I always like it when someone says, this is the ultimate, and you’ll work up to it over time. So I’m going to give you an ultimate when it comes to deep breathing. I learned this in a Kundalini yoga class, just to give it credit. It’s called the one minute breath. And just to give you a little warning, it’s not going to happen today. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually quite made it to the one minute breath. But let’s just break it down real simple. Breath has two parts, inhale and exhale. We’re going to add two more parts and make a breath four parts. It’s very simple. You’re going to inhale until you’re full. You’re going to hold. You’re going to exhale.
And you’re going to hold again. So you’re inhaling and then you’re retaining. Then you’re exhaling and then you’re retaining again. We’re going to start with four seconds. It’s easy to count. You might just watch a few times and then once you’ve seen this video, you can do this like as you’re drifting off to sleep at night. If you really enjoy it, you can do it while you’re driving the car on a road trip. You can even challenge your friends and see if they can do it. And you’re just spreading the good wisdom of yoga. So four seconds times four means I’m really just going to do a 16 second breath. And I’ll make it real obvious with what I’m doing. I won’t be able to talk if I’m doing it right.
So it’s inhale, hold, exhale, hold. four seconds each. And it’s amazing that just in that moment, I actually felt extremely clear-minded And even if you’re just dabbling with these techniques, the benefits that come to you are the same benefits of meditation. Because when you’re concentrating that hard on what you’re doing while you’re doing it, you are meditating. And most likely, whether you’ve ever done yoga or meditated before, you have. When you’re cooking, you’re chopping that zucchini, and if you aren’t paying attention, you’re gonna cut off your finger. Or if you’re caught in your favorite activity, art, golf, painting, whatever you’re doing, You’re in that moment and that’s all that matters in that moment. And yoga really is just one way to help you be in that place, which is the present moment more often.
I highly encourage you to explore the one minute breath and just to close my point, it eventually becomes a 15 second inhale. Yes, that is a very long time. You feel like you’re exploding and then you hold it for 15 seconds, which feels like a year. Then you exhale slowly. If you blow it out too quick, you’ll mess the whole thing up. You just blow it out slow, and then the really amazing part is when you hold your breath with your lungs empty. You honestly feel like you’re gonna die, and I don’t mean to scare you, but in the ancient texts, it actually says that this pranayama helps you release the fear of death. Might be a good thing to work on. So anyway, 15 times four is 60, 60 seconds in a minute.
Ultimate goal for this particular technique, the one minute breath. Good luck!