Peace Breathing
How to stay uplifted during life's challenges
by Dr Elena Bacash, Chiropractor
The first full week of every month in the Gita yoga tradition we practice peace breathing.
Peace seems to feel like something out of reach at the moment with our global and local challenges. It’s exacerbated by feeling that we have no control of our environment, but we need to understand that the internal environment has a huge impact on our health and feeling of peace. The internal emotional environment can be reduced to hormonal and neurotransmitter releases that effect tissue, inflammation and ultimately our health – we call this stress.
So from a yogic point of view the ultimate control we have is the state of our inner being - we can hold feelings of freedom, and expansion while while quarantined at home. Similarly the freedom we feel in life (even in lockdown) is related to the freedom of our consciousness and our ability to be polarised or focused in feelings of awe and expansion and joy – these are what the yogis call the realm of the soul or spirit. Unfortunately we tend to be polarised in fear, negative emotions and frustration and it can be useful to breath into and acknowledge the challenging emotions but after facing them we can choose to uplift ourselves and feel joy.
Joy doesn’t fluctuate based on what is happening in our day to day living – good or bad – it’s steady and it always resides in the background even in the midst of personal distress. I knew that this 'yoga stuff' worked when I had a very stressful and distressing time several years ago but I could feel joy behind it all! The wisdom teachings describe the state of Joy as being of the Soul so when we feel joy we're operating at that level albeit fleetingly.
I have been using a couple of techniques lately to help rewire the heaviness of lockdown. The first one is based on some of Dr Joe Dispenza’s work – it’s basically using the elevated emotions of awe, gratitude and freedom and feeling them in the midst of the day-to-day hum drum reality. Dr Joe has been studying and recording the neuroscience behind this for years. The outcome of holding and embodying these elevated emotions when we are standing in line at the supermarket or stuck in traffic (or seeing someone flouting lockdown rules!!) is that it starts to create a new body, a new mind and a new emotional state and we start to leave the old stuck one behind.
This process is different from affirmation which is really only using the mind when most people are more polarised in their emotions. Affirmations are hard for people and generally they don’t have the focus to hold them or the emotional states and belief to back up the affirmation. ‘I am abundant,’ said 50 times per day if you feel there is only a feeling of lack in your life won’t create abundance unless you are able to visualise and embody that state of abundance…and so it is with peace!
The second technique is a pranayama or breathing exercise called Peace Breathing which is done with a visualisation.
Gita Yoga Peace Breathing
Pranayama like Peace Breathing are more than just controlling breath - they control life force or prana or our chi.
Peace Breathing uses the centre between the eyebrows or the Ajna/eyebrow centre which is the seat of the inner teacher/intuition and the heart centre/ Anahata and our ability to focus. It’s effects are centring and peaceful but also I have always felt it bolsters energy and increases power because it is a technical breathing exercise that requires laser like focus. This is also an empowering breath because we are sending love and light to ourselves and others. The science shows that the brain can’t differentiate between subject and object so that when we are sending good intentions and love to others that’s what is being released hormonally into our own systems. That’s why the yogis say ‘take care of your thoughts, words and actions’ because what we send out comes back to us!
The Technique
Take a seated position on a chair or on the floor with cross legged.
Now place the palms together hands clasped with both index fingers pointing towards the ground and if seated on the floor touching the ground. This grounds your energy. This is a hand Mudra (hand gestures during practice that direct the flow of energy)
- Now inhale and draw energy as light through the crown of the head and down to the heart- colour the energy with love and peace and send it back up to the eye brow centre and store it there as light as you exhale the used breath.
- Repeat again – storing the extra light at the eyebrow centre and exhaling the used breath
- 3rd time – repeat the inhalation and colour the light at the heart sending it the eyebrow centre (it should be glowing with energy) and now exhale the spent breath while sending all of that stored light to something or someone in your own life that needs love and peace.
This is one round.
Second round – send the light to someone you know who needs peace and love.
Third round – send the light of peace to a place in the world that needs love and peace.
When we can’t physically help or we feel stuck, this is one of the most empowering breathing exercises to do!
Written by Dr. Elena Bacash, Chiropractor