Do you believe you have the power to control your state of being?
To tune into your enthusiasm, capacity to heal, focus and flow?
These three simple breathing exercises - when harmonized with the right frame of mind - can change your state of being and help you harness your life force.
There's not a lot of difference between each of these breaths aside from intention and intensity so be sure to know your intentions and monitor your intensity
1. Breath to Energize - think about how you breath when you just finished a sprint, a really hard set or some form of high intensity training . Your body is hungry for air and you naturally breath a little faster, pulling in a pushing out large amounts of air. This is the style breathing we can use to energise ourselves.
*Deep powerful breaths in, filling the entire rib cage, encouraging the chest to fill out in all directions.
*Long, full breaths out from the belly. Energetically pushing the "old" air out of your body to make room for the new.
The intention hear should be to fill your body with energy, to warm up the respiratory system and mobilise the rib cage.
The intensity should be quite high.
2. Breath to Focus -if you want your breath to help you focus, focus on your breath.
To do this it can be helpful to breath in a particular way. *Long breaths in through your nose right down into your belly and full breaths out is the foundation *the detail is trying to breath in and out through a slightly closed throat so that you can hear your breath. *The intention here could be relaxed but alert
*the intensity should be just enough to facilitate these two qualities.
3. Breath to Recover and Restore - the simplest breathing technique to recover is deep, slow breaths in through the nose followed long, slow, and full breaths out through the nose.
Be sure to breath into your whole body - belly then chest.
If you can make the out breath slightly longer than the in breath that will help.
A couple of intentions I like with this breath are "breathing in awareness, breathing out tension" or "breathing in let, breathing out go". The intensity is low - allow the breath to be deep and long rather than forcing it.
Each of these exercises invite you to control or direct the breath in someway - but the foundation of all breath work should be awareness - simply tuning in to the normal rhythms and sensations of the breath.
Do this often and learn the wisdom and transformative power of awareness.