If you ask the average citizen what “breathing” is, they might say that breathing is the inhalation of oxygen.

Although they aren’t mistaken, the universe is much more complex than that.

Why is that?

Oxygen is but one of a handful of gases in the air that you inhale, weighing in at a mere 21% composition of air as compared to nitrogen gas at 78%. Additional gases include argon, carbon dioxide, helium, and neon.

Moreover, the air you breathe in is not the same as the air you breathe out. That’s because your cells have used up the incoming oxygen and released carbon dioxide as an outgoing byproduct.

That leads us to our next point.

Breathing is not just the automatic inhalation of air.

Rather, with conscious effort, a breath can contain four parts:

• Inhalation: breathing in

• Inhalation Retention: holding a partial or full breath in your lungs

• Exhalation: breathing out

• Exhalation Retention: holding no breath in your lungs (i.e., empty)

Point being, you might be blissfully unaware of your umbilical cord to the universe—the breath—and, most importantly, how to control it.

But, why would you want to control that anyway? If your automatic breath has kept you alive this long, why fix what isn’t broken?

Well, in the modern world, you habitually and unconsciously trigger your automatic fight-or-flight response out of context.

Then, near instantly, your nervous system and your life spiral out of control.

To illustrate, you need not a single sabertooth tiger in existence to trigger the ancient stress response in your body.

Lesser beasts than a red-toothed cat are enough to throw you off kilter.

In particular, a rough day at the office or a mere glimpse at a stranger’s social media account.

Worst of all, you need not a single external stimuli to produce stress.

Unfortunately, via your internal thoughts and feelings, you are highly adept at triggering—and propagating—the physiological state of fight-or-flight, also known as the stress response.

So, what is the most effective practice to calm yourself down in the face of any imagined predator and re-charge your energy for life?

Let’s turn to ancient Vedic literature for our answer.

Breathe To Control Your Life Force

For thousands of years, Indian sages have practiced a style of breathwork known as Pranayama.

The word prana is often translated as “life force”, while the complementary term yama is often translated as “control”.

Literally, pranayama is the practice of controlling your life force through conscious breathing.

Conscious is the key word here.

As we noted above, the unconscious breath is a gift, which keeps you alive.

As well, the unconscious breath is a curse, which can unnecessarily trigger and propagate stress.

For example, look to your left at the horrified plane passenger, who is uncontrollably hyperventilating during takeoff.

Clearly, they’ve lost control of their breath.

And in so doing, they’ve lost control of their nervous system and the quality of their life experience.

Point being, instead, if you consciously direct your breath, you can alter your physiological state.

This can change your brainwaves, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, assimilation, excretion, and the list goes on.

And, as we discovered last week, your Physiology is one of three primary levers to control your state of being, along with the spiritual faculty of Focus and the mental faculty of Language.

Now, although breath is an endless rabbit hole worthy of lifetime study, let’s turn to a modern sage to break it down.

Jamie Wheal—peak performance expert and founder of Flow Genome Project—simplifies the scene in his spectacular book Recapture the Rapture, “Whether it comes wrapped in spiritual, martial, or athletic language, breath training boils down to three things: oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Varying the rate, depth, and rhythm of our breaths changes the ratios of the three gases that make up our atmosphere. In turn this affects how our bodies and brains perform, and how our hearts and minds feel. That’s pretty much it.”

He goes on to say, “The more we can familiarize ourselves with the edges of our physiology, the more control we have at the edges of our psychology.”

So, how can you push your bodily limits to fortify your mental strength?

Practice Pranayama Breathwork

Try this intermediate-level pranayama breathwork practice.

By design, it might not be easy, but that’s exactly what you need to discover who you are.

This practice is especially potent as an afternoon reset, when your brain is in a state of jittery overstimulation from a long day’s work grind.

• Breathe in 45 second cycles through your nose only.

• Consciously focus on all four parts of the breath cycle.

• Inhale for 6 seconds deep into your belly.

• Hold the inhale for 30 seconds and release all physical tension.

• Exhale for 6 seconds into full somatic relaxation.

• Hold the exhale fully out for 3 seconds.

That constitutes one 45-second cycle: 6 in + 30 hold in + 6 out + 3 hold out = 45 seconds. Then, repeat for 10-20 cycles, which will bring your practice to between ~7.5 and 15 minutes.

To complement your practice, here are a few quick pointers:

• Use high quality over-the-ear headphones with strong bass.

• Listen to binaural beats or Solfeggio frequencies to nudge your brain towards an altered state.

• Create a custom 45-second breath timer with an app, such as iBreathe or Insight Timer. That way, your practice descends into your body, instead of lingering in your head where you'd otherwise have to keep count of the seconds.

Now, it’s time for you to venture back into this incomprehensibly stressful modern world that is devoid of any real threats to your daily existence (i.e., ravenous sabertooth tigers).

But take with you one sneaky truth...

It is not just a negative thought or emotion that will hijack your life and send you into a tailspin.

As trippy as it may seem, you must too stay on the alert for the predatorial unconscious breath, which by Mother Nature’s design can ingeniously—but most often, unnecessarily—jolt your physiology into a sudden state of panic.

So, when you next catch yourself defaulting to your survival programming, how will you control your breath and re-direct your fate?

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