Category: Mindful Breathing

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A Mind of Ease Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Stress Transformation

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

The article below explains a brief self-healing meditation that can be performed at any time, specifically to calm and balance your nervous system.

In the spirit of mindful self-healing,

Toby

Taking Care of Your Nervous System Through Meditation 

Due to the busyness and stress of our daily life we often find ourselves with nervous systems that are chronically over-stimulated, often trapped in fight or flight mode, and generally wired for anxiety and fear. The main nerve within the nervous system is the spine, so one of the best ways to care for and gain benevolent control of your nervous system is to focus your attention upon relaxing and energizing the spine.
The short technique I describe below is one I use often myself as a short 1-5 minute meditation during the day, and is part of the multi-faceted approach to creating a calm-lucid body-mind that I teach in my Mind of Ease Program. It focuses on the body, but it can have a quick and profound effect on our mental and emotional state as well, due to the inherent interconnectedness of the body-mind.

Relaxing the Spine
Sit, stand or lie down in a comfortable posture with a straight back, your ears and shoulders in line with each other.
Focus your attention upon the length of your spine from the base of the skull all the way down to its base/your coccyx.
Feel your way inside the vertebrae of the spine, to the spinal nerve that runs inside. If you like you can wiggle your neck and hips a little just so as to feel the nerve moving so you get a feel for it.
Now see and feel the smaller nerves radiating out from the spine, spreading out from in between the vertebrae to the rest of the body.
See (visualize) in the centre of your spinal nerve there is a line of light and energy. As you breathe in see and feel this line of energy glowing brightly. As you exhale see that light and energy expanding out into the spinal nerve, and then out along all of the nerves that spread out through the body from the spine. See your whole nervous system in the whole of your body lighting up like a light bulb as you exhale.
Repeat for a few breaths, or for a few minutes, ending with a brief period of relaxation.

It can take a little while to get used to feeling your way into the centre of your spinal nerve and then breathing the energy out from your spine along your whole nervous system, but is a skill you can acquire relatively quickly with practice.

As I mention, I normally just do this as an ad hoc exercise whenever I am feeling a little tired or frazzled, I find it remarkable how quickly I can find a space of physical relaxation,  regeneration and energy by doing it. Try it out!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Uncategorized

Energizing Your Body-Mind With Cellular Breathing (Article and guided recording)

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weekend’s article explains a technique that I call ‘core cellular breathing’ which is a technique I teach for energizing and healing your body-mind. You can also listen to a five minute guided meditation on core cellular breathing by clicking on this link:

Core cellular breathing guided meditation (5mins)

In case you missed it here is the link to the free meditation on ‘listening to your breathing’ that I posted mid-week.

Toby

Energizing Your Body-Mind With Cellular Breathing 

This meditation is designed to directly stimulate the subtle energy within your physical body; increasing your energy, facilitating physical healing and also encouraging blocked emotional energies in your body to be released. Thus it works on both the physical and psychological level of-our body mind.

Implicitly it also invites practical awareness of a universal or spiritual level of energy that we can draw upon and use in practical ways in our daily life.

It is a form of mindful energy-breathing that I developed myself through daily qi-gong practice. I have found that breathing in this way is a very simple and effective method for healing and balancing the energy of your body-mind.

The method: Sit comfortably and take a few centring breaths, focusing on your body. You can either breathe in through the nose and out through the nose, or in through the nose and out through the mouth, whichever you feel more comfortable with.

Now as you breathe in, feel yourself breathing in not just with your nose and lungs, but with all the cells of your body. As you breathe in, feel all the cells of your body breathing in with you. As you breathe out feel all the cells of your body breathing out. Practice this form of full body breathing for a few breaths.

Now see in the centre of all the cells of your body there is a point of life-force and energy. As you breathe in focus on these points of energy within the centre of each cell, and see them glowing intensely with light.

Now as you exhale, see these points of light and energy expanding out into your cells, lighting up your body and cellular structure like a light bulb.

Continue to breathe in this way for a period of up to five minutes. You can extend this if you like once you are used to the technique, but in the beginning short periods are best.

It is a good idea to finnish with a brief period of silence and stillness.

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Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing One Minute Mindfulness Presence and being present Uncategorized

Listening to the Breathing – Free Meditation Recording (Plus Upcoming Mindful Breathing Workshop)

Dear Integral Meditators,

In each moment your breathing is providing you with a wealth of insight about the way in which you are thinking, feeling and experiencing your life. I’ve just created a short, 5 minute meditation on a practice I call “listening to the breathing” that will help you access that insight and use it to increase the amount of understanding, relaxation and ease that you experience in your life. You can have a listen to it right now by clicking here:

Listening to the Breathing Mindfulness Exercise (5mins)

Listening to the breathing is one example of the practices that I will be teaching in a short 2 hour workshop on Mindful Breathing on the 25th March. The full details are below.

Yours in the spirit of listening and awareness,

Toby

 

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