Guided Stomach Breathing For Total Relaxation

The mind and body are deeply interconnected; impact one and the other will follow. The breath is a prime example of this connection. When we slow down the breath and breathe deeply, we are activating the parasympathetic nervous system. This will subsequently result in physiological (then psychological) relaxation. The practice in this meditation is as follows: slow deep breath to fill the belly, then quick exhale with mouth open like fogging a mirror. This breathing technique is different to the traditional slow in and slow out breath techniques, and as such, it may produce a different result for you that you have experienced with those techniques.

Transcript

The mind and the body are completely connected.

If you impact the body,

The mind will follow.

If you impact the mind,

The body will follow.

This means that if you want to calm yourself down,

You can do certain physiological things.

You can alter your body as a way of influencing your mental state.

And the easiest and most accessible version of this is the breath.

So I invite you to take a seat in a nice strong posture.

That's upright,

Your hands in your lap,

And you're imagining that there's a balloon gently pulling your head to the ceiling.

There should be no pain or tension,

Just a nice chest expanded upright posture.

What you're going to do is take a long slow breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

And I want you to attempt to fill your lungs from your belly first.

So as you breathe in,

Your belly will expand first,

And just at the very end of the breath will your chest expand.

So you're going to breathe in through your nose and your belly will rise.

Your belly fills first.

So keep taking these long slow breaths.

And we're going to work on the out breath now.

So keep breathing into your belly.

But when you breathe out,

I want you to imagine there's a mirror close to your face.

And you're going to open your mouth wide and breathe out quickly onto that mirror.

Empty your lungs completely.

So you're breathing slowly and deeply into your belly through your nose.

And then very quickly fogging up the mirror out through your mouth.

And we're going to do that five times.

Ready?

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

This breathing technique is something that I use to start my mindfulness meditation practice,

But also at night.

As I'm lying in bed,

I do 10 slow and deep breaths into the belly and then out like I'm breathing or fogging up a mirror.

And this just resets my body,

Resets my mind and gets me ready to sleep,

Relaxes me,

Or puts me into that meditative state where I'm able to draw my attention mindfully to whatever object I choose.

So I encourage you to use this practice as a standalone relaxation technique or as a precursor to your meditative practice.

Happy meditating.

Reviews

Grateful to connect body and mind with this practice, thank you! 🙏

Thank you for this unique breathing technique😍🥰I found the 5 rounds so helpful, can’t wait to go to bed now to do this 10 times before sleep ✨🙌🏼🙏🏼

I love this session, it's short and sweet, but does the job! I even used it today while standing on the MTR, and my anxiety lessened so much. Thanks for this🙏🙌

Excellent. Will need to practice this for sure . Thanks!

Very effective breathing

So refreshing!!

A short and helpful breathing practice to calm the body.

Great little tool to have.

I liked this. Different than how I normally breathe.

This meditation brought me out of an anxiety episode I was having, Thank you for bringing us this healing exercise.

Great quick grounding/reset method. ✌️☀️❤️

Thankful for this. A good breathing practice.

This is a great one! I’ll definitely be using this to teach my clients (I’m a therapist)

Really good

👌

Thank you 🌼

I learned so much from this exercise, thank you very much!

That was intense! A little bit of a head rush, but definitely got me focused and relaxed. I'll remember this technique for my stressful workdays, thanks and namaste 🙏

Excellent and straight to the heart of the matter, as usual. Thanks for posting. Adding this to my toolbox.

Love this practical exercise. I can use it throughout my day to reset! Very grateful