True to Yourself Podcast 23: A Powerful Breathing Exercise for Anxiety Relief with Ananta Ripa Ajmera
Learn a powerful breathing exercise to relieve anxiety to support you with the sacral chakra healing journey. This is also a wonderful sleep promoting breathing exercise. It is an ideal breathing exercise for singing, as well. There has been research conducted by the International Journal of Yoga to demonstrate how this is a great breathing exercise to help lungs.
The best part? You only need 30 seconds to practice this breathing exercise to relieve anxiety, help you sleep better, warmup for singing and/or improve your lung function.
Join me on this special 'practice' episode of the True to Yourself Podcast to start your journey today with this breathing exercise that, when practiced regularly, can be a true game changer for your health, relationships, and the sacral chakra healing journey.
This breathing exercise to relieve anxiety is featured in Chapter 2 of my book, The Way of the Goddess.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Episode 23: A Powerful Breathing Exercise to Relieve Anxiety
[00:00:00] Namaste, and welcome back to the True To Yourself Podcast, a place where we explore the power of authentic living. I am your host, Ananta Ripa Ajmera, and today I am happy to share with you a really powerful breathing exercise for anxiety relief. This particular breathing exercise is also excellent for anyone who needs help sleeping at night,
[00:00:27] for people who are looking to improve their lung function, and for any time you need to bring your mind and your senses back into the present moment. A lot of times, there's confusion about what it means to concentrate. People think concentration means focus, and focus means concentration, but according to the Vedanta spiritual philosophy, what concentration actually means is anchoring your mind in the present moment and not going into thoughts and worries of the past or anxieties and fears related to the future.
[00:01:07] Anchoring your mind in the present moment is what will allow your inherent soul power and your true essence to be able to spring forth from deep within you. This is really, really important for the practice of channeling your energy and your emotions into soul power: the focus of the past month on the True To Yourself Podcast.
[00:01:33] I thought today I will actually show you a special practice that you can start to incorporate in your life anytime you feel really anxious and scattered, you need to recenter yourself, you're about to go to sleep and are trying to turn off your mind so that you can actually surrender to sleep.
[00:01:54] You can also do this early in the morning when you wake up as a way to energize yourself. It has many different purposes and you can do it at any time of the day. Unlike other breathing exercises, which have some kind of time constraints of empty stomach and things like that, this can be done anytime freely, and it's a really, really wonderful
[00:02:17] way to be able to close off the doorways of your five senses temporarily to be able to connect directly to your true essence, which goes beyond all of these five senses and is the key to unlock the inner peace and the clarity of mind that we're all consciously or unconsciously searching for in our day-to-day lives.
[00:02:42] This breathing exercise, like all of the breathing exercises in the yogic tradition, is designed to help you slow down your breathing as much as you possibly can. When you look at nature, the whale is the longest living animal. The secret for its longevity is that it actually breathes really slowly.
[00:03:09] So we, as yogis, are looking to learn from nature, to learn from animals, to be able to harmonize ourselves with the world around us, by being able to tune into what is that secret of the whale and how can I apply it to be able to enhance not only longevity, but the quality of whatever amount of life we have to live?
[00:03:35] When we think about life as an allocation of a certain number of breaths, then whatever we can do to slow down those breath, to expand them, will naturally extend our life force, even if not by years, then for sure, by the quality of our experience in our minds and in our bodies, and in our relationships as a result of.
[00:04:00] how we're feeling about ourselves. Because that always gets reflected in the way in which we relate to other people in our lives. So this one breathing exercise for anxiety relief has many, many implications in terms of helping you to stay in the present and to really unlock your greatest creative magic as a result, because creativity comes from being present. Creativity
[00:04:26] comes from being fully connected to your true essence, to your source, to your soul power, and that's what we're really looking to unlock in this step two of my nine-step framework that's featured in my book, The Way of the Goddess Daily Rituals to Awaken your Inner Warrior and Discover Your True Self.
[00:04:49] This particular ritual is actually featured in chapter two of my book, which is about channeling your energy: a topic we've been exploring a lot here on the podcast over the past few episodes. If you haven't listened to them, I definitely encourage you to check them out, and you'll be able to then even more deeply understand the context for
[00:05:10] why and how this really simple ritual will really help you to be able to become the master of your five senses and your mind as a result of that. That is because the mind needs to control the senses. What controls the mind is the intellect, and the intellect is like the higher mind that is the reigns of the chariot, so that the horses of the senses don't go out of control.
[00:05:39] If the mind is pulling the senses, then it can be led here and there and go astray, because the mind is really driven by the emotions, and the emotions tend to get pulled and triggered even by physical senses. Our minds get triggered by all of our senses, by our sights, by the smells that we're exposed to, etc. And when we are practicing Brahmacharya, which is a really powerful practice of developing self-control and the ability to channel your energy into constructive, productive, beautiful outlets, then we need to.
[00:06:16] awaken something even more than the mind, which is the intellect. And that is the capacity within us to be able to set limits for ourselves, which ultimately lead us to the poison that becomes nectar, right? The things that are difficult to do in the present that then unlock the nectar of whatever it is
[00:06:37] we're really looking for in our lives are what Brahmacharya unlocks for us. It's discipline that unlocks freedom. It's self-control that unlocks enjoyment. When we are a slave of our five senses, when we can't control our tongue, when we can't control our speech, when we can't control how much we eat, for example, then we're not really able to even enjoy what we do consume, because we're just.
[00:07:02] a subservient mess that is dependent upon something of the senses outside of us. Maybe it's even another person whose contact we need to have. We want to become the sovereign master of our senses so that we can consciously decide to really enjoy whatever food it is we really enjoy, by knowing that we're able to be without it.
[00:07:28] We can really enjoy the company of someone who means a lot to us in our lives if we know that we're able to be happy by ourselves. That's the power that these kinds of practices of really reigning in your senses and of closing off these five doorways to open up the doorway to your inner home, your true essence, your soul power, really imbue you with.
[00:07:52] That's the reason why we do them, which I believe is very important to know before we actually just go and do them. So I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate how to do this powerful breathing exercise now for anxiety relief, for help with sleep, for coming into the present moment, for enhancing your creativity and so many other benefits.
[00:08:13] What we're going to do is literally close our ears with our thumbs, and then we're going to gently cover our eyelids with our middle finger and our ring finger, and then we'll allow the index finger to just gently rest on our eyebrows. And then what we will do is inhale deeply through the nose, and then as we exhale, we'll make a sound, a buzzing sound at the throat, and that will reverberate throughout your being.
[00:08:44] This breathing exercise is also very great for regulating your nervous system. You'll feel the impact of it and how that sound vibration, which is the subtlest of all of the five senses, and is therefore the closest to our true Self, will actually really reverberate throughout your being. This is also a great breathing exercise for singing, when you're warming up to your voice, to be able to sing, speak or to perform, and also to channel any nerves that may be arising as you're about to speak,
[00:09:21] sing, or perform for people in whatever way. I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate it now by closing my ears with my thumbs gently covering my eyelids with my middle fingers. Actually, the ring finger is gently resting underneath the eyelids, and the index finger is gently resting on the eyebrows. Now I am going to inhale deeply through my nose.
[00:09:49] Exhale now, making a buzzing sound at the throat.
[00:10:06] We hold that exhale as long as we possibly can to prolong and extend our life force. That's the meaning of Pranayama. Let's do it again. Now, together three times. You can go ahead and start to close your ears with your thumbs. Gently rest your middle finger on your eyelids, your index finger on your eyebrows, and then your last two fingers can simply float or touch your nose gently.
[00:10:39] And we'll go ahead and inhale through the nose round one.
[00:10:57] Inhale round two.
[00:11:14] Inhale round three.
[00:11:22] Mmm.
[00:11:34] It's often really difficult to come back out after you do this breathing exercise, because it takes you to such a beautiful place, deep within, and it's a great way to connect with your true essence and really be able to anchor yourself through the ups and downs that are inevitable as we transverse through this life.
[00:11:56] I am so happy to share this practice with you and would love to also invite you to consider checking out a 14 day free trial of our Circle of Life Spiritual Membership Community program, where you will be able to benefit from all kinds of different embodiment tutorials in Qigong, yoga, dance styles, and step-by-step processes on how to cultivate creativity, stability, transformation, and all of the nine powers that I talk about in my nine step framework.
[00:12:32] The Community Program also hosts live Power of Practice Circles, to talk about your own journey and your own practice, discuss any challenges that you're having, and receive support from other seekers who are on the same path as you. We also just had our first Writing Circle, and we'll be doing this as a monthly offering to support you in connecting with your most authentic voice and your most authentic expression for the healing power that it has, first and foremost.
[00:13:07] And then we'll be teaching you how to become a published author. If that's something that you're seeking to be able to do with your life and your expertise, and if you are looking to benefit others with that, but are not really sure where to start or how to begin, this will be a really great step-by-step course that we'll be developing within the Circle of Life.
[00:13:29] Community to help you with that. We also have a whole library full of delicious Ayurvedic recipes that are themed for chakra healing. We have a whole chakra healing guide to help you know whether your chakras are in or out of balance, and then where to go to start to heal them. We also have different Ayurveda masterclasses in the library to help you unlock the power of authentic living in your daily routine and your
[00:13:56] seasonal lifestyle patterns, to really live in harmony with nature and be your most authentic self. We have a 14-day free trial of the Circle of Life Spiritual Membership Program available to you, so you can actually explore the whole library completely risk free and see if it's something that resonates with you.
[00:14:19] I would love to be able to connect with you more personally through our live circles and through our member discussion forum to be able to get to know you and your journey and to also have our mentors who have each trained with me also be able to support you one-on-one more personally with whatever your spiritual wellness goals may be.
[00:14:42] We have also a really beautiful community buddy system where we connect you with different seekers who are on a similar journey, so that you can give and receive much needed support on the journey ahead. I definitely invite you to check out the notes in the show notes so that you can consider joining us on this journey. Do also check out the other episodes that are related to the sacral chakra healing journey, channeling your energy, and what this practice of brahmacharya that I mentioned really means for you in terms of strengthening the foundation of your spiritual practice to empower your whole spiritual growth journey to really unfold and evolve at an exponential rate.
[00:15:29] It is always such a pleasure to be able to join you on the True To Yourself podcast, a place where we explore the power of authentic living. If you've enjoyed this or any other episodes, I would encourage you to leave a review and also share the episode with those you know in your life who can benefit from it.
[00:15:52] Thank you so much for joining me. Namaste.