How to Breathe Properly

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Here in this post, I am sharing some facts and tips about breathing properly that I have learned over the past few years and implemented :

Facts :

• Your breathing rate is directly related to your life span. Average healthy human breaths 15 times per minute (15 x 60min x 24hrs = 21600 breaths per day, do we ever realize this simple thing) and has a natural age of about 80-100yrs. Tortoise breathe about 3-5 times per minute and have natural age of about 100-200yrs. For them 100 is normal, some even live up to 250yrs. Take dogs, they breathe 20-30 times per minute and live for about 10-15yrs.
• Breath is the energy fuel of your mind. Each inhalation fills you with more thoughts and each exhalation empties your thoughts. 
• When you don’t breathe, you don’t think.
• Shallow, noisy, heavy breathing is a sign of a mind full of tension while calm, silent breathing is a sign of a calm mind. When I was in school, I had observed the breathing of some friends. The more tensed ones breathed very heavily and I could hear much noise in their breath.
• Newborn babies breathe in a natural proper way and are tension free. As they grow up, they learn to breathe in the wrong way or they get many tensions and end up breathing in the wrong way.
• When you breathe in a proper rhythm, you prevent diseases. Swami also mentioned this in one of his videos.
• There is a difference between the length of the inhaled breath and outgoing breath. When the outgoing breath is longer, the body decays at a faster pace. By length, I don’t mean the “time duration”, I mean how far the air goes when you exhale. The time duration of exhalation is double that of inhalation in pranayama.
• One sure outcome of meditation is that your breathing regulates and reduces.
• Breathing is your link with life. When this will stop completely, the shutter of eyes will fall forever.

Tips :

• Try to observe your breath at least for 5-10mins a day. Is it very noisy, shallow? 
• Proper breathing: First learn to breathe properly while just sitting or lying down and then apply it in everyday life. First, exhale completely. Then slowly, not forcefully, araam araam se, let your body inhale deeply, the breath should go till belly, your stomach should expand. Don’t try to interfere in natural breathing, you don’t need to breathe, your body better knows how to do it. Ever seen babies breathing, their stomach expands while breathing, see an adult the upper body expands, I have seen. Now slowly exhale, as you exhale, your stomach should go in. Slowly you will get used to this way of breathing with practice. This is the very effective, efficient, proper way of breathing. I just checked to breathe using baby and adult way, baby way relaxes you and adult one tenses you. This proper way is called Belly Breathing and Diaphragmatic breathing.
• When you breathe, don’t force yourself to breathe. When you force, it becomes noisy. Let it flow freely through you, it is the river of life.
• When you will start breathing properly, you will find yourself more energetic than before. This is because you will be taking in more “prana” than before. Prana is not equal to pranavayu (oxygen). You can survive without oxygen but not without prana, it is subtle life energy. Prana is real essence, the physical breath is just a medium of carrying it. It is like, if the air is glass, prana is water in it. You can have more or less water in the same size of the glass. It is possible to take prana directly without physical breath.

Speaking from my experience, I breathe much less than before. Just checked, breathed about 4-5 times in one minute. Whenever I meditate, my breathing falls down to abnormal levels. Sometimes, it even reduces to 1 breath in a minute or maybe lesser, I don’t keep looking at the clock.

So breath deeply, calmly, by your belly, like a baby. I want you to implement this in everyday life, don’t just read and forget. We take 21600 breaths in a day don’t waste all those breaths.