Breathing meditation for lung strength
This breathing meditation for stronger lungs is a beautiful practice for those who are concerned about COVID-19. It's also wonderful for anyone with asthma or lung health issues and is a great tool to use during cold and flu season to help your body recover faster from bronchial illnesses.
Below you'll find a video of the meditation!
Transcript of the breathing meditation for stronger lungs:
Begin by finding a comfortable place to sit down. You can also do this meditation lying down if you would like but I really like it as a seated meditation. Finding a comfortable place to sit on the floor or the chair rolling your shoulders backs, squeezing the shoulder blades just slightly together, closing your eyes, and starting by bringing your attention to your lungs.
We often think of our lungs in our chest in the front of our body, the lungs are also very present in the back of the body, in that middle back area. Feeling that part of the body, expanding and contracting with the breath. Then let's inhale deeply pulling the air all the way into the belly and exhaling through the mouth letting everything go. We'll begin the breathing practice now. We're going to count our breaths starting by exhaling all the breath from the body. Now inhaling for two, three, four, five. Holding the breath three, four, five. Exhaling two, three, four, five. Inhale two, three, four, five. Hold, two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four, five.
Continue on this rhythm with your own counting. We've got five counts in, five counts hold, five counts exhale. If that's feeling like too much of a struggle for you, if you feel like you have to gasp for breath lower it down to four. What we're really looking for is three equal parts of the breath. If you're feeling like you have to gasps with the five-count, lowering that down to a four-count inhale, four-count hold, four-count exhale. If five is feeling very comfortable for you maybe we can try to bring that up to an even six-count pattern. Starting again at the top of your cycle, inhale, two, three, four, five, six. Hold, two, three, four, five, six. Exhale, two, three, four, five, six. Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale, hold, and exhale.
Now let's take a break returning to your normal breath. Keeping our focus and attention still on that mid area of the torso where our lungs are, perhaps noticing if your breath feels any different after that retention exercise. Let's practice again. Finding the count that works best for you, whether that's four or five or six and then when you're ready, inhaling, holding, exhaling. Inhaling, holding, exhaling. Continuing on in your own cycle finding the rhythm of your breath, this three-part even breath.
Perhaps adding one more step at the end of the exhale, when all the breath is out of your body just holding one or two counts before you start that exhale. Adding a fourth part to our rhythmic sequence.
Taking one more cycle wherever you are and then coming back to your normal breathing. Again, keeping your focus in the lung area and then loading your focus drift back to everything else around you. The sounds, the smells, the sensations and slowly opening your eyes as we conclude this meditation practice. Thank you so much for joining me. As you can see it's a really simple practice and you can definitely practice that on your own once a day or a few times a week to really help keep your lungs healthy.
Thank you guys so much for joining me and I hope that was helpful. Have a great day wherever in the world you are.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more meditations and yoga videos! If you'd like to learn more about meditation, feel free to give this post on meditation a read.
