This is a short and simple routine that introduces you to three different breathing techniques.
These techniques can be used in one-to-one meetings or in group meetings.
What's remarkable about them,
They take a few minutes to do,
But you get the time back from doing them instantly.
The reason for this is that everyone becomes calm so the meeting is less fractious.
But also,
You seem to slow time down,
So you cover more ground in less time.
And also,
These techniques work when you're meeting face-to-face or even over Zoom,
FaceTime,
Microsoft Teams and the like.
And there are three ways to do this.
So the first way is either to do it yourself so you're calm,
Refreshed and energized,
Yet relaxed.
The second way is to take a few minutes out before the meeting proper starts and get all attendees to listen to this track,
Starting from the end of this initial instruction.
But the third and most natural way by far is for you to practice this a few times and lead the breathing yourself.
So you start by getting everyone to put their feet flat on the floor and then to place their hands on their belly so the middle fingers just touch.
Then get them to breathe in so the belly expands and the fingers part.
And then for the first out-breath do a whooo,
As if you're blowing out a candle.
And what this does is energize the diaphragm.
It asks people just to breathe in and out so on the in-breath the belly expands and the fingers part and on the out-breath they come together again.
And they can do that at their own pace,
In their own time.
It asks them to do this for five in and out breaths.
The second breathing technique comes from the yogic tradition and it's fabulous for energizing the left and right hemispheres of our brain.
So we enter what's known as the whole brain thinking mug.
And there are many variations of this.
What you do is you take your right index finger,
Get everyone to place it on their right nostril so it closes and then get them to breathe in and out through the left nostril,
Say three times.
And then when you've done that you just flip over and you get your left index finger,
Get them to place it on the outside of the left nostril so that closes and again breathe in and out three times.
But obviously this time through the right nostril.
And then for the third breathing practice,
Let's combine these two techniques.
So what you do,
You imagine that your breath starts in your left belly and on the in-breath it goes up through the diaphragm,
The centre of your rib cage,
And the in-breath goes up all the way into the right side of your head.
Then on the out-breath it flows back down through the middle of your rib cage back into the left side of your belly.
And then on the next in-breath you imagine it starts on the right side of your belly,
Goes up through the rib cage,
Up into your left brain,
And on the out-breath it comes back down the other way.
So what I recommend is you do this technique eight times.
So on the first,
Third,
Fifth and seventh in and out-breaths you start on the left side of your belly up into the right side of your brain,
And then on the second,
Fourth,
Sixth and eighth you start on the right side of your belly and go to the left side of your brain.
So do that right now.
So thanks for doing that.
I hope you find these techniques pretty simple.
I hope you get meetings to go much more smoothly and more productively and that you discover how time slows down when you slow down your breathing.
Thanks for breathing with me today and I'd love to hear your feedback of how it works for you.
And by the way,
If you'd like to lead this exercise yourself and use this ambient music track you'll find it on the app it's called Guiding Lights.
Good luck!
