In my last post I talked about the importance of the breath for not only your mantra meditation practice, but also for your life – your emotional, physical and mental well being.
Because there is a direct correspondence between how we breath and our emotions and state.
So to prepare for a deep and enjoyable mantra meditation practice we want to take a few moments to get in contact with our breath as a way to facilitate this deep contact by moving into a deeper state.
In fact, you can use this form of breathing whenever you feel you need to get back in touch with yourself, prepare for meditation, yoga or to rebalance yourself.
It is very easy.
In the yoga tradition this form of breathing is called “yogic breathing” but I am sure this is something more universal and used by many traditions.
To begin with you want to be in a comfortable sitting posture with the spin aligned. If you can manage, a cross legged sitting posture is best, but if not, sitting with the spine in alignment on a chair is fine.
For those familiar with breathing techniques this will probably be very simple, but for those who have no experience with breathing techniques, I will go right into the basics.
We will be inhaling from the nose and exhaling from the nose in long deep breaths.
It is important to inhale through the nose as breathing through the nose controls the air we inhale and it is easier to control the amount of air coming in and it gets filtered naturally through the respiratory system. Whereas when breathing through the mouth, we don’t have this level of control or filtering taking place.
To be continued in the next post….