If you have come for treatment at the Ayaffa Healing Space you have been given many breathing techniques to help accelerate and deepen your session. Some of them are whispered in my ear by your guides. Some are my favorites from yogic traditions. Some are excellent Taoist meditations. And some have been created over the years by me while I’m sitting in my practice.

Since not everyone on the great wide inter-web can come in for sessions, I thought I might post my favorites that you can bring to your own healing sessions. Yes, your welcome.

Favorite Breathing Meditation #1 :  Micro Cosmic Orbit.

This mediation is my definition of yummy.  I do this in the car.  In line at the store.  When I need to calm my mind (which is quite often.)  I will add some links, there is a lot written on this…and you can peruse at your leisure.  But here is a photo so you can see what I’m writing.

First sit with your feet flat on the ground.  Be comfortable…that’s very important.  I clearly have patients lying down to this, but either way works.  Then begin your breath at your perineum, or the lowest part of your body.  Your inhale moves up your spine to the top of your head.  Your exhale moves from the very top of your head back down to your perineum.

You are essentially tracing your midline of the trunk of your body with your breath.  I could write as much about this as this guy, but I will keep this blog kinda simple and say two things.

1) You are massaging and balancing all of you major chakras with this breath.  You are using the force of yang rising (your masculine, forceful energy)  to balance the receptive elements of your chakras.  And you are using the descending yin energy (feminine, nurturing energy) of your body to balance the more outgoing, out pouring elements of your chakras.  (My next blog will be about the chakras…so hold on tight.)  So it’s this perfect yin/yang balance meditation.

2) You are opening two of the Chinese energetic systems in your body:  The Du or governing vessel.  And the Ren or Conception vessel.  For more on that, do see this guy’s post…no sense in reinventing the wheel here

The trick with this meditation, as with all meditations, is that once we settle in and get familiar with the breath and visual of our energy rising and falling and balancing, it’s easy to let the mind wander.

See if for five or ten or even 20 minutes you can just “try” to notice when you are not present in this wheel and exhale (i exhale strongly to get my attention) and then I usually thank the thought or ask it to come back in 20 minutes.  When that doesn’t work I quickly follow the thought through, thank it for it’s persistence and then exhale and begin from the beginning of the breath again.

So…I have lots more to say about this..since it’s my favorite, but let’s move on to #2.

#2  Yogic Tri-Doshic Breath

Ok.  I have learned this many different ways from my many different teachers, so I will write the version I like the most…you are of course welcome to play and see which direction of flow suits you the best.  That is the joy of free will!

So this breath works either sitting in a chair, feet flat on the ground.  Or laying on your back, knees bent…feet a little wider than your hips with the knees falling toward the center….resting on each other to protect the back.  Or standing in a mountain pose, feet strong, arms either to your side or resting on your hara (under your navel).

Here’s my favorite version:  Inhale into your low belly, fill it up as much as you can.  Continue in the same breath to fill your middle abdomen breathing into your side ribs.  Continue the same breath up into your lugs and upper chest, well under the collar bones and hold.  Then exhale the same way:  Either exhale low belly, mid belly, upper chest.  Or my favorite is exhale upper chest and lungs, then side ribs and middle belly, then low belly.  My stomach is always totally flat at the end of the exhale.

I just did a few rounds.  It is so exhilarating!  Try and see.  Try to slow your breath down.  Try to speed your breath up.  See how that makes it different.

3.  I like to call this breath:  A slice of heaven.  You know you want to know more…am I right?

This breath is a bunch of visualizations.  I hope it makes sense because I don’t have a picture of it.  Laying on your back your first inhale brings in all the goodness of the heavens from above you.  You breathe this breath to its maximum inhalation and then exhale through your body under the table into the earth. Imagine the earth taking anything you no longer need from you. (This can be thoughts, emotions, pain, blocked energy.)

Your next inhale brings all that good earth energy into your body for a full inhale and then exhales any remaining trapped energy up towards the heaven to turn back into light.

Your next inhale breathes breath from pure light into your crown (the top of your head) and comes down through your body to your feet…filling you with beautiful angelic light.  Your inhale brings light all the way down to your feet, and then your exhale comes out through the soles of your feet…allowing any stagnant energy to be recycled in the earth.

Your next inhale brings all the wonderful grounding energy of earth into the soles of your feet and you can inhale that as far into you as it wants to go.  I generally get up to my hips and it doesn’t want to go any further.  I’m not sure I would go past my belly button…since you are getting close to the pivot of the heart chakra…and that doesn’t need to be grounded with earth energy…but more of that in the next post.

So you have a four directional breath that you can play with in any order.  If one direction feels really good I might stay there for a while before going onto others, but I make sure to hit each directions a few times before I move onto another breath meditation.

So…those a few of my all time favorites…and I hope you find that they help deepen the results of your treatments.  They of course are excellent to use for meditation without a treatment as well.

Many people will have you believe that you need to find a place of “no mind” when you meditate…and that is great after a lifetime of meditation.  But some of us have very active minds and active lives.  And finding 20 minutes to sit and breath and kind of put our minds on a little mouse wheel makes a huge difference in our grounding and the rest of our day.  The way I see it…if for a few minutes I can get my mind and my minds mind…and that minds mind to all line up in a single file and breathe and be at the same time…I have just won a serious miracle!

Happy grounded, amazing, deep healing treatment to you!  And happy meditative breath!