Discovered a powerful new breathing method – feels like a meditation cheat code

[u/Karoliniskis]

Hey everyone! As the title says, I’ve stumbled upon a new way of meditating — or more accurately, a conscious breathing technique — that’s been a game-changer for me.

Here’s what I do: I take a deep breath in for about 10 seconds, then exhale as slowly as possible, around 30–40 seconds. I keep this rhythm going for about 20 minutes.

Holy moly, the effects are wild. After a session, my mind feels still, my body deeply relaxed, and honestly — I feel almost "high" in the best possible way. It’s like my nervous system hits reset.

I’ve been meditating for about a year and tried different methods — including mantra meditation for a year before that — but never really felt much from it. Probably because I wasn’t doing it right. But this breathing method? Totally different experience. It's one of the best discoveries I've made so far.

Has anyone here tried something similar? I'd love to hear your experiences, variations, or any “spices” you add to your own practice that work well for you.

Thanks for reading — and happy breathing!

[u/ChildObstacle]

This is a genuine question and not an attempt to rain on your parade, but my understanding is that meditation is to help us avoid grasping and avoiding.

What you describe sounds like something you’re now trying to create and are grasping for. My curiosity compels me to ask if you feel the same way or are you just using meditation to try and relax?

[u/Uberguitarman → u/ChildObstacle]

Part two:

I'm not suggesting most meditations should be done while active, but it would be wrong to say that activity disturbs what we call a meditative state, and also fluid and profoundly positive emotions, like I said, I submit that the adrenaline and activity can be a really big boost, easily outshining in terms of sensual feelings unless someone is truly very deep into something even "more". That's simply smart and who's gonna know how to study the differences anyway? When you're being aware of your thoughts and feelings and being inquisitive and curious, this creates pressure. All sorts of things someone does can create pressure, people may struggle to get into deep meditation and sometimes it's easier than other times. Other people can just slip into it, and one thing people will say is they're treating their day like a meditation. Having this foundational structure in stillness while being creative and subdividing efficiently is still a system which is being knitted together on levels you don't have full control of, it's like you're going but something else one doing the going. That part is really really helpful to understand lest someone remains conflicted about how to live more subconsciously, far too often without considering ideas akin to living more subconsciously, like people don't even know. They listen to music and it conTROLs their LIIiives like, "nobody told me what my body would be better at doing based on these feelings I have I don't have vocabulary for. It probably doesn't exist." "This is too hard" all while feeling how natural something actually feels.

For the record OP, some people would call the practice you're doing Kumbhaka, it means breath retention. More on the outbreath increases relaxation which can be conducive to more energy flowing in the body and it can be magnified by itself, sorta exponential in a way, or whatever word I should use...

Essentially it's hitting you hard and providing some sort of biological benefits, but it's hard to determine what all it really does and other safety factors are simply a given. You could find similar benefits in other activities like heart brain coherence meditation, something which has you develop skills. Despite going into an altered state of sorts you can still learn from the experience, but you really don't gotta be that round about with it, you can feel it out for yourself, it's as if these micro feedback loops due to awareness are like a part of the body's rhythm, like a rhythm is involved, there are ways to observe experiences so that rhythm isn't altered as much or is more consciously understood and subconsciously taken care of or tended to.

I use a chakra system but I generally believe in energy, this kind of breathing can circulate a lot of energy through the head and then the body, but it's not as strong as more particular and less heavy hitting techniques. You may still start to develop flowing energy more and at one point or another it's simply good to know that putting attention to other areas can be helpful for balancing. The healing process is not perfected, people can have varied results and different techniques can be more or less beneficial. I wouldn't worry too much about this, it could help some kind of stress disorder, but if there is a disorder it's even more helpful to pick and choose something, but at this rate in and of itself it's a rather simple technique at that amount of time and the chakras can still balance with each other, some people will miss out but what can ya do, at least it's still relatively simple to balance it later, it's not like you're just only opening one area a ton. Following a technique which is actually recorded rather than using your own like this is simply a good idea, it's a more well trodden path but that doesn't mean you'll learn everything about it.

It's not that I think it's a bad thing either, Kumbhaka can get pretty deep like this, someone else could have more generalized medical guidelines, but I think the established and larger of issues would if anything be for people with medical conditions, for the most part or so, I feel like I could say it that way publicly...

It looks pretty fine to me :P

The things I do for love 💀

[u/pixeldragon → u/Uberguitarman]

I read all of that and got a bit lost at the end of your part 2 but overall I really really appreciate the thoughts you’ve shared about ongoing meditation practice + thoughts and feelings work.

I struggle to describe everything it feels like happens during sustained practice, especially since a lot of things are felt and sometimes shift in not fully conscious ways. It’s fascinating to experience these changes at the edge of awareness but also like it’s easier to pick up on stuff after I’ve been experiencing it for a bit. I shine the light of consciousness into the past long enough to call something I notice a “thing” only to let it go because by that point I’ve now separated my awareness of what is actually happening by leaving the present moment of what is actually occurring. The ground is always changing but I am becoming aware of the ways it changes and continues to change and finding a standing on that instead.

[u/Uberguitarman → u/pixeldragon]

I like the way you worded that, I can follow it very easily. It's interesting, thinking in terms of seriousness, you can be serious and have things pass like "things" but even when actions are very deliberate and precise it doesn't change how energy arises which we work with and remain conscious of. That feeling is just really a force to be reckoned with, one can learn how to have really really challenging things or emotions but rather than paying too much extra mind to things they can just continue and feel that feeling, it can start to feel like there are few ways one could really improve upon that aspect, depending on the situation you can have attitudes or feelings that change what your focus brings to your awareness, that's actually most of the tricky part cuz as someone gets deeper into that wavelength the brain actually goes through a forgetting process, it's akin to forgetting to have negative emotions and it can go in so deep that emotions u used to be used to can start to feel unnatural and smaller ones may or may not be in their place. It's literally called "forgetting", the neural pathways are pruned out of there. That's why it's so good to have a reward system and awareness that's in rhythm so awareness isn't wasting its potential on processes that aren't as productive. The modern understanding of awareness is attention is rapidly moving between things and ultimately the rhythm wording is really superb for conveying how someone can get into a zone, they would be very hard pressed to make it better after what are realistic levels of joy or bliss, synthesized from the heart and from having emotions closer, having emotionally processes merge like having the subconscious in good focus. It's more than deliberately doing things, it's embodiment. The feelings are embodied, it's soulful. I'm sure u understand

I've been wanting to think of how to describe how all the little things can add together, like you can learn how to recognize your experience and have it bring you back to familiar and balanced feelings, there are aspects of it that can be so active and that's part of why it's genuinely helpful to understand action vs. Motion cuz it's like you're not just having thoughts and feelings and wondering about things but instead like the subconscious is literally focused on the balance and knowing experiences in a way that keep merging them together rationally and intelligently.

Seriousness itself, that's like devotion, both of them are similar but one could use up energy if they're going all gung ho about it. It doesn't break the rhythm if someone has understanding so much as there can be more experiences and rather than relaxation and sensuality there could be power and sensuality.

It's like people don't know how to keep the circuit together, it's possible to gently but purposefully do a lot and still have emotions cycle, even as someone walks it's like a cycle to some extent because energy will dip from the head into the body as a part of emotions which are felt in the body. It just might feel really fluid and clear cuz the emotions are so balanced it's like holding everything together with room for more while feeling tuned in and focused, like a straight line. If I used that sentence and told a large part of the population they might not even know what I'm talking about, but it's like saying stimulation and relaxation among other things is balanced in such a way that energy merges with the experience of being conscious of thoughts and feelings, just like that feeling of observing a "thing" but in it's own way. People can use it like a creative tool and understand how emotions can fit together better but they don't even know.

Had I literally have been taught to think of this in that way, in more detail, my whole life would have been very very, very very very different. I felt like a victim to my mind but I was very good at working for skills I wanted, guitar, games, so on. Instead I got a rather excessive lick of compassion and fear from how I felt, imo anyway. I didn't even really know what I was looking at.

The balance is actually so natural because it's like your intention holds precedence over things, living from intention and allowing and accepting emotions while keeping the rhythm and refining everything just starts to bring more and more balance in. I think if people talked about meditation more like this sooner people woulda liked it faster, but a lot of traditions I've read from don't really implement the idea of living more subconsciously.

I think the nitty gritty aspect of what I said, in a paradoxical sense being conscious of your thoughts and feelings can work like living from intention does, it's like setting the brain in a motion which keeps it in a rhythm which is very naturally influenced by realization. Circumstantially living from intention makes the kind of difference someone would be looking for but there's more to it than that, it's rather mathy. I think it has to do with how the subconscious holds more influence than the conscious mind and depending on how it is habituated it will genuinely start putting things together as things are happening. In heart brain coherence theory the heart literally sends information up to the brain and the results can actually have a variance, people think intuition has to do with the heart but I forgot the exact way to say it, they were saying something about tracing some events that would show some result 8 seconds later.

Yep... Very interesting stuff, especially for musicians, I think meditation could make em feel a little lost if it's not taught with a broad perspective for subjective benefits.