How To use Breathing Videos
How To Use This Video
We have a number of breathing videos on our YouTube Channel with a variety of breathing practices and breathing rhythms. They all offer ways that you can use simple breathing to help your brain and nervous system shift into a more relaxed, easeful state of being. This video will guide you through a few practices that can help make the experience of our breathing videos more effective and enjoyable. (Please note - the effect of the video will be more powerful if you watch in full screen and listen through headphones or earbuds.)
The guided practices include (1) Basic Ocean Breathing (also known in the yoga tradition as ujjayi breathing) (2) Breathing with Words (3) Breathing with Meditative Movement, and (4) Attention Games.
Ocean Breathing is a quick and effective way to calm your mind and relax your body.
Breathing with Words is an easy way to focus your mind and help it let go of whatever it may have been busy with.
Coordinating the breath with Slow Meditative Movement can be calming or energizing depending on what you need at the time, and your intention. And it feels really good, especially after you’ve been sitting for a while.
The Attention Games in this video are about exploring two of the major ways our brain interacts with the world which, if they’re out of balance, can create stress, tension, and poor health. We’ll say a bit more about this in the next section.
Video created by Jan, using Motion 5. Music arranged and performed by Don, using Logic Pro X
Exploring Breathing, Movement and Attention Throughout the Day
Recent neurological and psychological research shows that our nervous system has a natural tendency toward greater harmony and balance. One of the most powerful ways of supporting that natural tendency is to simply observe different aspects of your experience without judging or interfering with them. Here are a few suggestions for what you can observe over the course of a day:
Breathing:
You can set an intention to gently observe the quality of your breathing at various times throughout the day – how rapid, deep or shallow, smooth or bumpy it is – and notice how it changes in response to different emotions, people, or situations. You may find that some of those qualities will change on their own as you observe them, but don’t make any effort to change anything.
Another way to weave awareness of your breathing into your day would be to try doing about 30 seconds of ocean breathing from time to time (that’s approximately 4 slow breaths) and see what effect it has on your mind and body. If your mind is overactive, combining ocean breathing with words will be more effective.
Movement:
As with breathing, gently noticing how your body is moving or sitting at various times throughout the day can, by itself, help the body to spontaneously release tension it’s been holding.
Another thing you might play with is the effect on your body and mind of moving very slowly – even for as little as 30 seconds. It could be a large movement, or something very small like the movement of a hand. Slow, deliberate movement can send a powerful message to the autonomic nervous system to shift into its relaxation and restoration mode.
Attention:
Much of our online course is devoted to exploring different modes of attention. Here’s a very brief description of two modes most of us tend to alternate between over the course of a day:
Detached attention: Detached attention is a more utilitarian way of relating to our experience. It attempts to control the object of our attention in order to get a particular result. This is extremely useful, for example, during certain phases of a task – like when you’re first learning how to ski or play a musical instrument. You start by observing the movements involved in a detached, analytic way so that you can adjust them to develop greater control and mastery. However, like the centipede who became paralyzed when it tried to keep track of its hundred legs, this form of attention, when overused, can lead to increased stress and ultimately to increased inefficiency.
Immersed attention: This mode of attention is more likely to be present when you’ve forgotten about trying to “control” yourself, someone else, or something in the environment. It’s a more relaxed, allowing form of attention.
One place you can play with these two forms of attention is with regard to physical pain or discomfort. First you might look at the pain in an objective, analytic way – noticing, for example, what movements increase or decrease the intensity of the pain, trying various remedies like heat or cold. Once you’ve made those kinds of determinations, it could be very beneficial to shift to a more immersed mode of relating to the pain. You might simply let yourself experience the sensations in a relaxed, non-judgmental way – noticing subtle changes in the quality, intensity, or location of the sensations, without labeling them or trying to make them go away. This simple kind of compassionate “being with” the pain actually changes the nature of the messages that nerve endings at the site of the pain send to your brain, sometimes significantly lessening the pain’s intensity.
About Our Online Course, “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life”
The breathing videos, like many of the videos on our YouTube channel, are an invitation to pause, to take time out from the intensity of the day to allow your brain and nervous system to shift into a calmer, more easeful state of being we refer to as “open, heartful awareness,” - which not only feels good, but makes you more effective in whatever you’re doing.
The breathing exercises are one part of a complete set of practices that we have in our online course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.
The course actually only takes 6 hours to complete, though it is spread out over 12 weeks to give your nervous system a chance to absorb a radically different way of being in the world. You will learn about the “sky” of open, heartful awareness,” which is always potentially available to us but is covered over by the “clouds” of distorted brain programming – various kinds of brain programming at the root of anxiety, depression, cravings, unhealthy habits and more.
The course provides practices that support the natural tendency of our brain and nervous system to move toward a state of greater calm and ease. It also provides a larger understanding that makes the practices meaningful. It explains how our outdated, unbalanced brain programing interferes with the experience of open heartful awareness, and how it can be harmonized so as to be supportive rather than an impediment. It includes audios and videos that teach you over two dozen “practices” that help to clear away the obstacles that make open, heartful awareness difficult to access. And it has dozens of one to three-minute guided audios and videos that are perfect for brief breaks during the day.
You can try out our Free Sampler Course, which includes a few of the practices from the full course. We also invite you to check out our Facebook page and YouTube channel where we’ll be posting a wide variety of brief videos designed to balance and harmonize your brain and nervous system in a way that makes it easier to shift to open, heartful awareness.
