Breathwork – The Unsung Hero

Master Victor: [00:00:00] And welcome back everybody to another episode of The Unlimited You. This week we’re going to be talking about breathwork, the unsung hero, probably the most important thing we can do in our practice aside from maybe actually meditate. We do breathwork and meditation together. We use them hand in hand.

Today we’re going to talk about like, what is breathwork? Why do we do it? What’s the importance of it? And you know, how often should we do it? It’s probably one of the things that has really changed my life the most. So, everybody breathes. We need to breathe in order to live. It is a physiological process that’s pretty complicated that involves your heart, your lungs, and your brain.

They need to work together in order to get oxygen into your system and carbon dioxide out. Normally breathing is a subconscious action where we’re not like actively thinking about how we’re breathing We’re just kind of [00:01:00] doing it Breath work is taking our awareness and putting it a hundred percent on our breath So we are being mindful and aware of how that breath is moving it and keeping consistent, right?

so You’re taking your breathing process and you’re just bringing awareness to it and making it more intentional. Now there’s many different types of breath work, right? There’s different techniques, there’s different methods, different applications. So what we’re referring to when we say breath work is just making a conscious awareness of how you’re going to be breathing.

And then we can use different techniques to amplify that. You know, for example, I think in a few of the earlier episodes, we, we went over a little bit of the school shining breath. Skull shining breath isn’t a powerful exhalation and then you have a very kind of passive inhalation that kind of happens naturally and you’re exerting the air, that carbon out of your system and you’re, you’re, you’re [00:02:00] allowing that emotion to squeeze and push out of you.

And another thing that happens in, in, in breathwork. One of those physiological things that happens is. Our breath regulates our pH level in our blood. Now, like when you’re eating food or water, that’s going to regulate the pH of essentially like the liquids in your digestive system. So it’s going to, you know, affect your pee maybe your poop.

Drinking pH level water is not going to affect your blood. That’s going to be your breath. The oxygen that’s getting into your system, Is going to alkalinize your blood. The carbon dioxide getting more into your system is going to make your blood more acidic. So when we do breath work, we’re intentionally bringing in, oftentimes more oxygen into our system.

We’re alkalinizing the blood. Oftentimes you’re going to get lightheaded. You might get tingling sensations and these other different physical responses that are completely normal. Just [00:03:00] part of doing the breath work. And we, our body naturally does this. So let’s say like you’re, Your blood is getting a little bit more acidic.

You haven’t been taking big, deep breaths and there’s carbon building up in your blood. Well, your body’s going to start taking deeper breaths, bringing in more oxygen naturally, without even thinking about it. It’s just, there’s a normal, natural response that your, your body has. So, kind of getting more into these different techniques, you know, Wim Hof popularized the Wim Hof method, which is an ancient breathing technique that they do in the Himalayas.

It’s very powerful in clearing out emotions, alkalinizing the body and establishing relaxation, right? I love doing skull shining technique as it helps clear the emotions and it drives the energy from the body up to the head, which is essentially what we’re doing when we’re doing meditation. Another one of my favorites [00:04:00] that.

I do pretty much every day in my meditation is our measured breathing. It is breathing in, holding, and then exhaling for the same amount of time. So we’ll breathe in for seven seconds. We’ll hold for seven seconds and we’ll exhale for seven seconds. And what this does is it allows your mind to focus on the breath.

So it gives mental clarity. It helps to relax the body. But the most important thing that we use it for in our meditation is bringing mental clarity in focusing the mind, not on the thoughts. But fully bringing that awareness to the breath and by slowing the breath, we can slow our minds. If you notice, you start rapidly breathing.

Your mind’s probably going to start chattering really fast. It’s going to be start talking and have all these thoughts running all over the place. But if you take a few big deep breaths, and this is a proven scientific thing. [00:05:00] And I’ve written an article on our website, farrahacademy. com. And you can go there.

I have articles being posted on there usually at least once a month. And you can look more into this. I have all the sources posted on there and you can also check the description. If you’re on YouTube, I’ll be posting it on there. So you can click and, you know, verify because. Always verify, right? Don’t just take people’s word for stuff, right?

So the, the scientific process has proven that breath work It instills calmness and relaxation in the body. So let’s say you’ve had a really stressful day. You know, your boss is kind of crappy to you at work. You come home and you’re just feeling heavy. You’re feeling like, oh, I hate my job, blah, blah, blah, right?

Do some breath work. Get out of that mind. Because what happens when we have these thoughts, they lead us down a pathway of just a cycle of thoughts. And. It doesn’t end. It just gets worse. So what we want to do is bring the awareness to the breath and that immediately what it does [00:06:00] is takes your mind off the thing, right?

And you put it on your breath already. You’re going to be more relaxed. Then by focusing on the breath, you’re quieting the mind, allowing it to focus on the moment, the body, this present moment and bringing the awareness here. There’s so much going on in the moment. If you try you know, feeling your body smelling, hearing and seeing and tasting everything all at once, there’s so much input coming in that tuning into the present moment will wash away that trend of thought, that stream of consciousness that’s making us focus on that hardship.

And it’ll bring it to that relaxation. Now, relaxation starts in the mind by focusing on the breath and then reverberates throughout the entire body. It has a physiological response. You release chemicals, your body relaxes, it changes the frequency of your brain patterns and allows you to literally calm down.

It is a [00:07:00] very powerful thing to do. Specifically, skull shining is probably one of my favorites for that specific instant. And there’s a beautiful tutorial on YouTube that I can also link on here. And we’ll be going over a few of these breathing techniques today as well. So you can, you can practice these and see how powerful they are.

And it’s really about how much of yourself you’re going to put into those techniques and you’re going to get that out of it. Breath work is really important in establishing, like, a good martial arts practice as well. When I was learning martial arts, my senior master would constantly tell me, Breathe, breathe, breathe, focus on your breath.

If you control your breath, you can control your mind, you can control your body. I’d be constantly being told this in training. During the intensity of our training, punching, kicking, you’re breathing hard, you’re tired. You have to focus on your breath. [00:08:00] If you’re breathing heavy, your, your blood, your, your heart is going to be pumping like a racehorse.

As you slow that heart rate down by focusing on the breath, by slowing it down, your heart rate has that same response, meaning you can last longer without getting your heart rate to a danger zone. We can expend less energy and by breathing, we can bring in more oxygen into our blood system, which gives us energy, right?

Oxygen is used in our cells to literally produce energy. So it is very important to breathe during high intensity exercises. And it’s probably like where I really started my, my breathing journey was applying it in exercises. And I really noticed that the more I focus on the breath, I can just train. For a crazy amount of time where I would be getting out of breath before because I’d be focusing on the intensity of the exercise and [00:09:00] then I get tired when I brought my mind and I took that awareness and put it to the moment and breathing and I let go of all of what I’m trying to do.

I let go of all these thoughts. I answer that flow state and I focus on my breath. Magic happens. The body relaxes. My speed increased. My mind became calmer. I didn’t feel afraid and oftentimes in a self defense situation, we are defeated first in our heads and then we’re not able to handle it correctly.

So by Establishing a sense of calmness inside, we are able to more accurately handle difficult and different situations, right? And this is one of the biggest keys that breath work and focusing on the breath will instill that inner calmness. And that’s so critical because like we we lose that inner calmness we we’ll get so emotionally attached to the things happening in our lives and then [00:10:00] like something bad happens and you’re just you’re just feeling crappy the rest of the day and everybody you talk to you’re exerting that energy out onto right so by walking throughout our life With that internal sense of calmness, we’re sharing that energy.

We’re sharing that calmness with other people through our smile, through our interaction, through literally the way we talk to them, the tone of voice, right? And that comes from, it starts here. It starts here. So we have to control ourselves in the brain and the lungs that controls our heart and that controls everything else.

And this is why breath work is so important that it’s literally the starting point for Everything else and it often gets neglected because it’s like oh, we all know how to breathe and then you do breath work And you’re like oh That was really hard. I don’t know if I have been breathing correctly and not a lot of people have done that kind of work to even make that realization about themselves, right?

And now let’s transition into like what, [00:11:00] what happens in breathwork because it is, is very powerful. You get a lot of different benefits from it. Now, of course you have to Do these techniques correctly. There’s many different ways, many different techniques for, for my own personal experience the, the breath work can provide large emotional release.

Through bringing awareness of the body. So in our breath work practice, we were breathing in intentionally and bringing out intentionally. When you do that, you’re bringing in more oxygen and you’re exhaling more carbon, which means you’re alkalinizing your blood. You’re bringing in more oxygen, which allows for higher brain function.

It allows for higher output of energy in your muscles. It can reduce soreness. It can kill some bad bacteria within your system. There’s a lot of benefits that come from just [00:12:00] alkalinizing your blood. What’s also been proven is that it calms the whole entire system. When that happens, when you get relaxed, when you get calm, you become aware.

of where the tightness in your body is being held. We oftentimes hold a lot of stress in our hips, shoulders, some people in their knees, some people in their jaw. So what happens as you’re relaxing, you’re going into the breath work, and then you get to the breath holding part. And the breath holding part is where a lot of that magic happens.

You’re forced to deal with this flight or flight reflex, and you’re, you’re allowing your body to do what it can naturally do through relaxation, right? You relax the body, you observe the mind, the sensations, the feelings, and what happens is calmness starts to be instilled in the body. Awareness starts to come to the spots [00:13:00] where you hold tension.

Like for me example, I hold a lot of tension on my mid glute here on the top of my glute from sitting too much or just standing wrong. And I often have a little bit of tightness there when I’m doing breath work. I will feel that tightness and I might move my hip a little bit. I might bring that awareness and the awareness of it allows me to feel the muscles around where the tightness is.

And it helps me relax and what I found and this is very true and it’s I’m pretty sure I have a an article linking this on on on the post I made on our website. There’s a link between the tightness we have in our body and emotional and mental suppression. And we often hold a lot of the experiences, negative as well, in our bodies.

So trauma can be held in specific [00:14:00] muscles and you may be just tense. Some people hold it in their shoulders, right? And releasing the muscle can oftentimes bring awareness to the emotional trauma or grief that’s being held in the body and literally releasing the tension in the muscle will bring forward to the mind what is happening in the emotions and it allows you to deal with it and it’s beautiful.

I’ve experienced many people cry, laugh, some people just get really deep into the breath. And it is unique to each person based on their own life experiences, their own level of awareness of themselves and how much they can let go and kind of where they are in their journey. The, the release of the muscles really becomes powerful.

And it becomes critical for our meditation as well, because. In order to meditate deeply, we have to have a relaxed body. If we’re constantly tight or [00:15:00] pain in our bodies, we can’t leave the awareness out of the body. Like you’re constantly having to adjust your position or relax a specific area and your, your, your awareness, your consciousness is there rather than being on the breath, rather than being on the third eye and really deepening the focus.

It’s on the body. So one of the first things we need to do is really relax the body. And once we do that, we can then bring the awareness of the breath and go into the meditation for a meditation. Specifically, I think I already went over this a little bit. We use the measured breathing and It becomes really powerful in like every time I do it, I just become calm.

I first relax the body through what we call a double inhalation and the double inhalation is a short and then a long breath. It sounds like this and then you hold the breath and you [00:16:00] squeeze every muscle in the body from your calves, your quads, your hips, your belly, your chest, your arms, your neck, your shoulders.

And then you double exhale up and relaxing the body. This tightening of the muscles helps relax your entire body. Breathing in brings an oxygen and allows that pressure to send out releasing the breath and relaxing the body allows that relaxation to deepen. Alright, so let’s try these two techniques.

We’re going to do the double inhalation. When we do the double inhalation, we’re going to hold the breath starting off low, medium, and then high intensity, squeezing every muscle in the body with your willpower. And then we’re going to double exhale out. After we do that three times, we’re going to go into our measured breathing.

We’re going to do our measured breathing. Let’s say four rounds. Sometimes you can go five if I’m kind of in a rush that day, and I feel like I’ve gotten the [00:17:00] benefit. Sometimes I’ll only do three. I minimum will do at least three. And you can start off with seven seconds, working your way up to eight, nine, ten, but you want to be comfortable when you’re doing these breaths.

You don’t want to be feeling like you’re Yeah, I can’t breathe right you want to be comfortable and relaxed in the breath work at least for this specific breath work There’s some other ones where there’s some other goals But for our measured breathing, we want to be relaxed. Eventually, once your breath slows down, maybe you can hold it 12 seconds, breathing in 12 seconds, hold 12 seconds, breathing out.

And that’s just the more used to your body gets. So let’s give this a try to get into our, our breathing. If you are driving either do, you can do this with your eyes open, but be very careful Careful and aware. I recommend you pulling over to do any kind of breath work like this. Also, if you’re out in a public space, maybe just be aware of where you [00:18:00] are.

So you’re in a safe area. I don’t want to put anybody in a compromise situation. So we want to be Sitting forward off the back of our chairs with our hands up, turning at the intersection of the hips, belly forward and chin parallel to the ground. This creates a nice straight spine. We’re dealing with energy work here.

We’re sending the energy from the base, from our root all the way to our brain. So sitting up tall allows that straight line and that energy to move up with our eyes closed. Let’s take a regulating big, deep breath in filling the lungs. And then breathing out, letting go, nice and slow. Now we’re going to take a double inhalation in, holding the breath, squeezing low, medium, high intensity.

Every muscle in the body vibrate with willpower. Double exhale out, relaxing the body, relaxing all of the muscles. Let’s do it again. [00:19:00] Double inhalation in, low, medium, high intensity, vibrate with willpower and double exhale. Relax the body. One last time here. Double inhale, squeezing low medium vibrate with willpower, squeezing every single muscle in your body.

Double exhale, relax every little muscle. Feel the muscles becoming like jello dripping off of the bone. Sitting up tall, we can bring our gaze to the center of the forehead. Let’s take a big regulating deep breath in

and ah,

one more time. Big deep breath in, fill the lungs. And let it out.

Getting ready for measured breathing. Breathing [00:20:00] in slow for eight seconds.

Holding the breath

and breathing out.

Breathing in, nice and slow. Keeping that gaze uplifted at the third eye. Slowly holding

and breathing out.

Breathing in. Feel that air coming in through the nostrils, filling the lungs, holding the breath,

and letting the air slowly come out,[00:21:00] 

letting go of the breath, feel the calmness you’ve instilled within yourself, bring your awareness back to your body. And that’s just a very quick short example of The breath work we use in our meditation, and it prepares our body and it prepares our mind. And after I did that, I already feel a lot calmer.

I did get a little bit sweaty though, from the vibrating, you know, you’re squeezing the muscles. And after that, we would go into our Hong Sau technique and go deeper into our meditation. So using breath work can be very critical for dealing with stressful situations. And this is This is essential in martial arts.

If you can’t control your mind, you can’t control yourself. And that’s the only thing we can control. And by controlling ourselves, we can establish peace, we can treat others with [00:22:00] courtesy, do things with integrity, with respect, and that’s really what it’s about. It’s instilling these values so that we are living a a good life so that we’re treating others with peace because that’s kind of the goal of martial arts is instilling this calmness and this peace inside of yourself that is unwavering our guru teaches us paramahansa yogananda that you can stand amidst the crash of breaking worlds calmness in your hearts unshaken Because that feeling is always there.

We must just connect with it. And once we realize that, the hardship of many situations becomes easier to do. If you’re in a conversation and you’re feeling that emotional overload. Breathe. Take a big deep breath in. And sigh it out. Let it out through the breath. And feel yourself calm down. The breath is [00:23:00] powerful.

And utilizing these different techniques can become transformative in how you You go about your life. It’s definitely transformed. Like how I deal with my emotions, how I deal with my thoughts during hard moments, I go to breath work. I practice breath work at least once a day and I do a good session multiple times a week.

And what I found is when I don’t do that kind of work and life happens cause life fricking happens and it’s stressful and some things are just hard. I feel it. And then when I go to do the breath work, I feel that restriction building in my diaphragm, in my abdomen, right? And it restricts my diaphragm from opening and then I can’t breathe as deeply.

And if I can’t breathe as deeply, I’m not getting a full deep breath. I’m not getting as much oxygen. And again, oxygen was tied to increased brain function, increased healing, higher energy. So we want to be able [00:24:00] to breathe deeply with our diaphragms. Oftentimes we’re just breathing shallowly with our chest to make sure you’re deep breathing deeply with your diaphragm.

If you sit up tall and you put your hand on your belly, you want to feel that hand expanding and contracting with each breath. The diaphragm is this muscle that comes down and contracts. Give space for the lungs to expand filling down here, right? So we want to use our belly, that diaphragm muscle to expand.

There’s multiple diaphragms, of course, in your body. I’m talking about the one we use at the bottom here for breathing, and that’s going to give us a deeper breath. A fuller breath rather than the shallow stuff that, you know, it keeps the lower side that’s unused in our lungs filled with carbon and that’s acidic and that’s not good, right?

So we want to be clearing out that air, the carbon dioxide out of our lungs by [00:25:00] taking regular full deep breaths and that is very rare to do in today’s world. So, you know, be aware of your breath. Do some breath work. Check out the description. I’m going to have some cool links, some examples, some sources for y’all.

If you have any questions, submit a comment, send me an email, go to our website, farahacademy. com slash you. Also almost every single major city I’ve been to in the U S has. a community that has good breathwork teachers. Go find someone who is doing a breathwork workshop. I recommend the Wim Hof Method, Skull Shining, and if you find any teachers who do Kriya Yoga out of Ananda Village, and there’s multiple places throughout the U.

S., go to one of those. Experience what that feels like. You know, the practice usually, when you’re doing a full breathwork practice, we’re doing three rounds, and in the three rounds, [00:26:00] The first one kind of gets you prepped the second when you get a little bit deeper and then the third one you’re loose You’re open and you can breathe deeper.

You can go further You can relax even more and it allows you to release more so breath work like this is a 22 minute episode We wouldn’t even be like done with the third round yet, right? So it takes a little bit of time and commitment to do the full practice, but it’s worth it. You can do Wim Hof has an 11 minute video.

There’s a, I think another 11 minute video on skull shining as well. There’s a lot of sources out there. So go for it. Try it. It is life changing. I can’t. reiterate that enough. So learn how to breathe, practice breath work. You won’t regret it and stay tuned for our next episode. Subscribe to our channel and go to fairacademy.

com slash you to find out more. We’ll see you all soon and [00:27:00] breathe.