8. Breathing Techniques for Anxiety and Addiction

As you build your meditation practice, you’ll learn to develop breathing techniques to help combat the physical and mental ailments that disrupt your peace. Two of the most common mental health challenges my students face are anxiety and addiction. In this lesson, I’ll share two breathing techniques to help you regain control from these stressors, restoring clarity and conscious awareness.

Awareness to Break Anxiety and Addiction

Imagine you’re a parent watching your child walking toward a fire. Your immediate reaction would be to snatch them away from the danger, breaking their compulsion. In this analogy, you, as consciousness, are the parent, your body is the child, and the fire represents your anxiety or addiction. To “snatch” yourself away from these compulsions, this is where the role of breathing comes in.

Breathing Technique for Anxiety

Anxiety is a creation, an illusion that can compel and control you. Its power comes from the energy you feed it, life energy drawn from your breath—which is why breathing is one of the most powerful tools for combating anxiety. Remember, if you withdraw life from the creation, it ceases to exist; this is what we aim to achieve with anxiety.

However, when anxiety is allowed to grow, it builds rigid belief systems that hack into your mind, making you believe in the illusions it creates. It has the power to reshape your identity and divert you from your true path. To combat such a powerful illusion, you need equally powerful breathing.

Imagine your mind is made up of thousands of gears working together to keep you alive and aligned. When anxiety strikes, these gears are hijacked, spinning out of control. To counteract this, try a short, sharp, rapid inhale—matching the intensity of the anxiety—to reverse the gears and interrupt the anxiety’s force. If needed, hold your breath briefly to “pause” this mental machine. Then, exhale slowly to restore normal function, controlling the pace of the gears moving forward.

So, take a short, sharp inhale to counteract the anxiety, and follow it with a gentle, controlled exhale to reset and regain balance. Repeat as needed until you feel free from the compulsion, then return to a natural, conscious breathing rhythm.

Breathing Technique for Addiction

Managing addiction through breathwork is similar to the technique for anxiety, but it requires an additional focus on purity. The breathing technique for anxiety will help you draw back from addiction, but addiction requires you to purify your body and cleanse your cells. Keep a bottle of water nearby, so once you’ve regained control, you can take a sip or a gulp to help satisfy the craving and replace toxicity with purity. Frequent urination may follow, but this is simply part of the cleansing process.

Good luck, and happy meditating. Next week, I’ll be teaching you when, why, and how to hold your breath in meditation practice.

• Have questions? Drop them in the comments! Sign in and start the conversation. Your feedback and contributions to this community are greatly appreciated!

Can't wait for your next lesson? Get a head start with these meditation resources: Order Books | Free Online Courses | Guided Meditations | Insight Timer | TikTok | Instagram | X | Facebook | YouTube | talwinder@meditationbytalwinder.com

Please note: Esoteric concepts are not meant to be taken literally or as absolute truths. However, they can provide valuable perspectives and context, helping our limited human minds grasp complex ideas.