Guided Practice: Chakra Exploration & Circular Breath
Circular Breath
Curated Resources of Shambhavananda Lineage Teachings on the practice of circular breath, as well as learning to work with our ‘flow of energy’.
Guided Audio Practices
The guided practices provided here focus on several key elements to deepen your experience and understanding of the circular breath practice as taught in the Shambhavananda lineage.
First, these practices are designed to guide you through the circular breath technique, emphasizing its unique approach. This practice is not solely about the chakras themselves but about working with them in a specific sequence, with focused attention on the breath, which makes it truly effective.
Second, you’ll notice a preparatory phase in these practices that involves exploring the chakras individually. This serves as a warm-up, helping you center your attention on each chakra in preparation for the circular breath practice. Since the circular breath requires a high degree of focus—simultaneously moving attention down the front and up the back while maintaining awareness of the chakras—it’s essential to take this time to build your inner focus and sensitivity.
Third, the practices are offered in varying lengths to suit different needs. There are longer sessions, lasting 20–25 minutes, for deep dives into the practice, as well as shorter options of 5, 10, or 15 minutes. These shorter sessions demonstrate how the circular breath can still be effectively taught and practiced within a condensed timeframe. One practice even focuses solely on exploring the chakras in a brief five-minute session, showing the versatility of these techniques in different settings.
These options are intended to help you explore the circular breath practice in various ways, enhancing both your personal meditation and your ability to teach it effectively. Please take a moment to comment below: What aspects of these guided practices helped you find success? How do you plan to incorporate the chakras or the circular breath into your teaching?
Please Comment with a Reflection: What aspects of these guided practices really help you find success? How do you work with the chakras or circular breath in your seated practice?
You’ll notice in this 20 minute exploration that Abhaya talks about not needing to do the circular breath the entire time— this is an important detail for the applied practice of the circular breath. It can cause tension for most new students to try and do the whole circuit with every breath, instead we can focus on our heart chakra and use the circular breath as a ‘refresher’ to get our energy moving every few minutes during our practice.
The longer 20 minute guided practice focuses on getting in touch with each energy center before putting them all together in one circulation. For some of us, simply sitting down and circulating without a sense of willfulness is a real challenge, that’s where taking more time comes in handy.
The 15 minute practice takes us through the chakra exploration a little more succinctly so that we can spend time with the circular breath. We wanted to show you that this entire practice could be taught in 15 minutes if needed.
When teaching a practice like this in 5 minutes, you’ll want to either focus on chakra exploration or the circular breath itself. Here are two examples of that in 5 minutes.
Please Comment with a Reflection: What aspects of these guided practices really help you find success? How do you work with the chakras or circular breath in your seated practice?