SGM Oct 2017 Weekly Message Three: “Use Your Breath to Release Tension, Pain, & Negative Feelings”
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Welcome to this week’s edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
Breathe & Let Go
What if there is a simple way to instantly release muscle tension, pain, and the oppressive grip of negative feelings? In this week’s message, you’ll learn how to use your breath to dissolve inner blocks and instantly shift into a state of relaxed empowerment in which you can perceive and welcome your positive next steps forward in life.
This month, we’ve been discussing the 5 Keys to Unlock the Power of Your Breath. Let’s refresh the first four keys, then we’ll talk about how to use your breath to release inner blocks and instantly shift into a relaxed empowered state in which you can sense inner guidance.
1. Nostril Breathe (breathe in and out through your nostrils only)
2. Take Complete Breaths (fully inflate your lungs from bottom to top)
3. Allow and Follow (don’t force your breathing into a specific pattern)
4. Practice Coherent Breathing (follow a rhythm of equal inhalation and exhalation coordinated with your heart-rate)
From previous Weekly Messages, you may remember that Nostril Breathing purifies and warms the air; Complete Breathing opens up your full lung capacity and extracts the most oxygen and energy from each breath; Allowing and Following keeps you in a state of relaxation and least effort; and Coherent Breathing integrates your breathing with your heart rhythm and brainwaves, so that your physiological system functions as an integrated whole.
Once you have practiced these four breathing keys you can put your Complete Coherent Breath to work for you to:
*release tension and stress,
*dissolve pain and negative emotion,
*clear your subtle energy system,
*facilitate healing, and
*tap into inspiration and inner guidance.
The fifth key is a powerful tool to accomplish these things.
Key #5: Guiding Your Breath: Use your mind to gently lead your breath wherever you focus your attention to release tension, pain, and inner blocks and welcome a relaxed empowered state of being.
Before we go further with this key, let me point out the word “gently.” This echoes the attitude of Key #3, Allow and Follow, but with the slight shift that you are leading your breath, rather than following it. You will still follow the natural pace of your breathing as in Key #3, but you will guide the path of your breath with your mind.
In Qigong meditation practice, we say “allow the mind to lead the qi.” Breath, in this case, is analogous to life energy. The breath contains life energy, and as you imagine leading the breath through your body, you are activating, clearing, and cultivating your subtle energy system.
Why is this important? It’s important because your subtle energy system is the basis of your life, it is the blueprint for your health and well-being, and the doorway to feeling guided and inspired.
So, with Key #5, you imagine your breath as life energy, and you imagine you can lead this life energy anywhere you focus your attention with the intention of releasing tension and facilitating energy flow. In simple terms, tension blocks energy flow and relaxation facilitates smooth energy flow. This is true for physical tension, such as muscle tightness, as well as mental and emotional tensions that create inner blocks. These are intimately connected. Your physical pain and tightness are signals to help you recognize limiting patterns of thinking and feeling.
This is the great insight of qigong and subtle energy practice:
When your energy is flowing smoothly throughout your entire system you are healthy and feel great. Whenever you experience tension, pain, or illness of any kind, it is the result of impeded energy flow.
Do you get the profound implication of this? Every less-than-optimal experience in your life is the result of tension in some form. This includes every type of illness or negative experience. This is true from muscle aches and pains, to depression and anger, to colds and cancer. They are all the result of impeded energy flow. They are all the result of tension holding in some form: spiritual, mental, emotional, and/or physical.
Before you scoff at this possibility, see if you can really take it in. Then, test it for yourself. If this is true, if this is the way life operates, you have just discovered a powerful and useful insight. It’s worth testing out. If this is an effective description and you understand how to use it, it changes every aspect of your life. It means that you can consciously release tension, pain, and limitation and welcome new possibilities simply by guiding your attention.
Imagine your body as a bio-energetic information system. When there is a free flow of information and open lines of communication throughout your body, you are healthy, inspired, and happy. When the lines of communication are disrupted, blocked, or impeded in any way, you experience inner conflict, negative emotion, or ill health.
Imagine the bio-information system of your body registers and stores every event in your life experience and its outcome on an energetic and a cellular level. Events that had pleasant outcomes create pleasurable bio-energetic pathways in which energetic information flows freely.
Events that are negative, traumatic, and not integrated or resolved are stored as points of tension in your energetic system. These unresolved negative events impede energy flow until they are cleared or resolved on an energetic level. You can use the signals of tension, negativity, or illness in your body to recognize points of poor bio-energetic information flow, release and resolve these experiences, clear your energy, and welcome new possibilities.
To do this requires that you develop a sensitivity to your inner body and a skill in operating your subtle energy system. You can develop this sensitivity and skill by using the Guiding Your Breath practice described below.
To use Guiding Your Breath effectively, it’s important to first establish Complete Coherent Breathing. This is the foundation for everything that follows. If you don’t have a good feel for this, you are likely to force the issue and try too hard. Relaxing into Coherent Breathing will help you take a mindful effortless approach.
So, first, let’s review how to establish Complete Coherent Breathing. You can practice this as you read or listen to the instructions. Then, we’ll use Guiding Your Breathing to release an area of tension, pain, or inner blockage.
To begin, sit or lie down in a distraction-free environment. Rest your hands, palms up on your legs, or at your sides if you are lying down.
Shift to an inner focus, becoming aware of the space inside your body. Feel your body as a whole from the inside. See if it’s possible to feel the entire space inside your skin.
Align your spine so feel an expansion upward through the core of your body. . . .
Relax the nine gates: first soften and relax your eyes. . . then your jaw. . . tongue. . . throat. . . hands. . . lower abdomen. . . pelvic floor. . . perineum. . . and feet. . .
Focus into the sensations of breathing inside your body and allow your breathing to flow easily, softly, without effort. . .
Easily allow your inhalation and exhalation to slow down and deepen. Imagine and feel that your in-breath fills the space of your entire torso from your pelvis up to your collarbones, from bottom to top. Imagine and feel that this entire space empties out completely as you exhale, from top to bottom. . .. . . .
Feel your pulse with your second and third fingers on the side of the front of your neck. Count the length of your in-breath and out-breath using your pulse. . . . Easily allow your breathing and pulse to coordinate so that your inhale and exhale are approximately equal in length as counted by the number of pulses (approximately six pulses for your in-breath and six pulses for your out-breath. However, don’t try to force this pace).
Allow a natural pause after each in-breath and after each out-breath. Allow your breathing rhythm to become like a gentle wave washing through your body. Relax in that rhythm for several breathing cycles. . . .
Now, let’s use your breath to release tension: Do you have any place in your body where you have a habit of holding tension or where you feel tension now? Place your attention there. If no area comes to mind, settle your awareness in your abdomen at the base of your ribs, a common tension-holding zone. As you place your attention in the area of tension, notice any thoughts or feelings that come to mind. Just notice these thoughts and feelings without trying to do anything with them. Just observe them. . . .
Now, as you inhale through your nose, imagine your breath is filling up your tension-holding zone. Allow your breath to expand the feeling of space in this area.
As you exhale, imagine your breath is releasing any tension out of your body. Allow your exhale to empty this area completely. You can exhale through your mouth with a “Haah” sound to help you let go. Easily allow yourself to let go of any limiting thought, belief, feeling, or tension as you breathe out.
You may also find it helpful to gently stretch the area that is tense and then breathe into it and out of it.
Stretching combined with breathing and intention is a powerful practice.
Don’t be fooled by the relative simplicity of this practice. In my experience, stretching and breathing along with mental-emotional letting-go can reduce or resolve any tension, pain, or inner block held in your body.
Breathe, stretch, and let go until you feel some shift in the area you are focusing on. It will feel more open, clear, and spacious.
Notice how you feel.
Do you feel a greater sense of lightness and ease in this area?
Once you learn how to do this with physical tension, you can apply the same practice to any pain, illness, negative emotion, mental block, or holding pattern in your body. All these are manifestations of tension of some kind at some level in your energy system. You can learn to locate every one of these experiences in your body and release them using the Guiding Your Breath technique. As you release inner tensions, you may notice that inner guidance and inspirations to take steps toward new possibilities naturally arises.
Let’s review the steps:
First establish a relaxed state of Coherent Breathing.
Then, feel your body as a whole from the inside. Ask yourself if you feel any unpleasant feelings in your body? Are you tired, depressed, frustrated, angry, or in pain? Is there anyone with whom you have unresolved conflict? Can you sense where you are holding tension associated with these feelings? Where are these feelings located in your body? Is there any place in your body that feels constricted or congested?
Is there any place in your body that doesn’t feel relaxed, open, and spacious? Gently focus into this area.
Breathe into this area. Inhale through your nose and allow your in-breath to fill up the congested area and expand your sense of space here.
Breathe out with the intention of letting go. Allow the area to empty out completely. Breathe out with a “Haah” sound through your mouth to help you let go. Maintain an intention to let go of anything that clouds or congests your inner space.
Find a way to stretch the area of tension while you breathe to deepen the release.
Repeat the breathing pattern until you feel a significant shift in your sense of openness and ease.
Notice any new thoughts or inspirations that naturally arise.
Now, if you haven’t done much work with inner sensing and conscious breathing before, you may not sense much going on inside. You may find that areas of chronic tension have actually become numb. You may find it a challenge to focus internally, especially in an area of chronic tension or pain.
On the other hand, if you are more sensitive, you may feel overwhelmed by all that is going on inside. See if you can relax and observe these feelings without being caught up in or overwhelmed by them. Practicing Coherent Breathing first will help you approach tension, pain, strong emotions, and inner blocks from a calm observer’s mind.
As you clear tension from your body, your inner body will begin to feel more open, clear, light, easeful, and relaxed. Once you become familiar with this sensation, it will become a baseline you can return to more and more easily. You will be able to sense whenever tension comes into your inner space. You will develop a fine sensitivity to any disruption in your inner clarity and you will be able to release that tension and return to the feeling of open, clear, light, easeful, spacious awareness.
Being able to live from this state of relaxed empowerment is a process. It takes daily practice. Conscious breathing is an important tool in this process. You can use your breathing to learn to sense your inner body, recognize areas of tension, dissolve those tensions, and return to feeling relaxed and empowered.
The more open and clear your inner space becomes, the more easily you will sense inner guidance as it arises.
My suggestion for you this week is to take some time each day to practice Complete Coherent Breathing and Guiding Your Breath to Release Tension. Use it to clear any tensions or pains in your body and to open your sense of energetic space in those areas. As you grow this skill, you can use it to instantly release tension the moment it arises. Then notice what you feel inspired to do from a more relaxed state.
I would love to hear your questions, comments, and experiences in our Discussion below.
Until next time,
Enjoy your practice!
Kevin