.

The movement of attention to cherish breath is instinctive, for all living things have a natural attraction toward that which gives them life. Meditation is an instinctive urge, a calling, as deep as any of the ancient yearnings that move human beings. All the hundreds of techniques are just ways of cooperating with that urge. In order for meditation to feel that innate, it helps to learn it at your own speed in your own way. Start now.

Take a breath, have fun.

The Elixir of Each Breath

One reason why it is important to be centered in your ego, in your natural self, and in your body when you meditate is so that your needs can be met. So that meditation can be a healing place, that tunes you up for life.

If you are on the path of intimacy (as opposed to being a monk or nun), then sexuality is a major part of your life and your dharma, your way through the world. Even if you are not having sex on a regular basis, welcoming the tingle of electricity through your body is important for your physical and emotional health.

Anger is also important, to notice and care for any feelings of anger anywhere in your body.

Hurt is important, to notice, tend to, soothe, any areas that are feeling hurt.

Exhaustion is important to notice, feel your way into any nerves, muscles, areas of the body that are feeling the strain, feeling tired out, in need of soothing and replenishing.

Boundary invasions, that weird rage feeling when someone crosses your boundaries, invades your space, is an important area of life to attend to, study, learn from, develop responses to.

Basically you want to feel every area of your body and its needs for healing and for expression.

This is where the magic happens.

Let's say you are using breath as your gateway into meditative awareness.

If you can simultaneously delight in the gorgeous generosity of the air, this magic substance that day and night gives us life, while at the same time feeling your desperate need for love, attention, healing, friendship, and safety, then your body will manufacture its own healing chemistry as you breathe.

This is, by the way, what life does. It generates a creative response to every challenge, every need.

Air is magic. This is not scientifically proven yet, but I also think that when we breathe aware of our needs, that we magnetically attract from the prana in air the exact kind of healing magnetism we need. There are some kind of charged particles of life in the air that respond to our need. All the meditation traditions consider this ocean of air we are living in to be generous beyond comprehension.

Most of us are borderline exhausted, like marathon runners, just doing our best ever day to get everything done.

Therefore when you approach meditation, come as your needy, exhausted, joyous, horny, lonely, irritated, angry, hurting self. That way you allow the generosity of life to treat you, heal you, soothe and refresh you.

* Ego is simply the sense of "I." The sense of who you are. What you capabilities and limitations are. What your desires are and the nature of your Path.

** When people try to be perfect in meditation and do not cherish their imperfection, and do not stay in their ego needs, then meditation can be dessicating. They might benefit for 6 months to a year, but then the denial of needs becomes a permanent part of the way energy flows in the body. There are many skilled observers in the world, and among them meditators are famous for becoming robotic and dissociated.