Practice box breathing to regulate your nervous system, reduce stress, and find a sense of inner balance.

English

This guided mindfulness of breath practice utilises the box breathing technique (a variation of the Sama Vrtti Yogic Pranayama) to help create a balanced nervous system. We count the inhale, hold, exhale and hold for 4 counts each in this super simple but very effective calming practice.

Breathing Into Balance - Box Breath

Hi, I'm Emily and I'm a teacher here on Insight Timer. I've been teaching mindfulness meditation and yoga for over 10 years and I'm passionate about showing how we can combine ancient philosophy with modern science through movement, through breath and through meditation to bring balance and a sense of true connection in our lives. And I'm guiding these practices on the traditional lands of the Dudaroa, the Tangarong, the Waiwuru and the Yaitmataung here in Victorian Australia and I pay my deepest gratitude and respects to the elders of this land past and present. Welcome to your practice today. So we're going to be exploring how we can find balance through our breath and in the yogic tradition there are a number of different practices that we can use to do this. But today I'm going to guide you through a really simple one, the box breath. And this might be really useful for you if you're feeling particularly chaotic or stressed. It can be used in moments of stress but you can also practice this every day in the morning or the evening or whenever you have time to, to help you to practice regulating your nervous system. Our breath is so intimately intertwined with our nervous system and through this practice of evening out the different parts of our breath, our inhale, the hold of our breath, the exhale and then the hold at the bottom of the exhale. And we're kind of toning our vagus nerve through this practice and tapping into our parasympathetic nervous system letting our body know that everything is okay. So know that this practice is safe for you at any time but if of course if you start to feel like you're more stressed out when you're doing this please just go gentle. So you might like to make the count slightly shorter or you might like to skip the holds of the breath, anything that you can do to make yourself feel more comfortable during this practice. But know that if this is a new idea to you that just expanding our breath a little bit and holding our breath can feel challenging so you can lean into that a little bit but if it starts to feel overwhelming please take a break. So sit yourself comfortably. You can absolutely do this lying down if that feels better for you otherwise sitting in a chair seeing if you can be quite upright or you can sit on the floor or cushion. And we'll start just by rolling the shoulders up towards the ears rolling them back and down a few times. We can hold a lot of tension through our shoulders and our chest and just a little bit of movement. It can be as big or as small as you like. It can just help us to iron that tension out a little bit. And then allow your shoulders to settle. Allow your hands to rest on your lap or down by your sides. And we'll take a few sighing breaths before we begin the box breath practice. So take a nice long breath in through your nose if you can. All the way to the top and then open your mouth and sigh your breath out. Releasing all of the air. Big breath in through the nose nice and slow. And then a sigh. You can make it as audible as you like. Again relax your shoulders, relax your jaw as you breathe out. Last one like that. Inhaling deeply. And exhaling fully. And then if you haven't already you might like to close your eyes. And just let that go and become aware of the natural movement of your breath. And if you can breathing in and out through your nose now as much as possible. And I'm going to guide you through this box breathing. Inhaling for four, holding for four, exhaling for four and then holding for four. And we'll do about five rounds guided together and then I'll let you do a few rounds on your own so that you can play around with the count keeping that count nice and even. So breathing in and breathing out. And then as you start to inhale we'll count one, two, three, four. Hold the breath two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four. And hold your breath two, three, four. Breathing in two, three, four. Hold the breath in two, three, four. Breathing out two, three, four. And hold the breath out two, three, four. Inhale two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Inhale two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Exhale two, three, four. And hold two, three, four. Breathing in two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Breathing out two, three, four. And hold two, three, four. And just continue for another three rounds on your own. And practicing, focusing on that count. And if you needed to you might shorten that count to three, you might like to extend it to five or more. Slow, controlled, balanced breathing. And when you've finished, your third round on your own, just let that box go. Imagine the sides of that box just falling outwards and your breath now allowed to expand. This practice of box breath is a version of Samavritti, which in Sanskrit means the equal fluctuation of the breath. A pranayama practice from the yoga tradition. Pranayama meaning both to control the breath, the yama, control, and prana, the life force of the breath. But also meaning ayama, to expand or to be free of constraints. So allow your breath to be free now. Allow yourself just to notice the natural flow of the breath, just as we did at the start. And perhaps noticing how you are as a whole after completing that practice. And you might like to take one hand to your heart, one hand to your belly, or both hands together at your heart. And just take a moment here to reflect on any insight that you might have gathered up from your time, simply breathing. And thank you so much for practicing with me today. I hope you enjoyed it. You have a beautiful day. You can take your time now to deepen your breath a little bit, blink open your eyes as you're ready to, and move on with the rest of your day.