Meditation – Guided Breathing for Stress Relief
Why Meditation
The modern world constantly bombards us with a phenomenal amount of stimuli and demands. This near constant state of stimulation and hectic pace of life in general creates a highly stressed state, having many adverse effects on our health both for our body and mind. Since stress is an inevitable part of our daily lives in this modern world, we must learn to manage stress and eliminate its adverse effects on both our bodies and mind. Meditation is an ancient solution to stress in the modern world.
Meditation – Through breath awareness
Meditation is a natural state of the mind that becomes easier to enter into with practice. One of the easiest and most effective forms of meditation is to simply become aware of your breathing, focusing on it, and gradually slowing it down.
Sit comfortably with your back straight; initially practicing in a quiet environment that is distraction free. Take a deep breath, inhaling through your nose and breathing in using your diaphragm. Exhale slowly through your nose or mouth, which ever feels more natural you. Just simply focus your breathing and the sensations of breathing feeling the air entering and leaving your body as breathe slowly and deeply. Don’t fight outside thoughts entering your mind just allow them to leave and return your mind to focusing on your breathing. This requires some practice and patience, but some persistence and can pay great dividends.
Musically Guided Breathing – A simple and effective form of Meditation for Stress Relief
An easy way to focus on your breathing is to use music to guide your breathing. Saagara’s Pranayama app has different tones for each stage of breathing: you simply let the music guide your breathing through the timing and duration. This is a surprisingly effective form meditation, which can be carried out anywhere by using a pair of headphones and pacing your breath to the music. Simply breathing slowly and deeply for 10 minutes a day can have tremendous impact on both your physical and psychological health.
Guided Breathing – Free Tools
Saagara offers several free applications on multiple platforms, which can help guide your breathing and help improve your overall health by training your body to take slower deeper breaths on more consistent basis such that it becomes part of your daily habit.
Universal Breathing – Pranayama free Available on the “Iphone” and “Android “
Pranayama Free – available on the “Mac App Store” and as a free “Web App”
Why is slow deep breathing so effective
Breathing is under both Voluntary control and Autonomic control. Therefore voluntarily slowing down your breathing and taking more powerful breaths has feedback effect on the autonomic system of your body. Essentially reducing the sympathetic output to the body (which meditates the negative effects of prolonged stress) and increasing the parasympathetic output to body (which mediates relaxation). This essentially positively effects every system in the body helping to reduce blood pressure and improve overall fitness.
Mindfulness - Information on meditation and a healthy consciousness
