3 Breathing Exercises That Will Change Your Life

One of the biggest benefits yoga offers actually has nothing to do with asana or poses. Instead, it’s all about learning to work with your breathing to quiet the nervous system and hone your focus.
Pranayama is the science of yogic breathing. “Prana” is the Sanskrit word for the energy that permeates all life, and pranayama means “the expansion of life force.”

Why Practice Pranayama?

When you inhale deeply, the lungs expand and the chest wall stretches, stimulating the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain down into the chest and beyond. The pressure on the vagus nerve triggers the body’s natural “relaxation response,” a physical state of deep rest that:

• Slows your heartbeat
• Slows your breathing
• Decreases blood pressure
• Increases levels of nitric oxide which relaxes blood vessels to increases oxygen and blood flow

Pranayama helps shift your awareness away from the busyness of the mind, and helps you feel in tune and reconnected to your body. And over time, practicing breath regulation will give you the skills and confidence to self-regulate in many other areas of daily life.

3 Breathing Practices You Should Try

Here are three pranayama practices from my latest book, Holistic Yoga Flow: The Path of Practice.

1. Victorious Breath (Ujjayi)

Ujjayi breath is generated by allowing the flow of breath to pass gently along the glottis, the base of the throat, creating a soft but audible sound.
The sound should be consistent and even on both the inhales and exhales. Ultimately, this sound vibration gives the mind something to sink its teeth into.
Tip: Inhale for four counts with ujjayi sound. Exhale for four counts with ujjayi sound. Repeat ten rounds.

2. Even Breath (Sama Vritti)

In this practice, the inhales and exhales should be even so the same amount of energy that is drawn in is then recycled back out.
Practice tip: Inhale for four counts and hold for two counts. Exhale for four counts and hold for two counts. Repeat ten rounds.

3. Alternate Nostril Breath (Nadi Shodhana)

Nadi Shodhana balances the right and left channels of our system.
Practice tip: Start by emptying the lungs on an exhale. Close the right nostril with the right thumb, and breathe in through the left nostril for four counts. Hold for two counts.

• Inhale for four counts and hold for two counts. Exhale for four counts and hold for two counts.
• Repeat ten rounds. Seal the left nostril with the right ring finger and breathe out through the right nostril for four counts. Hold for two counts. Breathe in through the right nostril for four counts and hold for two counts.
• Seal the right nostril with the right thumb, and breathe out through the left nostril for four counts. Hold for two counts.
• Repeat the cycle eight times.

108 rounds Maha Mrityunjay Mantra

7 Reasons to Meditate In The Morning.

When is the best time to meditate? For millnia, mystics, sages, and teachers have told us that early morning is the most conducive time to meditate. But why is that?
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I’ve tried meditating at all times of day. I once sat for 48 hours straight and I used to frequently meditate from midnight to 6 A.M.

Of course, those experiences were rich and incredibly rewarding in their own ways. But after 20 years, I’ve found from my own experience that there are some outstanding reasons to meditate early in the morning.

On Morning Meditations

I always meditate first thing in the morning after a small cup of coffee. That’s how I start my day and I love it. It’s not for everyone, but I do find it’s an extraordinary way to enter your day.

If you are thinking of starting a regular meditation practice, I highly recommend you try it for yourself.

And after extensive field research, here are my top 7 powerful and life-affirming reasons to meditate in the morning.

1. The world is still and quiet.

The way I think about it, when you wake up early in the morning, the mind of your “village” hasn’t stirred yet. So there is little friction or activity in the psychic space of the world around you.
The inner and outer worlds are calm like a tranquil lake. Your mind and body respond to this serene atmosphere. And for that reason, it’s a wonderful time to hit the cushion and commune with the silence.

2. Your mind is at rest.

our mind is like any other machine. The more stimulated it is, the more it speeds up and churns out thoughts. In the early morning, your mind has been in retreat from the world of activity, motion, and stimulus.
And relatively speaking, your mind is still at rest when you wake up. That makes it a very conducive time to practice meditation. Once you are in the active flow of your day, your mind is busy making billions of connections so you can function at a high level. Not so in the morning.

3. Start the day with a clean slate.

We get a fresh start with every dawn of day. As much as it might feel like it, no two days are the same. You wake up renewed and refreshed, having taken a break from the momentum of your life.
That’s another great reason to meditate in the morning. You have a clean state and you can let go of yesterday’s problems. You have a chance to embrace the world with a fresh outlook.
That’s what meditation is all about—letting go of the past and the future and meeting every moment like a new day.

4. Create a positive momentum.

Practicing meditation puts you in touch with the still, calm center of your being. It’s there where you start to find a deeper connection to life.
Within each of us, there is a place that is always fresh and untouched by the world. Immersing yourself in that calm center restores your faith and confidence in the goodness and positivity of life.
Like a plant unfurling in the fortifying light of the sun, we receive this soul-level nourishment in the depths of silence.

5. Move from the center.

Meditation helps you root yourself in the present moment. It erases the distance between you, yourself, and life.
When you practice this present moment awareness in the morning through meditation, it creates a powerful momentum for your day. With practice, you’ll learn how to stay rooted in that center all day long and you’ll respond to life and the complexity of the day from your truest and best self.

6. Cultivate focus that lasts all day.

Starting the day with meditation gives yourself an advantage. Meditation is the best way to train and exercise your awareness. Think of it as physical fitness for your awareness.
Through the act of focusing on one thing—say your breath—and then bringing your attention back to that object of focus again and again, you’re building your capacity for focus.
Doing this first thing in the morning will improve your focus all day long. It will keep you from getting distracted, help you stay on task, and you’ll be more productive, less divided, and happier as a result.

7. Experience the sacred.

More than any other time, the early morning is when I experience something I could only call sacred.
I’m not religious, but sometimes when I meditate in the early morning, I am touched and moved by a quality of silliness and silence that evokes a powerful sense that all of life is holy. The echo of those experiences lasts for a long time.
Their impact cuts across all aspects of my life and my humanity feels renewed and empowered.
If you are new to meditation, I encourage you to give it a try. Maybe you aren’t a morning person, and that’s totally fine too. But for the record, I’ve also seen people who aren’t fans of the early morning get “converted” because of the incredible benefits that come from meditating in the wee hours.

What is Yoga Nidra or Yogic Sleep?

Yoga Nidra is a practice that can take you to the next level; a relaxed body, fluid mind, and supercharged intuition.

Yoga Nidra, translated as yogic sleep, is a five-stage process that begins with a body scan to engage one’s physicality. It incorporates meditation on the breath, the balancing of emotional states, visualization, and self-healing. Setting a positive intention is another important step (which is called a sankalpa) and this gives the participant a specific purpose to the session.

The Depths and Benefits of Yoga Nidra

During Yoga Nidra, we let our awareness wander through the whole body.
 While doing so, we move through different stages of consciousness just as in sleep: We shift between the waking state, dream state, and finally to deep, dreamless sleep.
It creates deep relaxation for health, mental peace, and higher awareness. Swami Rama has been quoted to say that Yoga Nidra is a practice of self mastery of the autonomic nervous system. The technique is practical and easily accessible.

Relaxation exercises and pratyahara are used to prepare the mind and body for Yoga Nidra by balancing the right and left hemispheres of the brain and stimulating the subtle energies of our vital force, the prana.

It’s said that 45 minutes of Yoga Nidra is as restorative as 3 hours of sleep. What does this mean? By receiving the proper rest, we enhance functioning of the immune and metabolic systems. In turn, this improves our overall physical health and leads to higher energy as well as fewer colds and infections of all types. Rest also improves mental health, eliminating brain fog, insomnia, anxiety attacks, PTSD, and depression.

Yoga Nidra Breakdown: The Main Stages for All Levels

Preliminary Relaxation Technique
We engage in simple breathing exercises to release tension and trigger the nervous system to induce a state of parasympathetic activation.
Creating a Sankalpa (Intention or Resolve)
This intention is something we wish to manifest in any area of our life or a quality we wish to cultivate and/or embody. For example, someone might want to manifest fearlessness, courage, inner peace, or fulfillment.
Stage 1: Rotation of Awareness Through the Body
The primary objective in this stage is to isolate the mind. The mind is focused, alert, and separated from external stimuli. We separate from the body, from the senses, and from their need for attention.
So we create pratyahara (sense withdrawal) and command control over the sensory mechanisms of the physical body, specifically through exercises which deal with the mapping of the brain. Pratyahara opens the gate to the contents of the subconscious and unconscious levels of mind.
The science behind this stage is simply to make use of the principle of homunculus, or the walking sensation through the cerebral cortex. The mapped stimulation through the brain relaxes the motor and sensory regions, thereby relaxing the body and the mind.



“A cortical homunculus is a pictorial representation of the anatomical divisions of the primary motor cortex and the primary somatosensory cortex, i.e., the portion of the human brain directly responsible for the movement and exchange of sensory and motor information of the body. It is a visual representation of the concept of ‘the body within the brain’ — that one’s hand or face exists as much as a series of nerve structures or a “neuron concept” as it does in a physical form.”

Image Credit and Text Source: Boundless. “Mapping Primary Somatosensory Area.” Boundless Anatomy and Physiology. Boundless, 14 Nov. 2014; https://www.boundless.com/



Stage 2: Awareness of Prana
The objective here is not only to enhance our ability to be aware and connected to our emotional responses, but also to work with the subtle body. We want to become mindful of the realms that lie beyond body and experience the pranic tide of breath without judgement. Through breathing techniques, we continue withdrawal from the external body and continue momentum of the inward journey.
Stage 3: Awareness of Feeling and Emotion
Our aim at this stage is to use the interaction of polarized emotional experience through a type of word association. We want to dissolve our attachment to emotional and conditional programming that lies hidden from conscious awareness in the subconscious mind.
“With detachment and without fear we observe the polarizations then seek an equilibrium to their experience to culminate indifference. Experiencing both waves of a feeling or emotion can have significant impact on releasing stored effect of past experience. We simply invite without added distortion what ever may arise remaining fixed on observing the intensity, and flavour of each experience and even where in the body it’s centred.”- Everett Newell
Stage 4: Visualization
At this stage, we access and work with contents of the unconscious mind and samskaras which are our mental and emotional patterns, individual impressions, ideas, or actions. Together, our samskaras make up our programming.
Here, guidance through a series of archetypal images or a guided visualization in form of a vivid journey will evoke responses in our relaxed mind. We cleanse and heal the mine field of deep-rooted conditioning.
The Final Step
We revisit our intention (sankalpa) and plant it into the field of the unconscious mind. We then return awareness back to the body.
Yoga Nidra takes us through a magical process of releasing the physical body, quieting the brain waves, tapping into our emotional body, and gaining a higher intellect. Even a beginner can enter profoundly deep states of consciousness just the same as any experienced meditator.