Goop, there it is: boost your health with breath

GOOP featured on it's June 13th's mag, our own NYC's resident yoga teacher Elena Brower, co-owner of Virayoga.  Elena shows a simple metabolism boosting series.  One of the best lessons I have learned from studying with Elena is the powerful resource that breath is, so I am sharing the breathing meditation guide featured in the article.

"Set a timer for 3 minutes. Bring your prayer hands up to your forehead, and place your thumbs on your third eye point, in the middle of your forehead. Breathe slowly and deeply. This meditation can help to strengthen metabolism (as well as help control high blood pressure). It works the glandular system (which regulates bodily activities such as metabolism through hormones), stimulating and balancing the pituitary and pineal glands, considered the master glands of the body."

Como Una Ola - breathing meditation

"Like a wave, your love arrived in my life," the song goes, "like a wave of limitless force..."  Como Una Ola, in case you were not living in Spanish speaking country in the 1980's,  was a great hit by Rocio Jurado.  The song describes the stages of a love affair, from its surprising arrival, its monumental growth and to its recoiling end.  In recent weeks I was inspired by the song (blame youtube for this) to practice a breathing meditation with focus on the limitless healing power of breathing. You can practice this meditation whenever you feel that you need to connect to the grace of the universe, or a mini vacation from a tough day.  Just set a timer and surf the wave;

Lie flat on your back on a mat or blanket, with knees bend.  Let the inhalation come down into your back body like the trough of a wave.  Feel how it flattens the back against the floor.  Let the wave fill your body, let it grow in your front body from the belly to the top of your longs.  With the exhalation let your body follow the wave's crest as it withdraws into the back of your pelvis and out of your tailbone...let the whole wave dissolve back to the ocean of grace, knowing that there will be a new wave.  When you mind wants to move to a different task, just bring it back to the breath, like a wave, "como una ola," and repeat the wave cycle as many times as you like.

Namaste.