Retreat to the quietest room where you can be alone for a while and where you are warm enough. If you have cats, dogs or other pets, explain to them that they do not sit on your feet or invite you to go outside touching you with their paws for a while.
Do not practice outside as the wind will interfere with both the flow of prana and concentration.
Prana is energy that pervades all forms in nature including your nostrils and your lungs, and this all-pervading energy most people still cannot even recognize, much less control. That is why it is much wiser to live and work on the power of spirit and peace from the beginning and without shortcuts.
If sitting in one of the meditative positions on a slightly raised blanket or pillow on the floor is not familiar and easy for you, you can also sit in a chair. Avoid sharp edges of furniture or surrounding buildings that are pointed at you. Try to retreat to a room without computers and cell phones.
While practicing yogic breathing techniques it is always good to be at least one length of your outstretched arm away from the wall. If this is not easiest for your spine right now, you can sit leaning against the wall.
It is only important that you sit with your spine straight as much as you currently can.
When you practice breathing techniques often and properly, your spine will become more flexible and healthy.
If you are sitting in a chair, make sure you do not cross your feet and leg as per habit. Feet and legs do not touch. Practice just with your socks on your feet and no shoes.
Your hands are relaxed on your thighs. Bring the tip of your index finger and thumb together.
Almost every granny in the western world knows for this hand gesture, every student and every professor, every farmer and every worker, every unemployed man and every housewife, every patient and every doctor, and every man who has heard about yoga, many already made countless jokes between their fellows at the expense of this wise hand gesture.
Just ignore your husbands, wives, children, cats, dogs or other pats for a while and continue with your hand position and preparation for breathing techniques.
This variation of hand gesture is called chin mudra. Chin means consciousness and this very simple hand gesture has a great and always the same effect on the human energy of mind and consciousness and on breathing and heart no matter who performs it.
Your concentration is only important.
Close your eyes and stare at the dark, endless space in front of you. That space is a space of consciousness, a space where your consciousness, subconscious and superconscious meet.
You don’t need to do anything other than stare at that dark endless space. When your thoughts calm down, your breathing will calm down as well.
Now concentrate on the lower abdomen. Breathe relaxed and slow holding concentration on the lower abdomen.
Move your concentration now to your chest breathing relaxed and slow.
Now focus on the collarbone region. Your breathing is still relaxed and slow.
Keep concentration on each of these parts of your body for a few breaths, that is enough.
Your breathing has by now become slower and more relaxed.
Now connect your new experience of concentration with your breath.
Consciously, slowly and relaxed start inhaling in the lower abdomen by moving the concentration to the chest and then to the region of the collarbone. You will notice that with the inhalation your shoulders slightly rise and with the exhalation they lower.
Breathe as if your breathing has the form of a slow and even wave.
Fully, relaxed and slowly consciously inhale from the lower torso up and exhale from the top down.
The wave of your breathing moves from the lower abdomen, across the chest to the region of the collarbone and from of the collarbone, across the chest back to the lower abdomen.
And that is all.
Specially today in the time of “white lungs” there is nothing better you can do.
