Lesson 7.
Letting your breath drop from your chest to your belly.
If up until now you've been breathing from your chest,
It is now time to begin breathing from your belly.
You want to make your breath now come purely from your belly.
So put your hands on your chest so that your chest does not puff out when you breathe.
So you do not use any strength in your chest when you breathe.
But your chest just stays relaxed and all your breathing now will begin to come from your belly.
Still continuing on the inhale to breathe down to your lower Dandian,
Down the central channel.
And on the exhale to go from the lower Dandian up to the central channel and out your nose.
We will now begin to breathe from the belly.
To get our internal organs,
The organs in the front of the body to breathe.
To move with each breath.
Let the feeling of the center line inside your body,
Where your central channel is located,
From the middle of your throat to lower Dandian,
Expand forward and backward until you can feel the hole inside of your belly,
Microrinch by microrinch.
Now think of your belly,
Which goes basically from your lower Dandian to your solar plexus,
But does not include your chest.
Think of your belly as a cylinder and use your breath to expand it equally in all directions from its center line.
Forward,
Backwards and equidistant out to the sides.
So now put your hands,
One hand on your belly,
One hand on your chest,
So your chest does not move but your belly moves.
And as you inhale,
Expand your belly.
Feel your belly expanding from your center line forward to the skin on the front of your body.
On the out breath,
Return your belly to its original position.
In the beginning,
When you do this,
Focus on the easiest movement,
Which is that of the lower belly.
When this is comfortable,
Turn your attention to add the more difficult movement of the middle belly.
And finally,
Concentrate on and add the most difficult movement of the body to gain control of the solar plexus and diaphragm.
So now focus on just breathing with your lower belly,
Expanding it as you inhale,
Letting it go back as you exhale.
Expanding on the inhale.
Letting it go back on the exhale.
Returning to its original position.
Now,
On the in breath,
Expand the inside of your body backward from your center line to your spine.
On the exhale,
Relax your body to its original position.
So back to your spine.
Let it return.
Back to your spine on the inhale.
Let it return.
Making sure your chest is not breathing and focusing on the lower part of your belly.
Now focus on the middle part of your belly.
So that both the lower and the middle part of your body are moving.
Expanding on the inhale.
Relaxing back to its original position on the exhale.
And now the most difficult part,
The solar plexus and the diaphragm.
Solar plexus which is just below your sternum,
Just below the bones of your chest.
Expand on the inhale and return to your original position on the exhale.
It takes most people some weeks and sometimes months to actually be able to breathe with the solar plexus.
And it's important that you do not go to the next lesson in this tape until you can clearly get a distinct and definite movement of the solar plexus.
These exercises with the belly,
Breathing with the belly,
Will eventually move and shift your internal organs,
Allowing blood to go deep into them.
And regulating and releasing and balancing the emotions in the belly itself.
And giving you access to them when you practice meditation to release all those things which are bound inside of you.
Next,
On the inhale from the center line of your body,
Expand backward and forward at the same time,
Both toward the skin on the front of your belly and your spine.
On the exhale,
Return to your original position.
Inhale,
Expand forward and backwards at the same time.
Exhale,
Return to the original position.
With a completely relaxed continuity,
Both in your mind and your body,
If you lose awareness or space out,
Start over from the beginning and play this exercise again.
Day by day you will find the strength of your awareness increasing.
