Circular Breathing Exercise For Sleep

Can't get to sleep? Rhythmic circular breathing is useful for those of you who find it difficult to switch your mind off the problems of the day.

Try this exercise...

Your mind becomes anchored to the rhythm of your breath instead of to the problems of the day and the natural sleep cycle is encouraged to take over.
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How To Do Rhythmic Circular Breathing

Make yourself comfortable in the position in which you want to sleep. Close your eyes and settle down for sleep.
Now breathe deeply and gently in the same way that you would for diaphragmatic breathing.
Feel the breath filling up slowly from the diaphragm through the chest to your mouth, then, as you breath out, imagine yourself blowing the breath out of your mouth, round in a circle back through an imaginary hole in your tummy to the diaphragm.
Then start all over again! Up from the diaphragm, out of the mouth, and round down to your diaphragm. Take the rhythm fairly slowly.

Now that you understand the principle, Try It! ...

Breath in from the diaphragm slowly through the chest to the mouth, counting to four and blow it out back to the diaphragm in another count of four...

Pick your most comfortable, fairly slow, rhythm...

The most important part of this is the full involvement of the mind in the in the circular breathing process.

Keep a mental picture of the circle in your mind and follow it around at all times, making sure that your mind concentrates on and thinks only of this circular breathing rhythm...

Then, because there is nothing more interesting going on, I promise you, you will fall asleep.

I use this method to get to sleep and usually it only takes aboutten circles before I drift off...

You will find that your eyes will automatically follow the circle from the mouth out and back to the diaphragm. And this is the whole point, to keep your mind involved!

If you wake during the night, use this method to get back to sleep.