Making Happy Hormones
The following breathing method is a way to produce happy hormones within your body and can be done anytime, anywhere:
10 Adopt the 7-Point Body Posture.
2) Practice Belly Breathing for a few moments.
3) Bring your Body, Speech, and Mind to Rest.
4) With your imagination and sensation follow a path starting at the crown of your head and going straight down through your body to a point located four finger-widths beneath the navel. This is called the “core channel.”
5) Next, with your imagination and sensation follow a path, starting at each nostril, going upwards behind the eyes into the brain, then curving down and following on either side of the core channel, and connecting into the bottom of the core channel four finger-widths beneath the navel. These pathways are called the “side channels.”
6) Inhale long, slow, and deep through your nose. With your imagination and sensation feel the energy of the breath travel through the pathways of the side channels down to where they connect to the core channel.
7) Pause and feel the energy permeate your entire body. Smile into that energy.
8) Take a “sip” of air in and exhale, feeling the energy move up the side channels and out through your nostrils.
9) Repeat a few more times, relaxing deeper and deeper into your body.
10) At the end, simply rest and feel a gentle mist descending down from your brain through your body all the way to your fingers and toes. Feel the happy hormones permeate every atom of your body and simply welcome them with gratitude and a smile!
This exercise utilizes “diaphragmatic,” or “abdominal,” breathing (aka “belly breathing”), in which you breath slowly and gently deep down into your lower abdomen. Galen (129 CE - 216 CE), the famous Greek physician, recommended abdominal breathing as a means to bring the body back into balance after strenuous physical exercise. See Book III, Chapter 2 of Robert Green’s A Translation of Galen’s Hygiene (1951, Charles C. Thomas).
A similar exercise is used in modern Tibetan Medicine (Sowa Rigpa) to balance the energies in one’s body. See Dr. Nida Chenagtsang’s “Mindful Breathing Practice” on page 51 in his The Tibetan Book of Health (2018, Sky Press) and “Partial Vase Breathing” on page 105 in his Nejang: Tibetan Self-Healing Yoga (2018, Sky Press).
Regular practice of Making Happy Hormones may enhance the effects of Apollo’s Lyre Lion’s Mane Extract (and vice versa).