Energy Psychology A-Z: Breath Walking

What if you discovered a secret special strategy that combined breathing, meditating, and walking to improve your ability to be even more happy, healthy, and in harmony? Would you share it with family and friends? This blog is dedicated to helping you begin a breath walking practice with powerful benefits. Breath walking has been found to easily help boost your emotional, mental, and physical health for peak performance. The energy psychology benefits of breath walking may be one of the easiest and most effective ways to benefit people of all ages right now during these crazy coronavirus conditions. Breath walking is easy to do any place and any time…so there is no excuse to prevent you from giving it a go right now.

Many people have set New Years’ goals and resolutions to be healthier and less stressed and breath walking is the perfect way to accomplish these goals and so much more. By learning better breathing and walking techniques you can learn to benefit and master your breath, lungs, mind, and oxygen capacity. While everyone thinks they know the basic foundations of breathing they might be surprised to realize learning by trial and error may have actually caused more challenges and errors that are preventing them from being fit and healthy.

“Do you remember receiving any breath training when you were growing up that taught the art and science of breathing and breathwork for optimal performance in all areas of your life? Not me.” Michael Morningstar

In fact, most people do several things that sabotage their breathing and health until they receive the education, information, and inspiration to discover disciplined breath work to optimize their breath and health.

More people are learning about Ayurveda (wisdom of health and life) and Pranayama (the art and science of breathwork) to improve their lifestyle and longevity. Learning better breath practices can help enhance your emotional, mental and physical health quickly and we all want quick results. There is a very long list of benefits associated with breath waling and breathwork such as better: awareness, emotional balance, endurance, energy, immune function, mental function, pain reduction, perception, resilience, and vitality. Many people are looking for a fast way to be more mindful, feel better, reduce stress, and sleep better and breath walking is a walking meditation that does all this and more.

Anyone and everyone can benefit from learning breath walking which is easy and fun to do anytime during the day. Children, parents, and seniors alike can utilize it to help them in a few minutes during a busy day with rapid results. Everyone can benefit from various breath practices and breath walking to calm the mind, energize the body and brain and improve restful sleep. There are so many reasons to improve your breath practices and now is a great time to learn breath walking to transform your life.

Breath Walking to Be Happy and Healthy

A great energy psychology technique is called Breath Walking. It is a great way to make your breathing, relaxing, and walking more beneficial and enjoyable. Our emotions and psychology shift when we focus on our awareness, breathing, and surroundings which can lead to better emotional resiliency and stability. Big benefits can come from small steps. Breath Walking is the art and science of combining breath practices synchronized with walking. During the process, your attention and awareness is directed in a meditative, mindful and observant state to notice the sights, smells, and sounds around you. Breath Walking combines breathing, mindfulness, and walking with a heightened awareness to connect with Mother Nature and the world around you to help re-energize and revitalize the body, mind, and spirit.

Breath walking is a great way to combine emotional, mental, and physical benefits and is a great resource for wellness seekers, whole families, and workers dealing with low physical activity and high stress. Breath walking is designed to combine breath practices from Kundalini yoga integrated into a cadence and rhythm while walking that produces a deeper mindfulness state. The benefits are backed by research that showed the breath walking techniques produced enhanced effects over a person just walking.

The benefits of breath walking include:

Endurance and energy enhancement
Feelings of being more connected and conscious
Increase immune system resiliency
Mind and mood control
Refined mental clarity and focus

It is great to start with an intention, meditation, or visualization for being happy, healthy, and in harmony before you begin.

Breath walking has five stages or steps:

Awaken: The awaken exercises are done to prime the pump and warm up our wisdom within. Usually, three to five energizing exercises are done for one to three minutes each. They are simple breathing and movements to open up our breathing and consciousness. This could include a quick “Breath of Fire”, Bellows Breath or Yoga poses.
Align: This is when the walking begins. You can do an indoors waking in place or an outdoors walk at a comfortable pace on a safe surface. Check to be sure you maintain balance and body alignment and a steady stride. It is a great idea to check in from feet to head to ensure you use a good walking posture.
Vitalize: Depending on your desired outcome there are specific breathing patterns to be used to achieve different effects such as calming, energizing, focus, mindfulness, and relaxing. Breath walking uses different breathing techniques and primal sounds, either silent or spoken. With a cadence and synchronized breath practices, you coordinate your breaths with your steps. Most of the breathing is done in and out through the nose rather than the mouth. The breathing, mantra (primal sounds), and steps combined help clear the monkey mind of constant chatter to allow you to enjoy a form of walking meditation. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes, followed by normal breathing and walking pace for 3 to 5 minutes. Time permitting you could repeat this process a few times during a walk.
Balance: End the walk by slowing the pace and allowing your awareness to expand to the sights, smells, and sounds around you. Consider a balance pose such as tree pose or hugging tree pose to finish the experience.
Integrate: This is the process of inner linking and reprogramming to rewire our body and brain during the breath walk exercise. We also connect our external environment to our internal body, mind, and spirit. Putting your hands on your head or heart and sending healing energy is a nice way to anchor and integrate the benefit. Exercises may include “Beautiful Blue Bubble”, “Planting Seeds,” or “Vision Board Integration and Visualization”. It is super powerful to look at your vision board before and after your breath walk.

Basic Breath Walking

I first experienced breath practice training on Breath of Fire and Breath Walking at a wellness seminar in Maui, Hawaii in 1995. The yogi taught us the benefits of Kundalini energy practices and yoga. He shared different pranayama breath practices to help boost our energy and health. We also learned about the benefits of the specific strategies of integrating mantras, meditations, mudras, music, and yoga into our lifestyle. We enjoyed many amazing Kundalini techniques and the experiential learning continues to guide me on my health journey.

Breath walking is a breath technique used as a foundation practice in Kundalini energy practices. Learning to master our body and breath is key to our health and longevity. It is extremely important to learn and practice breath walking and breath practices in order to activate them easily and effectively when strain or stress may be blocking your energy and flow. A small shift in our breathing patterns can offer super support for better awareness, energy, mood, and performance.

Breath walking is easy to do and easy to learn. Like anything in life, the key is just doing it and then observe the results. Just doing it for 21 days may help you be convinced and committed for life. Be sure to select an easy path that is safe for walking as you will be focused on your breathing, mantras, and mudra touchpoints.

Here is the process:

Begin by breathing in through your nose four quick breaths and then out through the nose 4 quick breaths. Any congestion is a sign to clear your nasal passages and sinuses. Many of our blogs discuss this cleansing concept of nasal passages and sinuses in more detail.
Begin by walking in place and touching your thumbs to your first fingertips, then second, then third, and then fourth fingertips. Breath walking can be done walking in place indoors or walking outdoors. Being able to do breath walking indoors is great when it is cold, dark, or rainy and being outdoors is not optimal.
While walking, remain calm and relaxed with your hands either to your sides or slightly raised in front of you. Maintain mindfulness of your surroundings and steps.
Observe the natural flow of your breath and energy and your external and internal sensations as you walk with a cadence to your nasal breathing. In In In In then Out Out Out Out then repeat over and over again. Pick a good steady rhythm.
Repeat this sequence while you walk for several minutes.
After you find your groove, begin adding the mantras internally thinking about them or saying them out loud on the exhales…Sat Ta Na Ma—as you touch your first fingertip, think Sat—your second fingertip, think Ta—your third fingertip, think Na—your fourth fingertip, think Ma. Or you can say them as you touch the fingertips in sequence.
Practice this until it becomes second nature.
Over time you will likely be able to do it for longer periods of time as you enjoy breath practices and longer breath walking sessions.

It is possible some initial dizziness, lightheadedness, or tingling may occur. This is normal due to the increased energy and oxygen flow. If you need to take a break, this is perfectly fine. The body will learn to adapt to the new combined input of energy, relaxation, and stimulation to the nervous system. Breath Walking may or may not be ideal when pregnant or menstruating so check with your trusted adviser and use common sense.

Breath practices and breath walking will help you become acutely aware of any nasal issues or sinus congestion. Consider this a great thing because we must focus on our overall choices and decisions regarding healthy eating, holistic lifestyle, and hydration. Many people have sinus issues due to congestion caused by cheese, dairy, and milk products. Go to the Chopra website for more information on the how and why using a neti pot is beneficial. Changing our diet and properly cleaning our sinuses is a vital part of a healthy lifestyle and is not normally part of our health education growing up in the US. As a result, many people struggle and suffer for decades with sinus problems which lead to long-term health issues and substandard performance.

Breath Walking is designed to use specific breath practices to oxygenate the body while it calms the mind. Very specific breath patterns are used with pranayama breathing to achieve advanced states of profound body, mind, and spiritual awareness. The book, Breathwalk: Breathing Your Way to a Revitalized Body Mind and Spirit by Yogi Bhajan & Gurucharan Singh Khalsa Ph.D. is a great resource for more details. More helpful information on breathwork, meditation, and yoga is found at the Kundalini Research Institute.

Passion for People & Planet

The passion and purpose of Morningstar NEWS are to condense many hours of research down to two minutes of education, information, and inspiration for a healthy lifestyle and mindset. This blog shared the energy psychology benefits of Breath Walking to help your emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health in 2021 and beyond.

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Energy Psychology A-Z: Dancing

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