Inner Work

For the week of October 6, 2008

Spiritual Breathing

Our precious breath offers many powerful possibilities in support of our spiritual path. The four primary classes of spiritual breathing techniques are controlled breathing, conscious breathing, energy breathing, and soul breathing.

Controlled breathing. This refers to any intentional change to the normal physical pattern of breathing for spiritual purposes. Direct methods of breath control are found, for example, in Yoga and in Sufism. These include deep breathing, rapid shallow breathing, rhythmic breathing, alternating nostrils, and holding the breath, sometimes coupled with inwardly repeated words. More broadly, the efficacy of the spiritual chanting found in most traditions arises in part from the breath control indirectly caused by the chant.

While many people benefit enormously from the use of controlled breathing, such methods should be practiced only with the direct guidance of a teacher, so as to avoid possible negative health effects. As a personal example, for some years I practiced a spiritual technique that involves controlled breathing. During that period I first noticed that I had a mild heart arrhythmia. Eventually by experimentation, I confirmed a correlation between the arrhythmia and the controlled breathing practice. When I finally stopped that type of breathing, the arrhythmia vanished and has never returned. So I learned the lesson that even if a respected spiritual teacher personally gives you a practice, even a spiritually powerful practice, it still may not be right for you. Although our insight into the higher realms is quite limited, we should not abandon our common sense and our responsibility for the health of our body, which we need for our spiritual work.

The following methods do not entail any significant physical change to our natural patterns of breathing.

Conscious Breathing. For a leading example of conscious breathing, we turn to Buddhist mindfulness practice with its emphasis on attention to and awareness of the breath. In particular we focus on the physical sensations of breathing, at the nostrils, in the chest, and/or in the abdomen. This can be coupled with counting the exhalations, 1 to 10, and then starting again at 1. The attention should be primarily on the sensations of breathing, and secondarily on the counting which serves to help us keep focus on our breath. If we lose the count, we just start over at 1. Alternatively, we can practice conscious breathing with words, in-out or rising-falling. Again attention remains primarily with the sensations of breathing and secondarily with the words. We do not alter the natural, physical patterns and rhythms of the breathing. We only alter our attention and awareness through continuing contact with the breath. The count and the words are ancillary and can be dropped when steadiness of attention to the breath has been achieved.

Because the breath is always here, always moving and thus relatively easy to notice, it offers us an anchor in the present moment. Conscious breathing keeps us here and now. This simple and benign method holds great power.

Energy Breathing: A sea of spiritual energies surrounds us. The atmosphere carries such energies, which we continually inhale and exhale. But ordinarily we are not aware of these energies and they do not stick with us. They go in and right back out with the air. However, with sufficiently focused but relaxed attention and the appropriate inner action, we can access the energies in the air for our spiritual benefit.

As you inhale, place your full attention on the air entering your nostrils. Note the differences between conscious breathing and energy breathing. In conscious breathing the attention goes to the physical sensations associated with breathing. Here the attention goes to the air itself. In conscious breathing, we intend simply to maintain awareness of the physical sensations associated with breathing, whereas here we intend to draw the energy from the air.

Knowing, or at least accepting as a working hypothesis, that the air carries spiritual energies with it, by your attention, intention, and an inner act of will, draw the energy from the air as you inhale. While your body breathes in the physical air, you intentionally inhale the energy from the air. Thus you have the ordinary outer breath and, simultaneously, the inner breath.

We allow the energy to spread from its extraction point in the nose throughout the body, where it blends with and increases our store of sensitive energy. So if we practice sensing our whole body at the same time as the energy breathing, we build that part of our soul whose substance is the sensitive energy.

Soul breathing: This type of breath practice is nearly the same as energy breathing, except that we draw the energy from the air semi-independently of physically breathing the air. Casting a net made of attention-intention-will to catch the energy, as we physically inhale we pull the energy into us through the entire surface of our body, not just with the air through our nose. This method can also be done completely independently of the physical breath, drawing in the energy regardless of whether we are physically inhaling or not. As with energy breathing, sensing our entire body while we practice soul breathing gives the entering energy a place to land and be absorbed into our being.

For this week, practice one or more of these methods of spiritual breathing.

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