Breathing Practices To Still The Mind and Calm The Heart

There are lots of breathing practices that one can do to still the mind and calm the heart. These practices work at any time of the day or night – to help you fall asleep or to ease stress and tension.

To help me fall asleep I focus on my breath: soft breaths, hearing it entering and exiting through my nose and feeling it expand and empty from my lungs. I often imagine the breath swirling gently around my heart (which I know it doesn’t but imagery is powerful) and releasing the positive and loving energy it has captured to flow through the universe and land where it is needed most. It sounds very hippy-dippy but it helps me to find peace and calm and sleep.

Another breathing practice I find wonderfully settling is ‘alternate nostril breathing’, an ancient yoga and ayurvedic medicine technique called Nadi Shodhana Pranayama – in Sanskrit Nadi means flow, Shodhana means purifying and Pranayama means to control breath. This technique has been shown to balance both the physical and mental states of the body. (Honestly, who couldn’t use a little balancing these days!).

Taking time for yourself to simply be, let go and just breathe is wonderful and grounding. It helps almost immediately to settle restlessness and balances your heart rate, reduces the tense feelings of stress and anxiety, provides clarity to clouded thoughts, and improves brain function as it is said to help balance the two hemispheres of the brain.    

We often don’t give ourselves the permission and luxury to simply be, but believe me, we deserve it.

Let’s try alternate nostril breathing now, we’ll do it together:

1.    Find a quiet space. n a seated position, on a comfortable chair or side of the bed or on the floor in a crossed-leg position, sit up as straight as you can, comfortably. No need to arch your back – you want to be comfortable.

2.    Rest your left hand in your lap. Bring your right hand up to your face.

3.    Place the index and middle fingers of your raised hand lightly against the space between your eyebrows at the top of the bridge of your nose. I find this helps to gently anchor my hand and it’s more comfortable.

4.    Close your eyes.

5.    Take a few lovely, long, luxurious deep breaths through your nose – inhale then exhale.

6.    Now, with your thumb, close your right nostril and then inhale slowly through your left nostril.

7.    When you have breathed in fully, close your left nostril with your ring finger - both your nostrils are now closed.

8.    Pause for a moment – 2-3 seconds.

9.    Release your thumb from your right nostril and exhale (keep your left nostril closed).

10. Pause for a moment – 2-3 seconds.

11. Now change the nostril you breathe in – your left nostril is still closed, your right nostril is open - breathe in slowly through your right nostril. When you have breathed in fully, close up both nostrils, pause, and then release your ring finger and breathe out through your left nostril.

12. Pause again.

13. Repeat this lovely breathing process several times, breathing through alternating nostrils, falling into the rhythmic breathing of this ancient practise, hearing and feeling your cleansing breaths and feel your body reacting in a beautiful positive way, calming and settling.

I hope you find it as helpful and grounding as I do.

Here is one of a thousand articles online that provides more information on alternate nostril breathing: https://www.healthshots.com/fitness/staying-fit/heres-how-practicing-nadi-shuddhi-pranayama-can-help-you-feel-calmer/