Moving Your Breath To Reduce Your Stress

Guided audio of breath movement mindful meditation. You will learn how to move your breath to various parts of your body to help release and remove tension from various parts of your body. Great for soreness, tiredness, pain, tension, tightness, stress, and anxiety in different parts of the body.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Todd Corbin.

In this session,

My intention for you is to share with you a way to use your breath,

In fact to move your breath,

To reduce your stress and you reduce your anxiety and reduce your level of tension in your body.

And what do I mean by move your breath?

Now obviously,

You move your breath automatically,

The breath just moves through the body.

When you inhale,

You breathe in air,

Whether you breathe in through the nose usually or through the mouth,

You take in oxygen and the body does the work.

The body automatically knows where the breath is going to go and as you breathe out the same thing,

You exhale and the air moves in and through the body.

The oxygen that you breathe in and breathe out in and through the body moves.

So what do I mean move your breath?

In this way,

You're consciously moving your breath.

You're focusing on a particular part of your body.

Say for instance,

You feel stress and tension in your shoulders and you feel just tight there.

So what you can do is close your eyes and just imagine the breath moving in and through your shoulders.

Or a lot of times we stare at a computer screen or our phones or a lot of driving and we just get tired.

Our eyes get tired and there's a lot of tension buildup and strain in your eyes.

So you can close your eyes.

In fact,

Try this right now.

Gently,

Softly close your eyes and for the next few moments,

Take a few breaths and breathe in and through your eyes.

And just imagine as you breathe,

The energy and the oxygen from your breath is moving in and through your eyes.

Go ahead and do that now.

Okay.

How does that feel?

So the energy from the breath,

The oxygen,

Can actually loosen up areas of tension that we build up in our body.

So when we move our breath in a particular way,

We're consciously taking our breath from one point,

Say the top of your spine or the base of your neck,

To another point,

Say the bottom of your spine,

Or from one point,

Say from the top of your head to your heart.

And just going back and forth to those areas.

As you breathe in,

It goes in and up and as you exhale,

It moves down and through.

So whatever part of your body,

You can breathe in and through your legs,

You can breathe in and through your arms,

You can breathe in and through your chest,

Wherever you'd like.

But moving your breath,

You obviously have to pick two particular points.

And if you focus on one organ,

So like your heart,

To breathe in and through,

You can do the front of the heart and the back of the heart and it moves in and through back or you can go around like in a circle,

It moves all the way around.

And when you breathe in,

It moves the other way.

There's lots of things you can do with moving your breath.

But in this particular activity,

I want you to take your focus and put your focus on the top of your spine,

The area where it's right at the base of your neck and the top of the spine.

You can almost kind of feel that,

The connection where the base of the skull connects with the spine.

And that's your top point.

And as you breathe out,

That's your starting point.

And as you breathe out,

As you exhale and release the air,

I want you to move the energy of the breath.

Imagine the breath moving down a channel,

Down through the spine to the base of the spine,

Just above the small of the back.

Okay?

And as you breathe in,

As you inhale,

The breath then moves from the base of the spine all the way back to the top of the spine.

So back and forth,

Up and down your spine.

And I want you to do that for the next few minutes.

I will coach you and I will ring the sound of a Tibetan bowl so that you will hear and will you know when the time is over.

Okay?

So I want you to get into a comfortable position if you're not already in there.

Feet firmly on the floor.

Sit up fairly straight.

Sit up straight,

But not too straight,

So you still have some flexibility there.

And gently close your eyes if they're not already closed.

And just start by breathing in fresh air.

Breathe it up.

Come up to the top of the spine at the base of the neck.

And as you exhale,

Breathe it down and through the spine,

Down to the base of the spine.

And then back up as you inhale,

Up the spine.

And then breathe it down,

Back down the spine.

So inhales move up,

Exhales move down.

Go ahead and spend the next few minutes.

And I will remind you occasionally and when we're done you will hear the sound of a meditation bowl.

And we're going to spend the next three to five minutes doing that now.

And just notice if your mind drifts away to some thought or noise,

Any kind of distraction,

Just gently guide your attention back to the movement of your breath up and down the spine.

Remember as you breathe in,

You breathe it in and up to the top of your spine at the base of your neck.

And as you breathe it out,

As you exhale and release that air,

You move the energy of the breath down the spine to the base of the spine.

Done.

And just continue moving the breath up the spine and then back down the spine to the base of the spine.

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Reviews

Thank you it was really helpful to release my tension on my neck 🙏

A really interesting approach I had not experienced before: visualizing moving the energy of your breath around whatever part of your body is feeling tension, stress, or fatigue. A lot of the practice is spent in silent application of the technique and there is no music which meant my mind wandered often. Overall well-executed.