The Holiday season is a traditional time of giving. The practice of giving is universally recognized as one of the most basic human virtues, a virtue that demonstrates the depth of our humanity and connectedness. The decision to make giving a practice of awareness brings it out of the realm of unconscious and traditional activity, into the realm of conscious practice. It helps us to become free of unconscious restraints and fears from the past which often control us without our knowledge. When we become consciously aware of the fear and grasping that controls us we can reduce its power over us and live more freely, acting instead of reacting.

It’s common to think of giving as selfless, done without expectation of return. Conscious giving is about gaining freedom from unconscious restraints and fears. In the Christian tradition of tithing we give with the knowledge that our giving opens channels for us to receive blessings while in eastern spiritual tradition giving is tied to creating positive karma which benefits us in present and future lives.

Following is a Giving Practice from Gil Fronsdal of Tricycle Magazine. This practices involves giving consciously while observing the feelings that come up in your body and mind.

1. Do what you are doing with conscious generosity. If you are driving drive with generosity allowing someone to enter traffic ahead of you or taking a parking place further out to allow someone else to park closer. If you’re cooking, cook with a feeling of generosity in your heart for the people who will consume the food. Observe how this makes you feel.

2. Do small acts of generosity. This can be something as small as a smile or a comment on how nice someone looks. It can mean bringing something to share with your work group or remembering someones name and stopping to talk. How does this make you feel?

3. Do an act of inspired generosity. Give something much larger then you would normally to someone or something you care about or is important to you. Make the gift large enough to make you uncomfortable, to make you feel a stretch. Observe how this makes you feel before, during, and after.

4. Do something generous for a challenging person. Pick the person in your life you feel the most challenged by. We all have one or two we encounter daily. Do something generous for this person.

The Buddha says “You should feel Happy before you give, Joyous while giving, and Peaceful after giving.”

We all aspire to this.

Happy Holidays
Rich

In the eastern tradition of Yoga the practice of controlled breathing is called Pranayama.
Pranayama is a Sanskrit word meaning “extension of the life force”. The word is composed of two Sanskrit words, Prāna, life force, or vital energy, carried by the breath, and “āyāma”, to extend, draw out, restrain, or control. The breath is the carrier of Prana the life force. The practice of Pranayama helps expand life force throughout the body while eliminating negative influences like stress. The increase in life force through the practice quiets the mind and allows for increased energy, more focused concentration and deep meditation.

Go to this link for a more in-depth explanation, Breathing Exercises – Introduction to Pranayama  by Yogayak. I’m sure you would rather watch this beautiful young lady talk about Pranayama then read some dull stuff by me.

I practice Pranayama when I am tired or sleepy and need to energize myself and when I need to concentrate. It works better then the energy drinks you can buy at the store, it’s cheaper, and there’s no energy crash later. I’ve tested this myself by practicing Pranayams before I play Lumosity Brain Training. My scores are better and I find that I can focus more intensely for longer periods of time.

Many of my students live fast paced lives and have a tough time quieting down for meditation. I’ve found that the practice of Pranayama prior to meditation facilitates the state of quiet mind necessary for meditation to occur. In my personal practice pranayamic breathing prior to meditation takes me to quiet, alert mind quicker and my meditations tend to be deeper. I do three sets of five minutes using my IPhone app prior to meditation. You can demo the app at Saagara Health Apps. My son tells me that everybody doesn’t have that kind of time so even one set of five minutes will help achieve quiet mind.

Remember there is a definite difference between the breathing techniques of Pranayama and using the breath in meditation. Pranayama you control breathing while in meditation the breathe happens and you watch it without trying to control it.

Bottom line is this practice can improve your health by increasing breathing capacity and flooding the body with life force. It’s mobile, you can do it anywhere, so you can use it in your life. The way to find out if it works for you is to try it. I’m out!

“And if you know how you breathe when you are in silence, then you can create that state by regulating your breathing in a way that corresponds with silence.
Both mind and breathing are interconnected.”

Osho

Breath is the connection between the mind, the body, the spirit, and the universe.

The first step toward a more peaceful, centered life with less stress and upset is an effective breath practice. Breath practice develops awareness of the connection between the mind and the body. It enables better health, increased mental focus and ultimately a longer more vigorous life.

Our lives are contained between the space of our first breath in and our last breath out.

Breathing occurs without any doing from us. It’s a natural process of the body that occurs whether we are asleep or awake, conscious or unconscious, happy or sad without any doing from us. Breath forms a bridge between the mind and the body that allows communication through its rhythm. Each emotion originates in the mind, is grounded in the body and has a breathing rhythm associated with it. Anger, fear, joy, sorrow, all of your emotion has a breathing rhythm. Being more conscious of your breathing allows more conscious control over emotional reactions to things that happen in life.

Paying attention to the breath opens communication with the body.

We’re often controlled by emotion in our lives. We may not always be conscious of that control, especially when we experience strong emotions like anger and fear. The breath is a tool that can help develop more awareness. Awareness provides the option of changing our breathing rhythm to remain focused and relaxed so we can act instead of react.

Developing a breath consciousness involves paying attention to the breath in the moment. Looking at the breath when angry or frustrated can help us recognize our breathing rhythms.

A few years ago I mentored a fifteen year old boy who had a problem with anger.

This father had been a drug dealer and was killed in a drug incident, his mother was strung out and he lived with his elderly grandmother. When he got angry nothing else mattered except destroying everything around him. He was a gifted athlete, a good basketball player with the potential to become a really good player.

I worked with him to learn identify the anger before it consumed him. He became aware of where the anger lived in his body and how his breathing changed when he started to get angry. He found that if he noticed the anger before it took him over he could control it by turning inside, centering attention at the place in his body anger lived and changing his breathing. This didn’t happen immediately but he worked on it and he found that this practice gave him control. Last time I talked to him he was living with his sister, and playing on his high school basketball team. This meant his grades were good and he wasn’t getting kicked out of school. Learning to control anger by being conscious of breathing rhythm was important to his turning his life around.

My father once told me “everything changes, if you are sad just breathe and that will change, if you are happy just breathe, and learn to savor life on the middle path, walk on level ground.”

“There is a rhythm in the breath….and this rhythm is connected to the rhythm in the world, the rhythm in nature, the rhythm in the body, the rhythm of one’s thoughts and the rhythm of one’s emotions.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Picture a monk sitting in an uncomfortable posture, on an isolated mountaintop, a smile on his face to disguise the pain, chanting some strange mantra, while supposedly in deep meditation. This is the way many of us think about the practice of meditation and this picture contributes to the belief that meditation doesn’t fit into our complex, fast paced, modern lives.

This is far from the truth. What we typically think of as “The practice of meditation” is actually the practice of learning to skillfully quiet and focus the mind; a valuable skill in daily life.

Benefits of Meditation

The practice of quieting the mind is a tool that can help us manage stress, improve our physical health, and manage chronic pain. It can help us sleep better, feel happier, be more peaceful, as well as be more present. On a deeper level meditation is a spiritual practice that can help access deeper levels of the soul leading to a deeper more grounded sense of who you are in a spiritual sense.

Preparation

This practice begins with finding a comfortable sitting position. We commonly associate meditation practice with sitting cross legged on a cushion, but there are many ways to sit. It’s important to sit with back straight and in a position that is comfortable for your body, for the period of time you intend to practice. Here’s a link to an article by Rodney Yee describing sitting postures.

It’s important to have a place in your home where you practice. You may have a special chair, maybe an altar decorated with things that have meaning for you. You can train your family to understand that this is your special place to meditate.

Select a convenient time that you can commit to. It may be in the morning or before bed but form the intent to practice regularly. It’s better to practice 10 minutes a day for six days then to practice for 1 hour one day.

Practice

A common way to begin this practice is to gently focus on the breath. You can practice with your eyes open or closed, though in the beginning it may be easier to have them closed. Begin practicing by witnessing your breath. Watch the inflow and outflow of your breath without attempting to control it in any way. Many of my students find this difficult in the beginning. Just by paying attention to the breath you naturally try to control it. Watching the breath without control, just watching, comes with practice.

You may find that your breathing changes based on whats happening in your mind and body. It may get faster or slower, deeper or shallower, it may even pause for a time. Watch the changes without resistance or anticipation. Whenever your attention drifts away from your breath to thoughts in the mind, a sensation in the body, or noise in the environment, gently return to your focus on the breath. No judgment, no bad, no good just return your focus to the breath.

So-Hum

You can “note” the breath moving in and out using “So-Hum”.  As you inhale the sound of that vibration is “So”. As you exhale the vibration becomes “Hum”.  I’ve included a U-Tube video that I use, in the side panel, describing the use of the “So-Hum” mantra.

Focus on where your breath comes from. With your eyes closed, inhale and watch the breath come in. Hear the vibration “So”; on the exhale, hear the vibration “Hum.” Gradually both the breath and the sound will become quieter and quieter and quieter, and the breath becomes so quiet that it almost seems to stop. By quieting your breath, you quiet your mind. When you transcend, or drop into meditation, “so-hum” entirely disappears, and your breath pauses momentarily, when the breath continues it is light and transparent and time seems to stop.