Heart Breathing: A (brief) Meditation for Calm and Clarity
Brain busy-ness or overwhelm is a modern disorder caused by overactive ego and underactive capacity to hear what our heart has to say. Use this brief meditation to recreate calm.
Mind Body Spirit
Align heart and mind to reduce brain busy-ness using this brief meditation advocated by Graeme Nicholls, and create the space for your inner self to present solutions to your problems.
Heart Breathing
Meditate - it's easier than you think
Find a comfortable space where you can relax and close your eyes - whether you sit or lie is up to you.
Place your right hand over your heart (a little to the left of the centre of your chest).
Then take deep yet comfortable breaths as you breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. When your mind wanders simply bring your focus back to your breathing. This becomes easier with practice - it isn’t the aim to completely stop all thought.
Focus on a comfortable rhythm
It isn’t necessary to force breath all the way in or all the way out. Focus on creating a natural and comfortable rhythm. Concentrate on drawing your breath in through your nose and passing down through your heart space, into your lungs and back through your heart space and out through your mouth.
With each breath out, feel tension release from your body as stress evaporates into the atmosphere.
Start to relax.
With each breath, increased oxygen pumps through the bloodstream to every part of your body, supporting and nourishing your body function.
Continue to breathe in through the nose, into the heart space, into the lungs to oxygenate the body. Then breathe out through the heart space, expelling tension and stress out of the mouth. Maintain an even and relaxed rhythm.
Two systems out of Sync
Consider an electro cardiogram creating a picture of the heart rate, represented as electrical pulses which dip and peak.
The electrical current in the brain, too, dips and peaks. Create an image in your mind of the electric waves in the brain. When we feel extreme emotions such as stress, tension, anger or anxiety our brain rhythm peaks and dips erratically.
Balance
If we had two monitors; one measuring the heart rate and the other measuring brain activity, we would see 2 erratic graphs, each dipping and peaking without synchronicity.
This state can be balanced.
When we breathe through the heart for 2 to 3 minutes, we are returning our mind and body to a state of calm, synchronising our brain activity and heart activity. Balancing ourselves.
In this way we give ourselves clarity of thought that comes not only from the mind but also from the heart.
What does your heart have to say?
Brain busy-ness or overwhelm is caused by overactive ego and underactive capacity to hear what our heart has to say. This is fraught for our wellbeing as within the heart is truth, our inner self, and where knowledge about our passion and purpose in life lies.
Use heart breathing to align the energies throughout our body and create the space for the two elements to work together, creating an opportunity for clarity and solutions to our problems to arise.
To understand this we need to recognise that our heart holds the truth, while the rational brain is dictated by ego. Ego, though acting to protect us can misdirect or misguide. Fear and risk are a prime example of this.
Risk Avoidance or Love Avoidance?
Fear is an important and ancient emotion that has allowed humans to evolve over time. Its function kept us alert to the risk of dinosaurs, lions, tigers and bears. This emotion has not lost its power over time. In a modern context there is little call to fear being eaten alive, however, this powerful emotion continues to act to protect us by controlling perceived risk factors. All very useful if we contemplate carelessly crossing the road into oncoming traffic but not so useful if we need to summon the courage to speak publicly, follow our dreams or take the leap of faith needed to share our true selves in an expression of love. Locking our emotions down out of fear comes at an enormous cost.
Controlling our environment to protect ourselves, also protects us from being in the heart space that holds the answers we need to attain the very things we desire. Fear is limitation and holding faith in our ability to provide our answers is power.
Access your inner resources
When we connect the mind (logic/ego) and heart (passion and truth) through heart breathing, we are able to access a balanced perspective, create clarity and the space for solutions to rise to our consciousness.
Can you find a spare 3 minutes to listen to your inner self?
Some would say, no, they can't spare time for themselves. If this resonates and you feel the need for support to prioritise yourself, or feel the need for an energetic boost, consider energy therapies and make an appointment today.
You deserve it and your energy matters.
Love
Michelle
Michelle Cowles
Spiritual Healer / Energy Therapist
Disclaimer: The information on this page is general, lifestyle information and should not be used to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease. This information is never a substitute for professional health care advice. Any information you find on this page or on external sites which are linked to on this page should be verified with your professional health care provider.