Breath Into Life

Simply by practicing the art of meditation we’re not only connecting with our own inner peace; we’re contributing to everything and everyone in our environment. Essentially, we begin to change the energy within our own body which amplifies the electromagnetic field around us.

And isn’t that what meditation is all about, changing ourselves from the inside out by connecting with compassion, peace, joy, love and extending it outward?

Now let’s go back in time to when we’re growing up.

From a very young age we all learn how to demand things that we know will make us feel better. Before a child even starts school, the iPad, access to Netflicks, computer games, have become the objects of desire in their external world. There’s a deep sense of knowing that when they get the ‘thing’ they crave, they’ll feel good. And in the short-term life is great.

As an adult, as we gather more and more responsibilities, relationship issues, family, home, bills, loan payments, health, diet, unexpected challenges, through a lifetime of conditioning, we reach for a familiar external source we know will make us feel better. Over eating, over spending, over drinking, which spiral us into more stress, anxiety and worry.

And when a loved one is going through a tough time; we naturally suggest things that will make them feel better. Let’s go shopping, have lunch, let’s get a great movie and a bottle of wine. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but there comes a time when no external thing or person can ease the mental and emotional pain, we find ourselves in. There comes a point when we know that to really change means we have to go within and focus on change from the inside out. Meditation and yoga is now becoming the most popular methods to do just that.

Most of the students that come to me for guidance and support have come because they’re at the end of the line. No amount of external factors can dull the pain they feel inside. I know where they’re coming from because that was me over 10 years ago when anxiety, fear, frustration was at an all-time high. Fortunately, my external form of relief from a stressed-out mind was to basically workout until I was exhausted, so I ran every day. I’d put on my runners and with the dog beside me, I was transported into a very different place mentally and physically. In the short term the rush of chemicals from exercise felt great. But when the same mental torment was preventing me from sleeping and my health started to suffer, I knew that I needed to do something.

So, I started meditating. I was a huge sceptic which led me into researching the science behind this practice. Much to my surprise I found that there was a great deal of scientific data in support of meditation. There was an abundance of evidence that a regular meditation practice could calm the body and mind at a chemical level, bring the left and right hemispheres of the brain into harmony, balance the hormones, improve the immune system and most interesting of all that these benefits were not only experienced during meditation but throughout the rest of the day.

So, like a dog with a bone, I was going to learn this, master this. And I did just that. However, my biggest concern was if it hadn’t of been for my research, my tunnel vision that I was going to make this happen no matter what, I would not have got past the first class.

For most people the first meditation class they attend is usually their last. Why? Because time is precious and if someone doesn’t feel like they got a return on their investment of time and money then they won’t come back.

This led to the last 3-4 years of researching, how can busy individuals new to meditation start to experience benefits from the inside out in a short period of time?

The breath. I found that there are some profound breathing techniques that give immediate results and are in their own right a form of meditation. Thoughts fall away, the body relaxes, the cells are oxygenated, the hemispheres of the brain fall in sync, mind and body are in coherence, the peripheral nervous system is stimulated, and digestion runs optimally. And the great thing is, this can all occur in only a few minutes of practice. So rather than hours and hours of meditating whilst your monkey mind is thinking, ‘come on, this isn’t working, you have things to do, this is boring, I am so bad at this,’ breathwork alone is a great entrance into higher states of consciousness.

In the workshop I teach ‘Breath into Life,’ my students have to work for it; relaxing comes later. I require commitment, focus and the willingness to contribute to the energy in the room. During the practical part of this workshop there is very little opportunity for the monkey mind to run the show.

So, the workshop I teach ‘Breath into Life’ is dedicated to learning highly specific breathing techniques which are profound tools to transcend our mind into a higher state of consciousness. It is a workshop dedicated to busy, stressed out, anxious minds whose time is extremely precious.

Its run over 2 hours and once we’ve learnt the breathing techniques there’s a steady progression through the breath into mindfulness which naturally transitions into a deeper meditation practice.

And of course, I teach a little neuroscience and physiology which is the method behind the madness. Why do I include this? From being a sceptic myself, I know that when we are given the knowledge and understanding which backs up the process, then we are far more likely to believe and surrender into the practice.

Simple breathing techniques you can teach yourself at home are Alternative Nostril Breathing and Box Breathing. They’re straight forward to learn and can be carried out pretty much anywhere from sitting in an airport departure lounge to being stuck in a traffic jam. In only minutes, they change the physiology and open a gateway into a calm state of mind.