Developing Meaning
A podcast about healing trauma and finding meaning.
Have you ever wondered what your therapist has figured out about life's big questions?
Join psychiatrist Dr. Dirk Winter as he speaks with colleagues, therapists, and other healers about what they have learned from their clinical work about how to heal trauma and build more meaning and purpose into our lives.
Developing Meaning is NOT CLINICAL ADVICE and is NOT AFFILIATED WITH ANY INSTITUTIONS. It is intended to play with ideas that are emerging, fringe, and outside of the mainstream in order to discover the meaning of life.
Produced by Dirk Winter and Violet Chernoff
Developing Meaning
#13: Dr. Richard Brown Leads 6 Minutes of Coherent Breathing (Supplement to Episode 12)
Please enjoy this guided six minute coherent breathing exercise led by Dr. RIchard Brown, co-creator of Breath Body Mind.
This is a spontaneous demonstration taken out of our longer Episode 12 Interview in order for you to be able to chose the right time and place to do this exercise.
For more information on Dr. Brown's approaches to breathing listen to our full lenght episode 12, or go to www.breathbodymind.com.
Let's first take two deep breaths in and let them out with a sigh, and then we'll do a muscle relaxation from the end of the feet and then I'll pace you into breathing. So let's take a long, deep breath in and we'll let it out with a really even longer sigh. So breath in and breathing out and breathing out. And breathing in and breathing out and breathing out. Relax the muscles around your eyes. Relax the muscles around your eyes. Relax your mouth and jaw. Feel your jaw drop a little bit. Relax the muscles of your scalp, back of your head and neck. Relax your shoulders, arms and hands, letting them be still. Relax the muscles at the sides of your spine and between your ribs, around your waist, legs and feet, the whole body. Now I'll ask you to breathe in gently, effortlessly, continuously. I'll pace your breath with my voice and notice how, each time we breathe out, we can relax. Breath in gentle in through the nose, out through the nose, breath out now. Breath in, breath out, softening your body more. With each breath out, breath in, breath out. Breath in the belly gets bigger, breath out, the belly gets smaller.
Speaker 1:If you have a lot, lot of stress, it may go the opposite way. Breathe in, breathe out, breathing in, feel the breath in your nose and throat. Breath out, feel the breath. Leaving the pace is important. Breath in, but where we put our attention creates even more breath out, interlocking circuits that make the brain and everything breath in, work optimally.
Speaker 1:Breathing out, relaxing more. Breath in, breath out. Whatever distraction comes memory, image, sensation, emotion breath in, just let those distractions float by like clouds in the sky. Breath out, breathing in, savoring the breath each moment. Breath out, just moving a little bit of breath each second. Breath in. You do not have to fill your lungs. Breath out, you don't have to squeeze all the air out. Breath in, just let it happen naturally.
Speaker 1:Breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, very gentle. Breath in, breath out. When the distraction comes, come back to feeling the breath. Breath in, breath out. Imagine a beautiful smile appearing on your face, as if by magic. Breathing in. Pretend you're five years old. Magic happens a lot when you're five. Breath out. How does the smile change the quality of your breathing? Breath in, breath in, breath out. Now, just let your breath kind of find whatever rhythm is natural, right this moment. Can you feel that rhythm without changing it, just letting the breath be. Feel the sensations in your body, observe your thoughts, the quality of your thoughts, the spacing of your thoughts, and observe the qualities of your breathing.