The One Minute Breath

When you practice one breath a minute, then you become Pavan Guru—you become the light and knowledge of the prana, and then you know the Universe, the Universe knows you.
-Yogi Bhajan 7/26/96

The One Minute Breath is a great technique to keep your calm through our fast changing times. Try it.

Sit in a meditation posture. Inhale for 20 seconds, hold for 20 seconds, exhale for 20 seconds. 

Benefits

• Optimized cooperation between the brain hemispheres
• Dramatic calming of anxiety, fear and worry
• Openness to feeling one’s presence and the presence of spirit
• Intuition develops
• The whole brain works, especially the old brain and the frontal hemispheres

One Minute Breath Tips:

To start, make yourself very comfortable. Have a shawl on that you can remove without exertion if you get warm. Be very still.

Once you are set, take 3 minutes to relax and deepen your breath (or try 3 minutes of Breath of Fire, or if you are really tense try 3 minutes of Sat Kriya).

Inhale slowly and steadily, filling your lower abdomen, your stomach area, going up to your lungs and then all the way up the chest.

Lock the breath once you fill your upper chest (after 20 seconds).

Hold (20 seconds).

Then exhale, slowly gently and steadily.

At the end of 20 seconds gently reverse to an inhale and begin again.

Having trouble working your way into it?

Don’t fight your breath. Be relaxed. Here are two approaches:

1. Give yourself permission to work up to it. Start inhaling for 10 seconds, holding for 10 seconds, exhaling for 10 seconds (or even 5 seconds if necessary). Take a day or two and then increase to 15, 15, 15, and then to 20, 20, 20.

2. Start with 20, 20, 20. If you find yourself struggling against your breath, complete the breath and then begin one minute of deep breathing. After a minute, start again, inhaling for 20 seconds, holding for 20 seconds, exhaling for 20 seconds

“Twenty seconds to inhale, twenty seconds to hold, twenty seconds to let it out. It takes one minute. And if you just practice eleven to thirty-one minutes, your blood itself will become a warrior against disease.

On average, you breathe twenty to twenty-five breaths per minute. In good health you breathe ten times a minute and a mentally balanced person breathes seven to nine breaths per minute. Fewer than that and you are a yogi.

If you sit down and breathe one breath per minute, in exactly thirty seconds you will find you are talking to yourself. In three minutes, you can get over any kind of mood. Why are you suffering? Do you want to live a long time? If you breathe an average of fifteen times a minute, and you live one hundred years, then if instead, you breathe one breath a minute, you can live fifteen hundred years because life is measured by the breath, not by years or by the calendar. When you are unconscious, your breath will be shallow and strong. But if you practice one breath a minute for eleven minutes a day, you can be in control of your mind.

If you want things to be done for you so you don’t have to do anything, then you must breathe from one to five or six breaths per minute. If you can practice that, then you can attract the Universe to you. It is no secret. It’s a simple thing. The longer and deeper your breath is, the more your psyche attracts everything to you—it’s a way to prosperity.

For thirty-one minutes do the one-minute breath meditation—it’s the story of a man who is grateful today; who is successful today; who has become compassionate without any lecture. He has realized himself. Why? It’s so simple. You live by breath, you die by breath. And if you meditate on your breath, the Pavan Guru, the knowledge of the pranic vidya of creation and creativity and all incarnations will dawn on you.

For some people it may take a short time, for some it may take a long time. But the path is the same. The procedure is the same. You will start winning yourself. You will start valuing your breath. You will start valuing your environments. You will start valuing your projections and one day you will be surprised—everyone will, in turn, value you.”
-Yogi Bhajan from Success and the Spirit

“A person who can breathe one breath a minute can multiply life fifteen times—no matter what your disease or state of
affairs is.”
-Yogi Bhajan 1/18/95

©The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan