Heal Yourself With Your Breath
Adapted from The Miracle of the Breath, by Andy Caponigro (New World Library, 2005).

Simple Solution
Here is a powerful and sophisticated meditation technique that will enable you to concentrate your breath energy and direct it to diseased or tension-filled parts of your body with pinpoint accuracy.

The technique is based on an ancient Hindu technique, which the yogis practiced to attain miraculous powers. The same meditative principles can be used to cultivate extraordinary powers of self-healing. Here are the directions to this powerful 10-step self-healing meditation:

The author calls this technique “The Healing Triangle�?because it involves three basic elements that are kept in a delicate state of balance at all times. The first element is our consciousness (our mind in meditation); the second is the breath; and the third is the particular symptom of illness we wish to heal.

This is how it is done:

You will need a matched pair of sponge-rubber balls that are a bit smaller and softer than a tennis ball.

1. Sit in a comfortable posture with one rubber ball in each hand, and meditate on your breath for five to ten minutes to establish a good state of meditative consciousness.

2. Next, do enough rounds of gentle rapid breathing to be sure that your breath is open and flowing.
Note: Gentle-rapid breathing is to first pant like a dog, having in-breaths and out-breaths well-matched. Next, do the same thing and close your mouth and “pant�?through your nostrils instead.

3. Once your breath is moving freely, keep watching your breath and use your consciousness like a radar beam. Slowly scan your body looking for symptoms of distress.

4. As you scan the inside of your body, you might come across any number of symptoms.

5. Work first with the symptom that is calling the loudest for your attention.

6. Without losing track of your breath, focus your attention on the most intense part of the pain or tension, then squeeze your rubber balls firmly enough to match its intensity. This will bring your breathing tensions into synch with the tension. On the very next inhalation, you’ll find yourself breathing directly into the knot.

7. Keep the same steady pressure on the balls to keep the compression of your breath in synch with the tension you feel, and then do about five to ten seconds of gentle rapid breathing directly into the knot. This will weaken the energy blocks surrounding the knot and bring concentrated waves of healing prana directly into the tissues that feel dis-eased. Within seconds, the knot will begin to feel a bit softer and the pain will diminish noticeably.

8. Still watching your breath, allow these change to run their course for a full minute. At the end of this assimilation period, change the pressure on the balls to match the new feelings of pain or tension. Then do another round of gentle rapid breathing.

9. Each time you repeat this cycle, the pain and tension will grow increasingly weak, until the tension finally disappears. As the knot in your stomach begins to fade away, subtler symptoms of distress will begin to reveal their presence.

10. Whatever form these newly emerging disturbances take--feelings of irritation, pressure, burning, or anything else--treat them the same way as you did the original feelings of pain or tension; repeat the process.

The feelings of release and relief will gradually move from one symptom to another, as if playing a slow-motion game of “healing tag.�?BR>