Abdominal Breathing ignites the fire of our vitality and the flame of our spirit.
We all breathe, and some of us know that if we breathe deliberately, attentively, and/or in alternative ways, it greatly benefits our mental and physical health. You could call breathing a form of meditation.
Besides calming our brain waves and activating our parasympathetic nervous system so that our bodies and brains go into rest and digest mode, breathing meditation improves our energy circulation. It enables Water Up, Fire Down energy circulation to take place.
In that physical, mental, emotional, and energetic state, we are primed for spiritual awakening. You could say that our consciousness becomes brighter—more positive, empowered, and creative. Our intuition becomes stronger, and we can more easily go into a zero point state of consciousness.
There are many breathing methods out there. In this post, I’d like to remind you of one that’s quite simple and natural: Abdominal Breathing. This is also known as Dahnjon Breathing, since it stimulates and builds up energy in the energy center in our lower abdomen. In Korean, the main energy centers of the body are called dahnjons.
The Ins and Outs of Dahnjon Breathing
There are three basic points to Dahnjon Breathing:
- Straighten your spine, especially your lower back, without crossing your legs. Do it comfortably without forcing it. Only then will your brain not be under pressure. Your brain should be in its most comfortable state. Breath will enter your body comfortably only when you’re well centered.
- Breathe very simply rather than unnaturally or painfully. Don’t force yourself to take long breaths or to hold your breath.
- Put a comfortable smile on your face.
Heat Up the Body’s Furnace
Focus your mind solely on your lower dahnjon in your lower abdomen as you breathe continuously. By doing this, you’re fanning the flames in your dahnjon, calming your mind. The lower dahnjon is like a furnace, and when you continue to fan its flames, you make it red hot. When your furnace grows hot, your water naturally boils. This “water” is the water type of energy found in your kidneys.
Once it gets hot enough, you start to vibrate. You’ll find your body shaking. It might move vigorously, or the vibrations may be subtle. Vibration is the physical manifestation of strong energy moving through energy blockages in the body.
If you continue to fan your fire with your breathing, the vibration will eventually stop, and your dahnjon will keep getting hotter. The hot furnace of your dahnjon, as it promotes Water Up, Fire Down circulation, will help clear your head. You can go into a state without any desire, fear, loneliness, or boredom.
Once that fire has been cultivated, the energy point at the top of your head, at your seventh chakra, will open. This point is a gate for divine or spiritual energy to come into the body.
This will happen naturally; our bodies are designed this way. That’s why knowledge and thought are not enough for this gate to open. It’s like the laws of physics and chemistry, like how water boils only when it reaches 100 degrees Celsius. Believing it won’t make it happen, and neither will lobbying for it. It’s very honest and fair.
Keep Your Mind on Your Body
Breathing stops if it’s held too long or it’s hurried, and it doesn’t work well if it’s too relaxed. You’ll get drowsy if you breathe too slowly. You keep going so that the process of the breath coming in and going out does not stop. If your breathing momentarily stops, it means that distracting thoughts have entered your head. You’ll be able to concentrate only if you think precisely of breathing in.
Feel the flow of your breath as you breathe, as well as all the phenomena that’s happening in your body; always be conscious of your internal landscape. At the same time, don’t concern yourself with what you see in your mind’s eye—with auras or with darkness or brightness—or the phenomena that you feel in your body. Those are little experiences that happen before you encounter divine energy. Simply watch and focus solely on your dahnjon. And discard thoughts that would rush you. Don’t carry any expectation of what will happen during this experience.
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Breathing Is for Encountering Divinity
Then, like a dragon appearing out of deep waters, the true nature that is the master of life, divinity, will appear. When you have encountered it, the ecstasy is indescribable. That is the mystery of the human body. Once you know that, you won’t be so caught up in or led about by worldly things.
Your breath is respiration for encountering divinity. It is the truth by which you can approach the divine. Breathing is true. Breathing is life, and divine energy exists in all life, beyond the understanding of language and thought. That’s why you cannot encounter divinity through thought.
The light of divinity will undoubtedly appear when you’re ready. Your task is to continue devotedly fanning the flames in your dahnjon. “Devotion” is only breathing without distracting thoughts. It’s continually breathing regularly and smoothly to your own natural rhythm.
Dahnjon Breathing for Changing Our Lives and Creating a New Spiritual Civilization
What would happen if you did this kind of breathing meditation daily for 21 days? You would keep kindling the fire in your dahnjon, circulating your energy, and bringing in divine energy. We need these three conditions to use our brains to their full potential and to be positive, productive, and peaceful.
Therefore, we have to breathe. Breathing, meditation, and compassionate action—being Hongik—that is a spiritual life. These three things must move as one.
A spiritual civilization is needed right now, and the society of a spiritual civilization is a society that breathes. Breathing is something everyone can do. To make a spiritual civilization, we can go from a world that breathes without interest in it to a world that knows the meaning and value of breathing.
So I hope you are able to live your life within breathing and meditation. When everything is that way, you’ll see things anew. Rocks will seem new, trees will seem new, and even the stars in the heavens will seem new. Then you will feel the cells in your body awakening, and you will feel your consciousness awakening.
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