BREATH CONTROL
Breath control is gigantic in the practices of the Adepts and Masters. There are many reasons for it, but one of the most important is obviously increased oxygenation. I suspect that hydrogen and nitrogen also play some equally important role that as of yet I myself haven't come across anywhere. Increased oxygenation equates to more to the brain. Doing the 4/11 breath control exercise below clarifies my visualization, but don't use that one until you have the cadence pretty precisely down so that you can dispense with the counting while visualizing.
Also contained in the breath, especially in conscious breathing and breath control, is energy, the very energy we need to keep our bodies topped up with (especially in the reserve tank, the Dan Tien) in order to be able to expend it for any kind of "miraculous" work. I'm the farthest thing from being an expert anywhere, but there are things that I natively know about all this, such as the energy to which we refer is also called prana. Conscious breathing can be done all day long, and can in fact replace pointless, meandering, thinking. The only time anybody should be thinking is when they need to think, such as problem-solving or getting ready to go on a trip. Doing the dishes doesn't require thinking. Going for a walk, mowing the lawn...they don't require thinking. Meandering thinking is actually a wasteful expenditure of our all important energy. In fact, our senses are all expenditures of that energy, which makes sense, and this is one of the reasons our DNA has become programmed to age.
4/11 CADENCE - This one will greatly oxygenate your brain and body. This one's simple, anywhere, anytime, any position but preferably sitting comfortably, you inhale as deeply as you can to the count of 4, then without pause exhale as completely as you can to the count of 11, then without pause inhale to the count of 4, exhale to 11. Do 10 sets of this every day, then after a few days, do 20 sets of it. Do this every day until you have the cadence down. Spot check yourself. Go without counting on several in a row, and then bust a move on yourself and add the counting to see if your cadence is still there. Get this cadence nailed. Don't do any simultaneous visualizing until you have the cadence nailed.
SIMPLE CONNECTED BREATHING - This is one you could use upon waking in the morning, to replace purposeless thought, while driving, doing the dishes, or whatever. You inhale deeply and evenly. The inhalation and exhalation are about the same length, and might take 30 to 40 seconds for the entire thing, both in and out. Connecting the breaths is where the meditation part comes in. First off, your paying attention to the even control of both the inhale and exhale, which puts your awareness and thinking on an energy-raising activity. To connect them, you make an effort to have no real and noticeable termination point for either one. The inhale simply gives way to the exhale, and the exhale gives way to the inhale. A useful illustration is a pendulum. There is a point at which the pendulum swing terminates and heads back the other way, but if you make the pendulum swing be an oval, it doesn't terminate its direction and head back the other way, but rounds the corner and keeps on going. This one is fantastic upon waking in the morning, and will energize your entire body, but it's good anytime of day, anywhere, for any reason. You might find in the morning that you go to "nothingness," and that is one of the most energetically rejuvenating places you can go, plus it helps with the continued mental mastery we're after.
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