Breath in through your nose and draw your breath down into
the area just below your navel, allowing your stomach to
expand as you breath (Baby Breath) and filling your lungs
entirely with each breath before exhaling through your nose.
Breathing is the MOST important part of meditation and Kundalini
Awakening.
From our birth until death we breathe more or less continually,
yet for the most part we do it without any awareness of
our breath and its effects on us, and believe it or not
most people in the western world do it wrong!
Take a moment right now and feel your breath. Pay attention
to the air as it flows in through your nostrils and down
into your lungs. Don’t think about anything or do
anything other than just breathe.
1. Are you taking a relatively shallow breath and just filling
the upper lobes of your lungs?
2. Does your stomach move out as you breathe?
3. Do you feel the bones of your ribcage expanding and opening
with each breath?
For most people the answer to 1 is YES and the answers to
2 and 3 are NO so lets expand this exercise a bit.
Take a moment right now and feel your breath. Pay attention
to the air as it flows in through your nostrils and down
into your lungs. Don’t think about anything or do
anything other than just breathe.
Draw your breath down to a point about 2 inches below your
navel (the body’s center of gravity). When you do
this you’ll feel your stomach expand and push out
in front of you. Most westerners usually keep their stomach
pulled in and their chest out, so if you do this you’ll
have to relax all that.
Just take a moment and be aware of your breath as it flows
down into your center.
Now as you inhale and draw your breath down, also let your
ribcage expand. You’ll feel your floating ribs at
the bottom of your ribcage spread and move, and you may
get a few pops out of your spine also. Now just take a few
moments and breathe this way. Don’t think or let your
mind wander, just breathe.
If you’ve never meditated before then congratulations,
you just did! It’s exactly that simple.
There are many benefits to proper breathing. The extra oxygen
in your system means that your heart doesn’t have
to beat as fast, lowering your pulse and your blood pressure.
Drawing the breath down into your center also helps to massage
your internal organs, providing more oxygen to them as well
as helping to release the accumulated stresses that build
up there. The long term health benefits are immeasurable
and have been repeatedly proven for thousands of years.
Breathing is by far the most important part of the kundalini
awakening exercises, although it sounds so simple. Paying
attention to the breath is the beginning of opening up your
awareness and it’s seen in every culture on the planet.
Take some time to practice this, as it’s the foundation
for everything that comes next. If you have to dedicate
your meditation time to breathwork for awhile then that’s
good, as we all proceed at our own pace.
I recently read a translation of some of Jesus’ teachings
from the original Aramaic (the language he actually spoke,
although he apparently wasn’t literate) and it was
very interesting to me that in Aramaic they used the same
word for ‘wind’, ‘breath’ and ‘spirit’.
Those with a Chi Kung background might find it interesting
to take another look at the New Testament and insert the
word ‘breath’ every time you see the word ‘spirit’.
About the Author
---
Robert Morgen is a Reiki Master who currently holds a Black
Belt in Hoshin Roshi Ryu and founded High Mountain Hoshin
in Denver, Co. He's also the founder and moderator of the
Kundalini Awakening Discussion Group at http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/Kundalini
