Hello humanity, we need to talk about your breath. I know it’s a touchy subject and I’m not trying to embarrass you, in fact, I wouldn’t mention it at all unless I felt it was super important. This is the type of thing that only a true friend would bring up, so here goes.
For a long while now I have noticed how you breathe. At times it’s heavy, at times racy, at times calm, but the majority of the time it changes in reaction to what is going on around you. You watch a scary movie and it races, you push yourself on the sports field and it gets heavy, you sit with a mantra and it changes again.
Your breath is a precious gift, it is the stuff of life, quite literally, yet you allow the world to dictate its pace and rhythm. This is super significant because it is usually something that goes unnoticed for much of the day but has a dramatic effect on how you experience that day.
Have you noticed that you can’t change your emotional state without changing your breath first? Try it – think of something joyful and notice your breath, then think of something sad and feel if it changes.
People seem to be affected by the world in different ways but the impact on our breath appears to be similar. Most people breathe in reaction to the world.
But it stands to reason that if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world. Crazy concept I know, but it’s something worth exploring.
The word meditation comes up a lot at the moment, with people looking for another way of being with themselves and life. Yet there are so many meditation techniques around that don’t return the breath to you but rather continue the model of changing your breath based on what is around you… You can listen to tinkling music or do a guided journey to help calm you. These ‘seem’ to work and you may feel better compared to how you felt before you sat down to meditate, but aren’t they simply following the model of getting you to respond to a different external stimulus?
I know you’ve grown pretty attached to a few of those techniques, but is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you?
The secret is to start as you intend to finish. If the trigger for that connection is something outside you, then the power remains outside you. If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you. It is that inner focus where the most significant distinction lives. We can try to still the mind by focussing on the mind, or we can still the mind by bringing its focus in line with the movement of the body. If we are focussing solely on our mind, we are not truly bringing more presence to our lives. The mind is fed information from the body, so the true source of awareness and point of presence is the body.
Your breath is precious and how you choose to breathe can have a huge effect on your inner quality, so this is not trying to discourage you in any way: I am just checking in to see if what you are trying is really working.
In my experience of meditation, it doesn’t need to take that long to be meaningful. It simply needs to come from you and connect you to you. The real benefit of meditation is not how long you can sit in meditation, but the degree to which you can live that level of connection in real life.
Connecting you back to you needs to start with something that connects you back to you.
The Gentle Breath Meditation™ has been something that I have found supports my connection to me. It looks and sounds like other meditations but the reality is that it is vastly different.
We can talk later about why it might be different, if you want to know more, but for now, listen to these free Gentle Breath Meditation™ audios and see how you go.
5 – 10 minutes a day is all you need. I would suggest trying it for a week to see what you notice.
By Joel Levin
Related Reading:
Gentle Breath Meditation in Daily Life
Our Breath as a Tool of Connection
Living is as Easy as Breathing
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
The energy that goes into the way we move when we breath is super important to understand that each and every motion or in and out breathe can be very much the same in that the energy we put into each brings a focus to being Loving.
Great message Joel, what you have shared has revolutionised the way life is lived for so many people and this all thanks to the Loving Truth that is presented by Serge Benhayon.
Joel the simple act of breathing has a knock on effect to the state of our being. So this is just one person, then let’s look at it for the billions of people on earth. That is a lot of wasted energy going into our environment, let alone around each other.
The most powerful statement for me was, ‘If the trigger for that connection is something outside you, then the power remains outside you. If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you’. How often do we disempower ourselves to anything outside of ourselves? No wonder we are in a constant disarray, and living in that unsettlement.
To this day, the Gentle Breath Meditation is the simplest resource I refer to when I can feel an outness within me. Its there at the tip of my nose, so I do not need to get into any position or place. It will be there for me till the day I take my last breath on earth.
Understanding our breath and being able to bring a focus to it is life changing to say the least.
This blog is a great reminder that the quality of our breath is always super important, and is connected to the quality of our energy we allow our body to be in.
The key Lorraine is the ‘quality’. What quality are we allowing into our bodies, makes a massive difference. This is the equivalent of allowing fast foods continually compared to home and lovingly cooked foods. I know which I prefer.
Choosing to breathe and be aware of our breathing is vital in our everyday lives, ‘In choosing to breathe our own breath we are able to claim back our inner quality and know ourselves on a far deeper level’.
Absoulutely Doug, and once connected to God and heaven it is through that alignment much Love is on offer through all we bring.
Absoulutely Joel, we take our breath wherever we go so it is super important to be able to be at-least gentle in the way we breathe and as you have shared this has the most amazing knock on effect, when it done regularly.
I used to love doing guided meditations and meditations to music as they put me into a blissful state and helped me escape from the world. But thankfully I came to realise that none of these kinds of meditations actually helped me deal with real life and some of the issues I was having to live with day to day. When I first learned the gentle breath meditation and I did not like some of the things I could feel – there were many things I was trying to avoid feeling and deny in my life (hence why I liked the escape from the previous meditations) – and yet none of that really supported me as it was simply my way of trying to ‘get away from it all’. But with the gentle breath. when I began to let myself feel what I actually was feeling, I began to process and understand life more which allowed me to be more equipped to deal with the things around me – not in a mental way at all, but in a body way of simply knowing and registering what is true and what is not true and this I found is a far more honest way of living in the world that allows me to be me and see everything for what it is to be seen.
How we breath and more importantly the quality of our breath does indeed affect us on so many levels. The gentleness of the gentle breath asks for us to be gentle as the breath is gentle – a bear minimum of a standard of… well, gentleness, and from here we hold this as a platform and eventually deepen this and make it even more gentle – the best healing balm to the body and its cells and particles.
How our breath is does have an impact on us, ‘ it stands to reason that if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world. Crazy concept I know, but it’s something worth exploring.’ Definitely worth exploring.
“The real benefit of meditation is not how long you can sit in meditation, but the degree to which you can live that level of connection in real life.” – hence it makes sense that If the focus of your meditation is from the outside (such as a guided meditation etc), then the development will be on the outside at the expense of your inner connection. Amazing revelations Joel – thank you!
Joel, this whole blog is Gold and this so stands out for me as a truth to be reminded of all of the time: “But it stands to reason that if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world. Crazy concept I know, but it’s something worth exploring.”
“Your breath is a precious gift” The Gentle Breath Meditation offers a re-connection to the truth and love that we innately are.
Written like a true friend. Willing to approach a sensitive subject without holding back or sugarcoating the subject but said with love.
This is breath-taking Joel, as we can always take breathing to a deeper level of commitment and starting with the Gentle Breath Meditation as presented by Serge Benhayon opens our life to much Love through the way we breath.
What you have written is so true Joel; there was a time when I found it difficult and sometimes impossible to enter a lift. Now I am much more at ease with this but as soon as something doesn’t feel right or the lift takes to long too open the door, I can feel my breath change instantly as my body goes on the alert. It’s actually fascinating as it happens in a Nano second it’s automatic and I then need to bring myself back to breathing normally again.
What a great read. We underestimate how our rhythm of breath can impact on our lives, everything shared here makes so much sense in terms of giving our power to what is going on around us and letting that dictate the quality of our breath, or we choose our rhythm of breath and stay connected to the power of our being within.
Joel thank you for pointing this out to me.
“You can listen to tinkling music or do a guided journey to help calm you. These ‘seem’ to work and you may feel better compared to how you felt before you sat down to meditate, but aren’t they simply following the model of getting you to respond to a different external stimulus?”
I have a friend who listens to either the sound of the sea or a bubbling river as a way to relax themselves before going to sleep. And something about this didn’t feel or sit well with me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You have put words to my uncomfortable feeling that this type of medication is getting my friend to respond to an external stimulus rather than connecting to themselves and their own breath.
‘I know you’ve grown pretty attached to a few of those techniques, but is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you?’ This is such a simple yet powerful question and exposes so many of the choices we make to ‘feel better’ but that does not make a lasting difference. The Gentle Breath is something I have been practising and come to know and live every moment whether I am sitting quietly or moving around at work – it allows me to be with me all of the time and that is an amazing thing.
We don’t pay attention to this important area nearly enough. Noticing the quality of our breath, realising that it has a profound impact on our experience as well as our expression, and fine-tuning our ability to be the master of its quality – all of this ought to be part of basic life lessons taught and learned from young.
Even just reading this blog I felt my breath change and become much more settled. It feels great to breath myself.
Absolutely Leigh, breathing is something we can always deepen, and as it changes who we are connected to at a much-deeper level, as we are always evolving as is our breath.
I used to be a ‘doer’ and get things done. But in that was no moments to appreciate or consolidate – just what was delivered. I now love and appreciate the fact that with space comes the wisdom that is offered and cannot be owned. It is the most amazing feeling to know that we do not have to push or drive to get things done.
Only someone who truly cares about humanity can write a blog like this as our breath is our connection to God.
So True Annelies, the Love humanity is held in is a reflection that we are living and sharing with our breath and this is so confirming of our re-connection to our essences / Souls and God.
“If the trigger for that connection is something outside you, then the power remains outside you. If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you.” – pretty straight forward logic, be hard to disagree with that one!
How gorgeous is it to breathe our own breath instead of breathing the emotions the whole of humanity puts out. it’s as if we have become attached to the drama and the emotional roller coaster but the gentle breath is our true breath that steadies us and helps us to discard the attachment to emotional energy.
“Your breath is a precious gift, it is the stuff of life, quite literally, yet you allow the world to dictate its pace and rhythm.” It’s fascinating how something that is so intrinsically vital to life, and even moreso to our quality of life, can be something that we rarley consider, until such times that there is a problem with it. But when we bring our focus to ‘how’ we breathe the knock on changes that are possible throughout the body can be so enormous that it does seem crazy that we do not bring our full attention to this in our everyday.
We could all do well by pondering and making this scientific fact part of our life “The mind is fed information from the body, so the true source of awareness and point of presence is the body.”
Spot on David – the science of all sciences of which the particles of our body speak loudly.
Breath is so important. I also tried the Gentle Breath meditation 10 years ago, but as I was so in my head, it did not result in much at the start. The Gentle Breath allows you to connect with your essence, and that essence is in the body and not in the head.
The Gentle Breath Meditation helps bring you back to your body, and your connection, ‘is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you?’
Yes, there is certainly a felt tension of everyone wanting everything now. This means that we are not allowing ourselves the space for things to come when they are needed – so looking at the breath of humanity is a great place to start.
When we talk about breath or our breath we are in fact talking about God.
If we give breath to that which is not true and allow it to endlessly circulate among us, then it stands that the quality of that which we inhale will carry a staleness that is then inspired into our lungs. This not only makes our breath stink so to speak, it also affects the quality of our entire organism not to mention further pollutes the air we breathe due to the diminished quality of that which we must then exhale for all others to breathe in as well. Not only do we as a humanity need a breath mint, we also need a loving slap in the face to wake us up from the deep slumber we are in and the incredible irresponsibility of it all.
How often do we even think about how we breathe, let alone consider it a precious gift? Bringing our attention and awareness to just one area of our body – our breathing, or how a particular area feels – can start to shift our relationship with our whole body, over time.
“If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you.” This is very true, a lot of people can support us to make loving choices for ourselves but in the end it is us that have to activate these choices, no one else can do this for us.
We don’t always have tinkling music with us or time to do a guided journey to help calm us, but what we always have inside ourselves is our essence which we can connect with where ever we are and the tool of connection (The Gentle Breath Meditation) is something we can do everywhere and any time we choose to become present and not in reaction with the world around us.
Thanks Joel for raising the subject. There are many meditations in the world today.. Tricky really. All sounding like “good” sollutions for our miseries/discontentments in life. But great questions you asked: do these meditations support us to life by our essence or again something from outside of factors that keep us trapped in giving our power away to outside of us – a force that we yet have to totally expose by living from within (our essence). Great call Joel. Worth pondering on.
Our breath – super important that we learn to use it wisely.
Absolutely Elizabeth, the quality of our breath reflects the quality of our thoughts, movements and actions. It is pretty powerful when we understand how our breath can also be deeply healing.
Thank you Joel… The extraordinary quality and connected ability of this gentle breath really has to be felt to be understood… It is so simple that the mind rebels at such simplicity, and yet it is within this that the connection to the body, heart, the inner heart, and who we truly are starts.
“Your breath is precious and how you choose to breathe can have a huge effect on your inner quality…” indeed it can. Choosing to surrender more deeply to breathing gently as guided by the gentle breath meditation, allows so much to unravel inside, leaving more space to simply be and express from the delicacy of who we truly are.
Our breath is our connection to life and the quality of our movements.
‘Your breath is precious…’ When I let that sink in and feel it in my body, my lungs expand with the acknowledgement of their significance.
‘The real benefit of meditation is not how long you can sit in meditation, but the degree to which you can live that level of connection in real life.’ Very true Joel. The Gentle Breath Meditation has been key for me to be able to hold myself in the world and learn to respond to life instead of react.
“The real benefit of meditation is not how long you can sit in meditation, but the degree to which you can live that level of connection in real life” – indeed, what is the point in being able to sit still for hours away from the reality of life if we are unable to handle life?
The power and impact of even just one person committing to breathing in this way can have an enormous and far reaching effects in ways that we cannot even beging to imagine. We should never underestimate the power of truth, in whatever form that comes in.
The ripple effect of one being the inspiration for living with awareness and responsibility.
The way we breath tells us so much about the way we are living. Just yesterday I became aware of how I sometimes control my breathing and this was a great reflection for me of how I still can control certain areas of my life. Allowing the breath to flow freely with the beautiful innate rhythm that is always there allows us to open up and let go of that control.
Beautiful sharing Sandra and this highlights how important it is to bring awareness to the quality of our breath. Also we have the ability to shift the quality of our thoughts by breathing our own breath and move in connection to our heart.
It is important to be aware of our breath, its rhythm and flow, where in our lungs are we breathing and so much more.
“is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you?” – this is a great question that sums up the entire way humanity tends to seek solutions and management techniques for problems instead of true answers.
“Have you noticed that you can’t change your emotional state without changing your breath first? Try it – think of something joyful and notice your breath, then think of something sad and feel if it changes.” Such a simple little exercise, but one that is so significant when it comes to how we are feeling and consequently how we go about our day. What a wonderful and precious gift the Gentle Breath Meditation has been and continues to be for so many people.
I would agree with you Joel that we seem to breath without taking any notice of how we are breathing at all, it is so automatic. And not breathing can be very traumatic as someone who used to have panic attacks not being able to catch my breath was very scary this was the dark spiral that took me further away from myself and being able to breath. I carried a paper bag around with me wherever I went as breathing into this would bring me back.
Not allowing love to flow in to us and back out is akin to holding our breath – a great stagnation that not only smells, it paralyses for it goes against our most natural breath.
Is this why when we are angry we tend to turn red because we hold our breath? And then whatever is expressed in this state can be explosive with abuse.
Our every breath offers us the opportunity to know the depth of who we are and all we are connected to as Sons of God, as such every breath offers a reflection of the degree in which we have surrendered to our Soul and live with Soulfulness.
The gentle breath meditation is such a great support so easy to use, and I find it a great way to reconnect especially when I am traveling or at work.
Moving on from the free Gentle Breath Meditation™ audios
The healing modalities offered by Universal Medicine supports us to actually feel what is going on inside our bodies, so that it’s not ever about getting better but healing the ill so that the true you can emerge out of the false ideals and pictures we build our lives on. Is it possible we have built our lives on a bed of sand so there is no true foundation to stand on?
The Gentle Breath Meditation is such a simple yet profound tool that supports us to stay connected to who we are. What a wonderful technique this would be to introduce as part of the national curriculum.
Imagine if there was such a thing as world breath day – not as a fundraiser or charity or public holiday, just a day of awareness to ones own rhythmic breath. And imagine if everyone in the world participated… I think it would be a very very different day for many and we would all feel the impact.
“If the trigger for that connection is something outside you, then the power remains outside you. If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you.” What a powerful observation to remember and choose in order to remain discerning and non-judgmental and thereby enabled to see the truth of what is being presented rather than being subservient to world around us.
“But it stands to reason that if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world.” Such a profound truth that if truly explored brings a paradigm shift with one’s relationship with the world.
Wow Joel, I do not think I have read this since it was first published and reading it again I am blown away with the simplicity and directness with which you show that the Gentle Breath Meditation™ may appear the same yet is vastly different; the how and why breath itself is so fundamental; and that choosing how you breath is self-empowering.
Thank you Joel for reminding humanity about our breath, by being more aware of the quality of our breath this can change how we feel, how we respond to situations, to people and to ourselves. It can seem like a very minor detail but the impact is huge.
Joel we need a team of you to take along to every school and share what you have shared in this blog. Imagine if when we were young we were given the tools to be all of who we are, with no reduction just the magnificence of our being shining out. The Gentle Breath™ as taught by Serge Benhayon is the baseline for breathing who we truly are. It’s totally life changing.
Bringing The Gentle Breath Meditation into schools from an early age would be life changing, and such a valuable tool for all.
If the difference in the quality of your breath is the key factor with living with exhaustion or not, why this basic truth not made an important fact we learn across society?
There isn’t a price in this world which can give us more than what the connection from our soul does.
Absolutely Viktoria – nothing in this world comes even close to that which is otherworldly, multidimensional, from Heaven.
But we stubbornly keep trying to make it so, and what’s worse many of us would go the extra mile and lie, deface and try to bring down anything and everything that has even the smallest reflection that the way we are living our lives may just not be it.
Breathing is an involuntary action that we engage all the time in while we live. Our breath, yet, can only reflect us in a deep way. Our breath reflects where is our body and being at. Although the mechanics is shared by everybody (even if some do it through the mouth and others through the nose), the quality of our breath is a reflection of the quality of the order we have inside us. The way a dis-ordered body breaths in and out, is different from a more ordered one. This brings the issue of order to the fore and, thus, the importance of techniques that help us truly to make order inside us; an order that truly talks to our divine particles.
Introducing the Gentle Breath technique to people offers them a golden opportunity to stop and start to let go of any tension in their bodies. Its a very powerful thing to do and i have found the response is always that it is deeply relaxing and calming for the body.
“if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world” – Absolutely, and it’s untrue that we are at the ‘mercy’ of life because in fact our movements, how we breathe, walk, talk and hold ourselves is much more powerful than the external influences we are under.
This blog is pure gold. I love the way and ease you write allowing the reader to ‘get’ something. I mean how often do we stop to think about our breath and how and why it changes!!! Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have been teaching this since 1999 following from a lineage of truth and wisdom regarding the connection (or loss of connection) innately within. Definitely worth exploring more .. we are worth it ‘But it stands to reason that if our breath can be changed by our experience of the world around us, then changing our breath may well change how we experience the world. Crazy concept I know, but it’s something worth exploring.’
The breath is a marker of how we are living indeed – and I notice in sessions how I am very aware of it, and the practitioner supports me to come back into my body and breath my own breath rather than in reaction to life. The Gentle Breath Meditation is an amazing bridge into supporting the breath.
Joel, what you are offering humanity here is huge and worth exploring, breathing our own breath, not as a solution but as a true answer to feel who we are and where we come from.
I can remember the many moments I have not surrendered to my body and let go of my attachments and investments in life. My breath is vastly different then when compared to what it feels like when I actually do start to surrender and let go. Shows how much we actually control our breath.
I still keep coming back to my breath when the going gets tough so to speak and even when it doesn’t.
When I walk next to people in the supermarket/shopping centres etc I see that people are having a hard time to breathe in any way gently. This is telling us the general state of our overall health, which is not very good at all.
Observe someone breathe and you know a lot about him or her and how he or she is in life.
Observe a young child or baby sleeping and we know the stillness we innately are.
That is interesting Elizabeth and by openly observing someone we can also learn a lot about ourselves.
Absolutely, by observing someone’s breathing you understand far more about them.
What is breathing you if you do not breath your own breath?
But what is it ..to breath your own breath?
It is the breath we did as a child, very simple, just the connection within our body is felt when breathing which confirms the connection with God and to express this on earth.
“If the trigger for that connection is something outside you, then the power remains outside you. If the focus for that connection is within you, then the power remains with you.” I feel like this needs to be emblazoned across the world as so much of us is seeking outside of us, when the true power for change remains within us.
Within our reach every moment of every day… the opportunity to let go of the unease, hurt and struggle we so often carry in our days… a breath away to re-connect to a quality and quiet within us that is our natural and normal way to be.
Our breath is something we are often not aware of, in terms of its quality and rhythm. This blog is an awesome reminder that the quality of our breath is highly important and it matters which quality of energy we are breathing in, is it fiery or pranic? Something I forget to check in throughout my day. This blog is an awesome reminder to breathe our own breath, I reckon if we can master this consistently it could change our life and perhaps the world too.
Having tried many forms of mediation over the years, I always believed it had to be practiced for a long time and to sit cross-legged for me to experience a deep state of calm. I realised what an illusion this was because when I began practicing the Gentle Breath Meditation it was clear how simple and yet powerful these 5-10 minute meditations were.
‘The real benefit of meditation is not how long you can sit in meditation, but the degree to which you can live that level of connection in real life’. Beautifully said Joel.
“…… is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you?…” I would say yes, there most definately is a difference. When we do something to make us feel better we have to go outside of oursleves to get it and it does not last, but when we do somehting that helps us feel ourselves, we literally get to feel it for ourseves and there can be no denying what we feel. Therefore we have a marker in our bodies that we can refer to if and when we do lose that connection with our innermost.
‘is there a difference between something that makes you feel better and something that helps you feel you’ This is key Joel as the world is filled with options to feel better but as it never lasts we become like junkies, always craving for the next feel better moments, adding more and more until we find a state in which we can say ‘i am ok now’. Only this state is infinitely fragile and dependent on everything outside of us. If we breathe our own breath and come to our our own, we will feel the ultimate full-filment.
Well said Carolien. The insatiableness of the search outside of ourselves, when our absolute full-fill-ment is within… love it.
There is so much to appreciate about our bodies and how they keep working for us to the best of their abilities regardless of what we do to them and what we expect them to do for us. So something as simple as the Gentle Breath Meditation can be hugely beneficial to everyone as it offers the opportuntiy to stop and appreciate the amazingness that we all have at our fingertips.
Incredible piece of wisdom shared Joel. If we hold all wisdom within, then connecting to such wisdom is the only movement to be in.