Healing Breath Meditation

The Healing Breath is a meditation practice that originated in the early zen tradition. It's done with a very deliberate controlled breathing that involves breathing in, holding your breath, and then breathing out. It can be used to help you center yourself and also as an entry into your meditation practice.

Transcript

Hello,

I'm Daniel.

This is the practice that is called the Healing Breath Meditation.

The Healing Breath Meditation.

I like to use it as a bookend to my meditation practice.

So I'll do the Healing Breath and then do whatever meditation I'm doing and then do the Healing Breath again at the end.

I like to use it for that.

But also what I like about it is it's kind of a portable practice so it helps you right now.

So you can take it to whatever situation you're in.

If you're in a stressful situation you can do the Healing Breath and center yourself and help yourself sort of be guided into making better decisions I think.

Or at least be guided into the present moment instead of worrying about you know what could happen or what might happen that sort of thing.

So what is the Healing Breath?

So the Healing Breath,

And there are different versions of this,

But the one I teach is we do a slow inhale for a count of five and we hold our breath for a count of five and we do a slow exhale for a count of five.

So a breath takes 15 seconds.

We don't put much attention on our breath a lot of the time unless we're meditators and this sort of gives us a chance to really pay attention to it and to sort of bring ourselves back to this moment instead of somewhere else.

So I'm going to guide you in doing the Healing Breath with me and we're going to do it a set of three.

So we're going to do it three times.

Okay?

So we want to do a big inhale and then hold our breath and do a big exhale.

So I'm going to tell you what to do.

Here we go.

Inhale.

Hold your breath.

Exhale.

And we'll do it again.

Inhale.

Hold your breath.

Exhale.

One last time.

Inhale.

Hold your breath.

Exhale.

One last time.

So I like to use that like before a meditation practice just to set it off and say this is a sacred experience I'm entering into and I need something to separate me from my day to day life.

So I do use it for that.

But then also it could be used just in a stressful situation.

I'm stuck in traffic and it's freaking me out.

I'm going to do the Healing Breath or the kids aren't listening and it's bothering me a lot.

I'm going to do a Healing Breath and it's going to help me sort of calm and center myself.

So that is the Healing Breath practice and thank you for taking the time to listen to me.

Have a good day.