When we constantly have thoughts running through our mind every single day we reach the end of today and those thoughts don’t allow us to fall asleep easily or we fall asleep and then we wake up in between and we have disturbed cycles of sleep. All of us know that sleep is the most important vertical in the health paradigm. We need sleep for hormonal balance, to lose weight, to rejuvenate, recharge our brain, repair, grow our cells and boost immunity. A lot of people today are on sleeping medication and sleeping pills. We need those medicines because of sleeplessness but at the same time but we have to look at ways of finally getting off those pills because every medicine you take has a side effect. I’ve selected two breathing techniques which works for my clients all over the world and I know people who have used these techniques week-over-week have gotten off their sleeping medication but of course with their doctor’s approval.

The two techniques that I’m going to teach you basically train the parasympathetic nervous system. So basically when we are frantic, anxious or tensed we tend to take short breaths, we take we tend to take less oxygen and billions of our cells require oxygen that’s the life force to conduct all of its chemical reactions and hormonal balance that actually stimulates the mind and body to fall asleep. So when we have the right balance of all these chemicals working together we sleep well and oxygen could be the answer to most sleep problems, not all but most of them. 

Left Nostril Breathing
So the first sleeping technique is very simple. We call it the left nostril breathing. In this you cover your right nostril with your thumb and then you breathe through your left nostril. So you only breathe through your left nostril several times maybe start with 10 times, 10 to 12 times. Or just follow your breath, it can be long, it can be short, don’t force it. Close your eyes and focus on each inhale going through your left nostril and each exhale coming out of your left nostril. So unlike the other pranayama where you keep moving from nostril to nostril over here it’s your thumb on your right nostril and then you close your eyes back straight and you inhale and you exhale and you keep repeating that. Let your inhale be slower and your exhale be even a little bit longer, but don’t force that it will automatically fall into pattern. So you do that a couple of times every single day just before you go to sleep. This technique trains your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down and when that’s calm you allow oxygen to reach all of the cells of your body and it promotes good sleep. It’s not going to happen the first time but for many people that actually does work the first time. It’s going to take maybe a few days for some of you, maybe a couple of weeks for some of you, but don’t give up and keep trying that particular method. 

6, 2 and 10 Technique
The second breathing technique is very simple which works on the principle of 6, 2 and 1. So for 6 second, your inhale last for 6 seconds. So you inhale now through both nostrils six seconds inhale. Some of you may be able to keep up for 4 seconds, some of you for 5, some of you for 7. Over time you get to 6 over time you get to 7 so you inhale for 7 or you inhale for 6 seconds and then you hold your breath for three to four seconds. You may be able to hold for two with the start or three or four but we don’t cross four seconds so it’s six seconds of inhale four seconds of hold and then we are going to exhale for about 10 seconds. So now you’re going to really control your exhale like I said don’t force it, you may get it in eight seconds six seconds but we’re going to aim to come up to 10 to 11 seconds but the exhale is a little bit different.  We will not exhale through our nostrils. What we will try to do is generate a whoosh; sound like a whoosh. Now how do you generate a whoosh sound? You got to purse your lips tight but you do it counting to ten seconds. So it’s a slow exhale with your lips pursed like a whoosh action. So it’s inhale for 6 seconds hold for three to four seconds and an exhale with your lips pursed, control for about 10 seconds. You do these six times to start with slowly build up to 8, slowly build up to 10. Again this trains your parasympathetic nervous system, it calms down your nervous system, and it gets your breath in control. It distributes oxygen equally to all those billions of cells that you have in the human body.

There are people who say this works better than a sleeping tablet. We are not going to equate it to that but nature always works and your breathing and the way you breath when it’s in line with nature it works wonders as it boosts immunity, it helps you lose weight and balance hormones and it does everything that the human body is designed to do.

So you should try one of these at a time. So maybe for the next one week or two weeks you could just focus on the left nostril breathing or you could start off with the second with the 6,4 and 10 method of breathing or vice versa, but it’s not suggested that you do alternately different breathing techniques. Your body should get used to one of them.