Use Kundalini Breathing for Self-Healing
Yogic Breath Techniques Train Body for Healing, Bliss, Relaxation
Apr 28, 2009
Bliss begins with the breath, according to Dr. Steve Koc of Salem, Oregon.
“When we breathe deeply, we have the potential of attaining the same trance-like euphoria found in meditation, prayer, chanting, ecstatic dance, kirtan and by listening to particular kinds of music," he says.
According to Koc, a chiropractor and longtime energy healer who's worked extensively with celebrities including Michael Jackson, the Grateful Dead and the Eagles, and who’s spent decades studying and teaching Kundalini yoga, anyone can achieve a blissful state anywhere, at any time.
Attain Bliss with the Calming Breath
A key method of reaching the euphoric state is through the Kundalini meditation technique of the Calming Breath, he explains.
To begin the Calming Breath, sit down, close your eyes, and start breathing long and deep, in through the nose. Fill the belly, fill the chest with air, and hold it for a while. Then let it out slowly and fully through the nose.
“Remember, you hold the breath in, but you also hold it out; both are important. The key is to slow this cycle, to slow down your breath rate,” Koc notes.
Doing this frequently trains your body, musculature and glandular system to instantly revert to a state of deep relaxation.
Nerve Accommodation Trains the Body
“It’s the concept of nerve accommodation,” says Koc. “The nerves fire off easier every time you use them; that’s how habits get formed. When we are training the nervous system with a new breathing technique, the muscles and nerves learn the pattern; they will reach it faster and more efficiently each time.”
To slow the breath further actually causes a shift in your body’s hormones, he says.
To achieve this, start by breathing 6-11 breaths per minute, to give your body a chance to incorporate the change. Then, slow down to one to five breaths per minute, with one breath cycle being an inhale, hold in, exhale, hold out.
“This will create the physiological and psychological response of the meditative state,” he says. “It’s very restorative.”
Accessing the Parasympathetic Nervous System
The result of this carefully slowed breath is that the glands release, the muscles relax, and the parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, as opposed to the sympathetic system, Koc says.
“The sympathetic is our fight or flight system, the adrenal based system of our body chemistry. It rules nervous excitability. The parasympathetic system is the at-ease state, the relaxed state in which your body does self-healing and rejuvenation. It’s the way you feel right before you drift off to sleep, the feeling of peace and calm you get when you are in nature, or when you are day-dreaming,” he says
If you can slow your breath with the Calming Breath, you will be able to get near to, or actually within the parasympathetic state, where your body does self-healing.
Working with the breath, the ancient yogis knew, is a simple, effective technique that can be done anywhere, at anytime, to calm the mind and help the body use the parasympathetic nervous system for euphoria and healing.
