Breathe to Change Your Life

I’ve been a yoga teacher for more than 30 years. I’ve taught yoga breathing techniques to hundreds of students. I know the importance of the breath for health.

But the teacher can always be taught.

In this case, Dr. Andrew Weil showed me a new/old breathing technique that is a powerful health enhancer, stress reducer and the simplest method I have ever known to power up my health literally in three minutes a day.

Dr. Weil, author of 8 Weeks to Optimum Health and integrative medicine guru supreme, has for years taught a simple technique as a means of addressing stress, insomnia and as an overall health enhancer.

Here goes:

1. Inhale through your nose to the count of four.
2. Hold for a count of seven.
3. Exhale slowly through pursed lips to the count of eight.
4. Repeat four times.
5. Do this twice a day.

That’s it! You don’t have to build up to more repetitions (although Dr. Weil says you can do it as many as eight times in a session).

This type of breathing balances your autonomic nervous system erases stress and rebalances your energy. Breathing is the only bodily function we can control consciously, but if we stop thinking about it, it continues on its own (good thing or we’d all die from forgetting to breathe!). So doing this little exercise balances the conscious and unconscious body functions. Voila!  Better health.

I’ve been religiously following Dr. Weil’s advice fort the past two weeks and I can tell you that it has profoundly changed my life.

Before I learning this technique, I often woke up in the middle of the night and found myself unable to go back to sleep because my brain would start churning on all the things I needed to do. I would toss and turn for a couple of hours and finally get up.

Now when I wake up, I simply do this breathing technique and I am rarely awake more than a minute or two.

Of course, we all lead stressful lives and so I do this a couple of times a day (more if  I am very stressed). I can immediately feel my heart rate slow (and probably my blood pressure). This breathing technique stops the toxic stress cycle that leads to a multitude of health problems and it even stops my 4 p.m. low cortisol  “I gotta have some coffee and chocolate” obsession.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I’m not a superlative type of person.

But I have superlatives for this simple technique. It has changed my life and I know it will change yours, improve your health and give you control over stress.

It’ll cost you nothing. Just about three minutes of your time every day.

Who could ask for more?