A breathing exercise that’s practically a workout … for your body as well as your mind.

I’ve worked with quite a number of guided meditations, breathing exercises, and visual imagery. This particular 12-minute exercise is one of my favorites as it’s very active, goal oriented, invigorating and inspiring. It’s a great preparation exercise for an even more targeted meditation session where you need positive energy. After 12 minutes, you have a well of it ready to go to work for you right up in your brain where you need it.

Meditation Highlights

• Intense-as-you-like-it breathing
• Pulling, sucking, even squeezing low-level (negative) emotions out of your core e.g. fear, dread
• Filling your brain with high-level (positive) emotions e.g. joy, awe, inspiration

The meditation (or exercise) is read by Dr. Joe Dispenza, author of You Are the Placebo. He questions the placebo effect not if it works or not—for he’s certain it does—but whether or not we even need the sugar pill or fake surgery. Can we not be the sugar pill ourselves? What is the sugar pill doing anyway? It’s the intention, expectation and emotion that comes in the little pill that our body is working with. But there’s nothing in it. So what’s happening? Our body is doing it all. Or is it our body? Is it our mind? Is it our mind and our body? Is it our mind working with our body? The book is a fascinating read and even a page turner if you’re interested in things like the power of the mind. You can buy this particular audio on his site, it’s part of a series.

I was curious as to how Dispenza packed so much into 12 minutes, so I thought I’d take it apart. By analyzing it, it also helps me go deeper into understanding of what we’re doing—and to get more out of it. I’m not going to quote his every word, but rather take out sections to highlight. Here we go.

It’s time to change your energy.

The time is now, we’re going to do this right now. Are you ready? Are you sitting up straight? You won’t be interrupted? Have good audio? Eye covering? If you’re not ready, come back when you are, because we’re going to change some energy here.

It’s 12 minutes. What did you do in the last 12 minutes? I’m going to go out on a ledge and say that you probably didn’t remove your mind from your body, suck negative emotions from your core, or fill your brain with high level emotion. Just saying.

We are divine beings. We are the creators of destiny. To be greater than your body. To be greater than your environment and to be greater than time means you are the master of your body, the master of your life, and the master of time.

Are we divine beings? We’re not chopped liver. Are we just flesh and blood or is there more? I like that he doesn’t ask if we’re divine beings, he just boldly states that we are. So we’ve got that going for us.

Pulling the mind out of the body, changing your energy, ascending your energy back to the brain.

Contract your intrinsic muscles, your perineum, your lower abdomen, your upper abdomen, and as you contract those intrinsic muscles, I want you to inhale through your nose in one, slow, steady breath and pull your energy your perineum, your lower abdomen, your upper abdomen, through your chest, through your throat, through your head, all the way to the top and hold it at the top and let your energy move to your awareness and hold it there for a second. Hold it … and as you exhale now, relax.

Whew! Whoa! You can do this as calmly or intensely as you choose. Take that breath slowly and softly through your nose, quietly and gently pulling and sucking up from below. Quietly and smoothly.

Or you can make a more physical exercise of it. Inhale deep and slow, but with power. Not just with your nose, but with your diaphragm, deep into the core of your trunk, and pull up and through like an industrial strength vacuum. You know when you’re squeezing those muscles down there with a light tug or with force. Choose how you like it, but make it real. It should be tight: perineum, lower abdomen, upper abdomen. Like squeezing a toothpaste tube, but the tube is your trunk, feel that energy being forced out, whether it wants to go or not, it’s going.

Moving from survival to creation. Freeing the body from the past, contract those intrinsic muscles and in one slow, steady breath pull that energy from your body all the way to your brain, like drawing fluid up a straw and hold it all the way at the top, the very top of your head, hold it there, and let your energy follow your awareness. Hold it. As you exhale now, relax.

From “survival to creation.” If you’re familiar with the different states of mind (e.g. beta, alpha, theta, delta) and the fight or flight mechanism, you’ll know that your body is either in a state of survival (stress, worry, fear, etc.) or creation (relaxed, creative, healing, etc.). But boom, just like that he sneaks that into the beginning of that section: from survival to creation. So get out of that survival state and just like that you’re in a creation state, ready to put that energy to work now that it’s no longer worried or scared.

“Freeing the body from the past” also puts you in the present—and the present state of creation. It’s now time to pull those emotions of fear up and out of your body, through your chest, up your spine, spiraling up your throat and into and beyond your brain. There’s a lot going on here—and so precious little, too. Just keep going, keep breathing, more and more deeply.

With the intention of pulling the mind out of the body. Going from particle to wave.

This is going from matter to energy. The particles of your body, the actual matter, we’re transforming it into energy, into something we can use. By pulling out from the depths and bringing it to the heights, we are transforming our energy. We are pulling the mind, the thoughts, the feelings (at least this is what I understand of it), out of the physical body—so the energy can work on the physical body, so the subconscious can work while the conscious is out of the way.

The limited (or negative) emotions are in there, down there. Let’s scrape them out, pull, vacuum, suck, vibrate, squeeze.

Use your body as an instrument of consciousness to ascend your energy from your body into your brain and into the field. Changing those limited emotions that are stored in the body like an alchemist into gold. Transmuting that energy into an elevated state requires your intention.

Is there enough going on here for you? You think you’re just sitting there in your chair, but look what happening—that is, if you’re making it happen. He says you’re using your (physical) body as an instrument of consciousness to change those emotions. This covers a few topics that Dispenza goes into in great depth in his books. The negative emotions are there, no doubt about it, but by, to use his words, firing and wiring new (positive) connections, we’re creating new connections, new neurological synapses that will focus the attention on them—and not on the old (negative) connections.

So, yes, we’re “brute forcing” in a way the positive energy to rid the body of the negative and low-level energy. He then states that it requires our intention. We want it, of course, but we have to “do it” or “ask for it” to happen consciously to let the unconscious know what we want. Heavy enough for you? Enough work? Good. You’ll feel lighter afterwards.

Exhale

One quick note on the exhale. Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book he dedicated to just breath, said that we don’t usually exhale as deeply or as long and smooth as our inhale. I find it quite difficult to slow down the exhale as I want to gasp for more breath quickly. One technique I’ve used with success is to open your mouth as wide as you can and do something of a silent scream, maybe like the hiss of a cat. It comes from lower down and it’s not so much that air is coming out but that air isn’t coming in and you’re pushing the rest of it out, what you can scrape from the bottom of the barrel. Give it a good last push.

Come on, take the journey, from body to brain.

You might even interpret this, if you’re looking for even more visual imagery, as a journey from the depths of your soul to the lightness of your being. OK, OK, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Come on, there’s a little bit more now … let your breath be your intention to change your energy and pull that energy from your body all the way into your brain to the top of your head and as you rest your awareness on the top of your head, let your energy move to your awareness and just hold it there. Just hold it.

This is comforting to think that he’s suggesting that there’s just a little bit left now. We’ve done a good job thus far, we’ve gotten most of the bad stuff out, just some more work to do. Almost there!

Think of a chimney and think of how air passing through a dirty old chimney is going to first get lots of soot out. But after a few breaths it will be less.

With the intention of pulling the mind out of the body, freeing it from the chains of the past and hold it there. Hold it.

Break those last chains. By now they’re small and weak. Get ‘em.

Whew. A few more deep breaths and we’re done. I’ve done this exercise countless times and there have been occasions where I’m sweating because I’m squeezing and breathing and almost vibrating to get that energy out of there, to brutally force it out of my body. Afterwards, I have a full well of high-level energy that I can use throughout my day or, better yet, apply to the subconscious to work on an aspect where my conscious needs some help.

I hope that was of some help to “decode” the exercise. This is one of my favorite ones and, if you do it enough, it becomes something you look forward to doing and then achieving, reaping the benefits and, literally, smiling when you let out that last breath, knowing you’re doing your body—and your mind—good. Oh so good.

• Possible: breathe
• Impossible: suck your soul through a straw
• Repossible: turn your innards into a Dyson tornado

2020 Update

It starts with open!

The above post was written around the time I met Adwynna Mackenzie at the Dr. Joe Advanced in Carefree, Arizona.

Now almost 5 years later, her book is out! Check it out on Amazon today!