Yesterday I wrote about how John Nester’s book Breath and Baba Ramdev’s Pranayam exercises have helped me realise the importance of proper breathing.

Today I will just talk about some of the experiments which John Nester speaks about and how I felt after that.

One of the breathing exercises he talks about is 5-6 second inhale and similarly 5-6 second exhale. He’s given various examples of how different religious hymns have a cycle which corresponds to this breathing pattern. I have tried doing this in two ways.

One while moving from one concentrated task to another, I try to keep a gap of about 10 minutes during which I try to break away from my computer screen. During this time I try to focus on this breathing cycle. It helps me in feeling less exhausted from tasks, though I am not sure if this is the only reason but I do think breathing this way helps.

The other time I have experimented with this breathing pattern is just before sleeping. I lie on the bed and for the next few minutes I keep breathing in this manner. Slowly all the thoughts of the day start disappearing as I concentrate on the breathing. I think that is a major benefit. As long as you keep thinking about the events of the day, the brain keeps in hyper drive.

I will add one thing over here though. While doing this breathing pattern, I have in parallel also started writing down all the thoughts which come to me on a piece of paper or on my cell phone for taking action. This could also be helping get my brain to wind down.

If you have trouble getting to sleep in the night, try this and let me know your comments below.

Till next time…..