
mindfulness news & tips
Full, slow breathing is among the most relaxing mindfulness practices. An effective way to slow and deepen your breathing is to pay attention to your out-breath.
While doing this practice, allow your out-breath to be a little longer than your in-breath. That longer out-breath will also lead to deeper breathing.
Dr Friz Perls, a pioneer of Gestalt Therapy, saw full, free (i.e. not restricted) breathing as conductive to letting ourselves approach the world with openness rather than avoidance. (See PerIs, F., Hefferline, R, & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt therapy. New York: Delta Publishing).
The out-breath activates the para-sympathetic nervous system which calms us down. Essentially, we go through cycles of increased and lowered arousal which can be seen in the zig-zag pattern of a heartbeat printout. The out-breath helps with the “lowered arousal” part of the cycle.
This awareness has very practical benefits. Or instance, if you are awake during the night, allow your attention to follow the out-breath all the way out; when the subsequent in-breath has completed, follow the out-breath again all the way out. Allow your out-breath to be longer than your in-breath.
Tip: Aim to do this seven times and then another seven times – with luck you’ll drift off before you finish the first round.
Awareness of the out-breath was being taught to Irish athletes at the time of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics by Felicity Heathcote, a sports psychologist who was also one of Ireland’s first mindfulness teachers. She wrote about her application of mindfulness meditation in Peak Performance – Zen and the sporting zone.
You’ll find many ways of practising mindful calming in my 15-lesson Easy Mindfulness online course
Image by Jeremy Bishop
Post updated 9th July 2020
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2 Comments
Hello Padraig,
I wish to congratulate you on your fantastic presentation of the subject of Mindfulness. I have been a student of your Mindfulness classes in Tallaght a in 2012. I am so grateful I attended your Course then and have endeavoured to practice it since then to date with very positive results. It is so relevant now during the Covid 19 Pandemic. I really admire the wonderful clarity and simplicity which you use to describe this very therapeutic approach to eg Fear , Worry, Stress ,Anxiety, etc. – so relevant at this time. I am also very grateful for your daily emails and indeed I happily have referred many friend and relatives to your website.
Many Thanks,
Josephine Mc Namara MB MPH Dch Dip Anaesthetics
Thank you Josephine for these very generous words, and for reading the Daily Bell. Right now is the time for us all to live the lessons of mindfulness which has continued through centuries of human trials and tribulations as well as the good times.