Meditation

What is Breathwork Meditation and How Will It Benefit You?

Breathwork meditation can help you treat stress, anxiety, and even PTSD. Find out how it works and how to start.

Jade Doherty

If you've spent any time in the wellness space (or let's be real...online) chances are someone has recommended to you that you try at least one of the following: meditation, breathwork, yoga, and mindfulness. 

Maybe you were interested in the recommendation and felt like it was something you wanted to try. Maybe you (subtly) rolled your eyes at the recommender and smiled politely until they stopped talking. Maybe you even already have a practice and are wondering if there’s anything else you could be doing.

Either way, here you are. On a post about breathwork meditation.

This article will take a look at what exactly breathwork meditation is, what are the benefits of both individually, and what the supercharged benefits are of them together.

So whether you're someone who has been meditating for a while but wants to explore other options, who is just getting started with "all this meditation stuff" or a total skeptic who was sent this by a friend, let's go!

What are meditation and breathwork?

First things first, what exactly are we talking about?

As the popularity of both has grown, so too have the definitions!

Both are very old practices that constitute 2 of Patanjali's 8 limbs of yoga, and both are awesome!

Breathwork, also called pranayama in Sanskrit, is about controlling your breath. Prana means life force energy and Yama means to control, to regulate and to channel. So, it's techniques to control and enhance your life force energy through the breath.

What ancient yogis and modern scientists discovered was that by controlling or regulating your breath it was possible to bring about amazing physical benefits, to calm the mind, and to even change how you feel. We will get into the benefits in more detail later, but for now, breathwork means to control your breath/life force.

There are so many techniques. Some involve breathing very forcefully. Others focus on breath retention. While others are all about the length of your inhale or exhale.

And onto meditation? What exactly is that? There are a lot of opinions on meditation out there, but for our purposes, we will go with the more traditional, Indian understanding. The Art of Living founder and global spiritual leader Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says that meditation is "the delicate art of doing nothing and letting go of all the efforts to relax into your true nature which is love, joy, and peace".

That sounds good to me!

One of the common misconceptions about meditation is that it is a focus-based practice. Where you must control your mind, and not waver in your focus. A lot of people even feel bad because their focus wavers and then think that they're not good at meditation. For all those folks, the idea of letting go and relaxing may sound more doable. 

The Sanskrit term for meditation is dhyana, which means absorption. To become totally absorbed in...life, yourself, love, joy, and peace!

What are the benefits of meditation?

So, onto the benefits, the good stuff!

There are many, many- oh so many- benefits!

Mediation can help to increase mental clarity, reduce anxiety, and reduce stress. It can help to reduce stress and improve your feeling of well-being.

There are also physical benefits to meditation, which include reducing depression, helping with chronic pain, and improving sleep problems.

For people who have a regular meditation practice, it becomes an incredibly grounding and valuable part of their day and helps to keep the mind, body, and emotions happy and healthy.

What are the benefits of breathwork?

Breathwork is the cool new kid on the block in the world of wellness, and also has a ton of impressive and valuable benefits. It's worth mentioning here that there are a lot of different techniques, and that the benefits and experiences of holotropic breathwork will be different from diaphragmatic breathing, for example.

But, in general, some of the benefits of a breathing practice include reduced stress, reduced anxiety, more energy, increased positivity, and happiness.

Breathwork + Meditation = SKY Breath Meditation

So, if these are the individual benefits, what happens when you combine these two?

Well, what you get is SKY Breath Meditation, and what you get are benefits ranging from the mental to the physical to the emotional to the spiritual.

SKY is an evidence-based technique that has been featured in multiple university studies and comes out every time with flying colors. Let's look at some of the benefits of SKY and what that means for you.

Some of the highlights of SKY include:

Reducing cortisol (the stress hormone) by 56.6%

This is huge! A reduction in cortisol not only means that you feel less stressed (which is awesome) but is also amazing as high cortisol puts you at greater risk of headaches, high blood pressure, slowed healing, weight gain, and irritability.

So by reducing cortisol, you reduce those risks!

Increasing immune cells (lymphocytes) by 33% in 6 weeks

I'm sure we've all been thinking a lot more about immunity as of late! To put it bluntly, the stronger your immune system the less likely you are to get sick from infections and viruses, and if you do get one, the faster you'll recover from it.

So, SKY can help you to boost your immune system and be less susceptible to viruses and infections. Which is great anyway, but especially now!

Reduce clinical and non-clinical depression and anxiety

Did you know that 6.2% of the US population had been diagnosed with a depressive episode in 2016? That's over 16 million people! And that 18.1% suffer from anxiety, which is 40 million people! And that's not to mention the people who don't have an official diagnosis.

SKY has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety (both clinical and non-clinical) by significant amounts.

What does this mean? It means you feel better! You're happier, you feel more like yourself, and are able to actually live rather than just trying to survive and get through the day.

Reduce PTSD

For people suffering from PTSD life is hard. PTSD comes from trauma, be it in childhood or as an adult, and means people feel very stuck in that traumatic experience. Essentially reliving that experience again and again.

SKY has been found to reduce PTSD in war vets, and help them to process what happened and live happier lives.

What this means for you is freedom! That's the best way I can put it. Freedom from what happened to you, and the freedom to move forward and live your life.

How to get started

Are you ready to get started and start your own meditation breathwork practice towards health, happiness, and maybe even enlightenment?

If so, please join us for a free workshop called Beyond Breath where you will get an introduction to SKY Breath Meditation, learn a breathing technique, all while being guided by an expert teacher who can answer any questions you may have.

Click the image below to book your place. See you there!

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