Balloon Belly Breath For Kids And Others

This is a practice that's made for kids but is totally suitable for anyone. The practice is what is known as "gentle vase breathing" within the system of Tibetan yoga. Often we find ourselves becoming quite hyperactive and anxious, with our thoughts coming very rapidly and a sense of over-excitedness pervading our being. We may find it difficult to focus, or difficult to sleep, and we feel uneasy around others because of the churning of thoughts and judgments.

The purpose of this practice is to balance the energies or winds in the body by bringing them down into the belly, where they are grounded and stable. This practice is very simple and can be done at any time, even during school, work or conversation, etc. Without any special insight or skill, we can make great strides toward an experience of greater ease and balance, by simply engaging in this balloon belly breath.

Transcript

Hello friends.

I'm recording today from the beach and so I hope you enjoy these beach sounds as we go through this very short meditation.

The purpose of this meditation is to bring the energies down into the belly where they belong,

Providing much-needed grounding when we begin to get overexcited or lost in excitation.

So this is a very simple but a very powerful practice and so I encourage you all to follow along with me and I think you'll be very happy that you did.

Once you learn this practice you can bring it out of the meditation session into everyday life and practice it at any time really.

So let's begin.

So to start we begin by taking three deep breaths into our bellies.

We're sitting with our back straight.

We're lying with our back straight.

We take these three deep breaths and as we breathe in we tense our hands.

We feel all the tension and knots in our body and as we breathe out we just release all those knots,

All that tension.

So on three.

One,

Two,

Three.

Breathing in and breathing out.

Releasing everything.

Again on the count of three we breathe in feeling all the tension,

All the knots.

One,

Two,

Three.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

One last time.

Again we clench our hands tight to feel what the tension feels like inside.

Tension is inside us as well but just as a feeling and as we breathe out we relax our hands completely and open them ready for anything.

So on three.

One,

Two,

Three.

Breathing in and breathing out.

Now we just relax into that for a moment.

Okay.

Very good.

Now I can see that everyone here is ready for a little bit deeper meditation.

It's very simple.

So what we're going to do is we're going to breathe in to our bellies again and we're going to breathe in till the belly gets very big,

Very big.

So let's just try that a few times first.

Breathe in to the belly.

Big balloon belly.

And we don't strain and then we breathe out and we relax.

We don't push the air out.

We just relax.

Breathe out.

We breathe in.

Big balloon belly.

And then we breathe out.

We just relax.

One last time.

Big balloon belly.

And then we just relax and let the air pass out.

Now when we do this,

When we breathe in,

We don't want we breathe in big balloon belly but we don't want to breathe in so that our shoulders become tense or our belly is really tense.

It's not like a hard balloon that's blown up until it's about to pop.

It's a soft balloon.

So let's try one time.

We breathe in.

Breathe in big balloon belly but not so close to popping.

Just keep it big but not so big.

Okay on three.

One,

Two,

Three.

And the whole body relaxed.

Belly out.

And we breathe out and just relax.

Now here's the trick.

Here's what we're going to do.

Now we do the same breathing in but when we breathe out we let all the air out except the last little bit.

We save just a little bit down there.

Just a little bit of breath inside.

So we're going to breathe in to the big balloon belly and then as we breathe out we're just going to relax.

Allow the breath to pass out but when there's maybe just a little bit left we save that last little bit.

We don't breathe it out and we stop there.

And then we breathe in again big balloon belly.

We breathe out and we stop again just just a little bit before before we would naturally stop.

And that's the whole practice.

As we do that we can feel the energies that are so often are being directed up to the head where they circle around and make us very nervous and anxious sometimes.

We can feel them coming down to the belly where they belong calming us grounding us and stabilizing us.

So let's try this a few times and the practice will be over.

Breathing in big balloon belly.

It's still gentle and as we breathe out we breathe out relax but we stop just before we would naturally stop.

And now we breathe in big balloon belly and we breathe out naturally and you let it go but we stop just before and we can feel the energies kind of gathering down there in that belly.

That's where we want them it feels so they feel so happy there.

So let's let the those energies be happy down in the belly and that makes us happy too.

So I'm going to leave us silent to breathe in and out for these last few seconds before the meditation is over.

Okay thank you for joining me here on the beach for this beautiful meditation which seems so simple but it's so powerful.

And if you practice it all the time anytime you're feeling a little bit tense or nervous or anxious or frightened any of those sort of shaky energetic feelings when the energies start going up into your head and they're rushing and rushing we can just do this very simple little breath where we just save we breathe in deep and then we save just a little bit of the breath on the breath out.

So simple and it really is going to work to help bring all those energies down and ground us.

So I hope you'll take this and whatever you most wish for I hope that this meditation can help that deepest wish for yourself and for all other beings.

I can hope I hope that it will help that to come true.

Thank you for joining me.