Breathing while doing guided meditation could be one of the most important techniques you should learn and master in order to gain maximum benefits from any meditation exercise. Here are some of the most popular breating techniques used today, one of which you should become a master while meditating.
Abdominal Breathing
Many people breathe unnaturally into their chest. When we were born we all breathed from our stomach. At some point in our life we feel the need to turn back to our natural and effortless way of breathing.
Firstly, we breathe in and out in our usual way through nose. Also, we pay attention on how we breathe. After that, we put one hand on our stomach and the other one on our chest. Then, while we breathe in our stomach rises and uplifts the hand on it. The chest and the hand on it moves slightly or not move at all. While we breathe out, we push out the air by contracting our stomach muscles. We feel how our stomach expands while we breathe in and pull in towards our spine while we breathe out. We repeat the abdominal breathing for as long as we feel comfortable.
Advanced Abdominal Breathing
Here, when we do abdominal breathing we pay attention to the whole abdominal region and its sideways. As we breathe in our belly expands and we notice how the sideways expand, too. As we breathe out, the sides tighten up. Further on, we include withdrawing and squeezing of our buttocks and bottom muscles. As we breathe in, we expand our belly and relax our gluteal cleft and muscles around it. We do it with no force. As we breathe out, we withdraw our bely and squeeze gently our buttocks. By expanding our focus on internal abdominal region, we open the path for the full abdominal breathing where we include the lower back as well. This breathing needs more practice until it becomes an easy and natural thing to do.
Hara Breathing
Persons who trained the martial arts understands the significance of the hara center. Apart from being the physical, it is also the spiritual center of our body located two or three fingers below the navel on the midline of our body and closer to the spine. Firstly, we start to breathe in and out in order to clean our mind of thoughts and to relax the body. Then, we focus on abdominal breathing for a while. After that, we breathe into the hara. While we breathe in and out we focus on this center. We repeat this breathing for a while. The next thing we do is to imagine the stream of energizing particles which enter the hara every time we breathe in. We imagine how the health and new energy enter the hara and spread throughout the whole body. When we breathe out, we imagine how all the unpleasant and negative particles leave our body.
