The Slow Breath

Tony Crisp has taught methods of stress release to hundreds of people internationally. He has been recognised as having developed innovative methods of releasing deeply interior tensions. See Biographical Notes

The aim of the ’slow breath’ method is to breathe naturally-abdominally-but to breathe as slowly as comfort allows. It must be comfortable, however, as the aim is to induce quiet of mind and emotions, and if you are struggling with the method it defeats its own purpose. So there must be no gasping for breath because you are breathing too slowly. Find a rhythm that is slow but not making you out of breath.

Therefore, slowly breathe in counting to see how long this takes. Then exhale to the same count. There is no need to concentrate on anything except the beautiful slowness of the breath. This takes practice, so do not hope to find the great quietness right away.

You need to use this slow breathing for at least ten minutes each day, longer if you can manage it. Keep the practice running daily for three months. This insures real physical and mental changes. It also puts in place new habits, meaning that after that period you will find you will be breathing more slowly as a natural rather than induced pattern.

You must realise that you are gradually changing very deeply seated habits that have been with you a lifetime. Taking hold of the breath and controlling it is like taking hold of your nervous system, or body, and gradually altering the way it responds to events and thoughts. It is a bit like taking a wild animal and gently taming it. There should be no force or conflict involved. Gradually you will see that your way of dealing with, or responding to, difficult emotions, fears and stressful events, is changing. You feel more able to meet difficulties, allowing you to grow as a person, and be more creative.

With practice, one should begin to experience a dropping away of tension, disturbed emotions and thoughts. Sometimes it will feel as if something has literally fallen away from you, or as if the bottom of the spine is opening as the tensions there drop away. Eventually you will glimpse something that can only be described as a void or absence of all personal activity. There is a quiet peace and bliss in this, but it will at first only be flashes, secondary glimpses, growing gradually longer. This is achieved when all efforts and desires drop away – never by striving after it. By surrendering to this quietness you will be cleansed by it first – then it acts upon you producing growth of inner awareness.

The result upon your nervous or emotional conflicts is one of gradual calming, cleansing and leading towards peace. While we may find ease from tensions within months, such personality growths should be hoped for only in the sense of years. Like trees, we grow slowly, but there is beauty in it.

One of the greatest of Chinese methods of personal transformation suggests the slow breath as it basic technique. This is explained in the book The Secret of the Golden Flower. The aim is to gradually return one to the pristine awareness you were born with, free of the encumbering cultural traits and beliefs taken on during culturation and education.