If you're looking for a great way to ease stress and return your body to a naturally relaxed state, try breathing and visualization, a form of meditation that can help you feel better in only a few minutes a day. With the right combination of deep belly breathing and mental imagery, you'll find it easy to relax each muscle group and feel refreshed and energized. Meditation is not a replacement for conventional medical therapies.
Types
The simplest form of breathing and visualization is body scanning. Working from your feet up, mentally focus on each body part, asking it to relax as you breathe deeply in and out through the nose. Some types of yoga and qigong combine exercise with visualization and breathwork. In guided meditation, an instructor directs you to breathe deeply as you imagine yourself moving through peaceful and relaxing environments such as a beach or mountain retreat.
Technique
The key to using breathwork for relaxation is as simple as moving your breath down into your belly. Young children breathe this way naturally, notes Shoshanna Katzman, director of the Red Bank Acupuncture and Wellness Center in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, and author of "Qigong for Staying Young." Breathing in a relaxed, full manner naturally helps your muscles soften. Imagine your breath feeding a warm golden ball of light in your belly to further break the cycle of stress and increase your store of qi or vital life energy.
Benefits
Visualization, breathwork and muscle relaxation can help gradually change your mind, emotions and behavior, according to Margaret Pierce and the late Martin Pierce, founders of the Pierce Yoga Program in Atlanta, Georgia, and authors of "Yoga for Your Life." The Pierces recommend a simple meditation to help you clear away stored tensions. Sitting with your eyes closed, visualize a fire in your abdomen. Below the fire, imagine everything you don't need -- pain, negative emotion or stale energy -- is sitting in a pile. Each time you inhale, part of this pile flies into the fire, where it burns away. Each time you exhale, you blow away any ash the fire creates.
Research
Researchers have shown that regular meditation practice might improve your ability to concentrate during everyday tasks, according to the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, or NCCAM. When you meditate, some researchers theorize that you're relaxing the part of your nervous system that governs your fight-or-flight response and optimizing the function of the part of your nervous system that allows heart rate and breathing to slow.
Try This
Practice deep breathing while visualizing green light, a color that the alternative health community associates with healing. Sit or lie comfortably. Breathe softly, deeply and evenly through the nose. Place a hand on your belly and feel your breath moving down into this area with each inhalation. As you inhale, imagine an emerald green light entering the soles of your feet and traveling up your legs. The light relaxes each muscle fiber that it touches. Exhale, moving the light up into your lower belly. Inhale, directing the light through your upper abdomen and chest. Exhale, allowing the light to fill your head. Once the light fills you, hold it for a few breaths. Now visualize the light draining out through your feet, taking any stale energies with it. Inhale, imagining and feeling white light coming in through the soles of the feet. Continue to breathe the light up through your body until it fills you completely. Allow the light to shine brightly as you continue to breathe and relax.
