Learning Ocean Breathing
How To Use This Video
The purpose of this video is to teach you a breathing practice that makes it much easier to breathe more slowly. In the yoga tradition it's called “Ujayii” (oo-JAH-ee) breath. We refer to it as "ocean breathing" because when you do it, it sounds kind of like the ocean in a seashell.
Slow breathing has been shown to have many beneficial effects including alleviation of the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia, making it easier to manage physical pain, and lowering of high blood pressure. (The effect of the video may be more powerful if you watch it in full screen and listen through earbuds or headphones.)
We have a number of breathing videos on our YouTube channel, and we’ll be posting new ones every month. They’re very simple to use. Basically, you inhale as the image gets larger and exhale as it gets smaller. However, the breathing rhythm of the videos is much slower than the way most of us usually breathe. The average person breathes in and out about 14 times a minute. Our videos begin with about 7 breaths per minute, and our most advanced videos have a rhythm of about 4 breaths per minute. Ocean breathing can help you to effortlessly slow down the rate of your breathing.
Here are written instructions for what we guide you through in the video:
With your mouth open, exhale making the sound, “hah” (as if you were trying to fog up a mirror).
Now with your mouth still open, make that same “hah” sound as you inhale.
Now close your mouth and make the same “hah” sound as you inhale and exhale. It should sound something like Darth Vader, or the sound of the ocean in a seashell.
Video created by Jan in Motion 5. Music composed and performed by Don with Logic Pro X.
Using Ocean Breathing During The Day
Slow breathing is extremely useful in a wide range of situations. When you use Ocean Breathing, it becomes even more powerful.
Here are just a few examples of how ocean breathing can be helpful:
Sleep: Several minutes of slow ocean breathing often makes it easier to get to sleep:
If you combine deep muscle relaxation with ocean breathing it can be even more effective. With each exhalation imagine different parts of your body letting go of tension - your forehead, eyes, back of the neck, arms and hands, belly, upper back, lower back, pelvis, legs and feet. Feel your whole body becoming gradually more and more relaxed with each exhalation.
If your mind is overactive, you could try breathing with words – silently hearing the word calm as you inhale, and peace as you exhale.
Naps: Using ocean breathing – along with muscle relaxation and breathing with words - can be an excellent way to make the most out of a short nap. There are many scientifically established benefits of napping, including:
reduced fatigue
increased alertness
improved learning ability
increased ability to regulate emotions
overall improved mood
better memory
quicker reaction time
It’s generally considered best to nap for not more than 20 minutes, and a good 10 minute nap is often considered better.
High Blood Pressure: It has been scientifically established that slow breathing for 15 minutes at a time, 4 times a week, at the rate of about 5 to 7 breath cycles per minute, can result in significant reductions in blood pressure. If you’re interested in this, after using one of the breathing videos at least once a day for while, you might try experimenting with longer periods of up to 15 minutes each, allowing your body to become increasingly relaxed with each exhalation.
Chronic Pain: When we have physical pain, our instinct is to try to change it, get rid of it, or fix it somehow. It may seem paradoxical, but more than 20 years of research have consistently shown that when we learn to attend mindfully to the sensations associated with the pain, it shifts something in our brain and nervous system, and both the subjective experience of pain and the nerve impulses associated with pain change in a way that lessens the overall discomfort. Attending to pain sensations while doing slow ocean breathing is an especially good way to learn to attend to them without judging or trying to change them.
And there are many other uses for ocean breathing as well – everything from dealing with food cravings to playing a musical instrument, to performing of any kind, to improving your golf game, and more. We’ll be talking about these in future blog posts.
About Our Online Course “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life”
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of pausing for your brain and nervous system, and how you can train your brain to be more receptive to experiencing this state of deep peace, contentment, and creativity that we refer to as "open, heartful awareness," you can check out our online course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life.
The course provides practices that support the natural tendency of our brain and nervous system to move toward a state of greater calm and ease. It also provides a larger understanding that makes the practices meaningful. It explains how our outdated, unbalanced brain programing interferes with the experience of open heartful awareness, and how it can be harmonized so as to be supportive rather than an impediment. It includes audios and videos that teach you over two dozen “practices” that help to clear away the obstacles that make open, heartful awareness difficult to access. And it has dozens of one to three-minute guided audios and videos that are perfect for brief breaks during the day.
You can try out our Free Sampler Course, which includes a few of the practices from the full course. We also invite you to check out our Facebook page and YouTube channel where we’ll be posting a wide variety of brief videos designed to balance and harmonize your brain and nervous system in a way that makes it easier to shift to open, heartful awareness.
