Episode 4

Spirituality 101 - Meditation Breathing

In this fourth episode of the Deeper Dive podcast series 'Spirituality 101,' Dr. Robert Carrillo delves into the practice and significance of breathing meditations. Emphasizing the spiritual, theological, and practical aspects of breath, he explores how breathing plays a vital role in connecting us with God's creation and sustaining our spiritual journey. Dr. Carrillo also discusses different breathing techniques, resources for learning, and the transformative benefits of breathing meditation in managing stress, anxiety, and enhancing spiritual consciousness.

00:00 Introduction to the Deeper Dive Podcast

00:41 The Importance of Breathing in Meditation

02:01 The Theology Behind Breathing

05:09 Contrasting Rowing and Sailing in Spirituality

08:34 Practical Uses and Benefits of Meditation

09:51 Guided Breathing Meditation Techniques

13:09 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes

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Transcript
Speaker:

Okay,

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welcome to the deeper dive podcast brought

to you by the OSI church of Christ.

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The deeper dive podcast is about going

deeper into God's word, learning new

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insights and taking a fresh look at

the verses that impact our daily lives.

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Today's episode is part two of

meditation from our spirituality

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1 0 1 series by Robert.

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Koreo get your scuba gear and

let's dive deep into God's word.

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Here's Dr.

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Robert Kareo.

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Robert: Okay, Robert Carrillo here again,

and welcome back to Spirituality 101.

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It's great to have you with us.

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And this class is meditation,

breathing meditations.

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And we're going to focus on our

breathing on this one, uh, uh,

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which is an important topic.

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You know, I'm normally, you know,

one of those things that you

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normally just don't think about much.

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But, um, those of you who have

meditation experience, you know,

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how important breathing is.

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And, and many of you who come from

the medical background know how

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important breathing is and, and what

a significant part of life this is.

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Our focus for this short video

will be Breathing or this short

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podcast and the importance of it.

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And you know, I got to say right,

right, right from the start,

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life begins with a breath, right?

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You know, that first, I watched three

of my kids being born, all of them.

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I saw, I got to see them take that first

breath of life and then scream, right?

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And, and, and that's how it all begins.

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And life ends with a.

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an exhale, a breath out.

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It begins with a breath in

and ends with a breath out.

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And, um, everything in between is

this spiritual journey that we are on

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and breathing is a significant part.

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I want to give a little bit

of the theology behind this

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because there is a theology.

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You know, it sounds kind of strange

that theology behind breathing.

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Yeah, they're there.

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They're actually it's it's deeply rooted

in the scripture and You know, we most

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of us know the word Yahweh, you know,

which there's this is the word most likely

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to to the pronunciation of God's name

We don't know exactly why well because

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nobody would say the word So we have

no recording of the word, and, and the

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language, you know, as many of you might

know, was discontinued for many, many

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centuries, and, and has only been recently

revived, but even among those that kept

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it with the reading of the Torah, um, they

would never use the, they would never say

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the name of God, Yahweh, you know, and

that's, that's the Orthodox Jewish view

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of things, and even when they write it,

they'll write G slash D, and that's not

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even his name, that's just the word God.

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But it's that sacred, it's that holy,

but some scholars would argue that

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Yahweh is actually the sound of breath.

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It's breathing, Yahweh, you

know, it's how we breathe.

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It is the breath of life, and that is God.

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God is the breath of life, and there,

and we know from scripture that

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that's how he created man, right?

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He breathed into a pile of dirt.

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And that became Adam,

that became us, right?

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In the Greek, uh, this word is very

important, Nelma, it means wind, it means

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breath, it means spirit, it means life.

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The breath of God that gives

life and empowers all creation.

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Everything he gave life for.

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He gave breath too, right?

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Genesis 1.

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And to all the beasts of the earth, and

all the birds in the sky, and all the

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creatures that move along the ground,

everything that has the breath of life

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in it, I give every green plant for food.

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And it was so.

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This is all part of creation.

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God, Giving us the breath of life

and so breath is a sacred thing.

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It's a sacred thing and later on we

read Then the Lord God formed a man

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from the dust of the ground and breathed

into his nostrils the breath of life

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And the man became a living being You

know, we came from the breath of God.

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How important is that?

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How cool is that that our life comes

from the very breath of God Job wrote?

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But it is the spirit In a person,

the breath of the almighty that

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gives them understanding, you know,

his very breath is what opens our

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minds and helps us to understand.

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And, uh, this is incredibly significant.

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And more so when we're in tune with.

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Uh, where things are at spiritually,

when we're in tune with the spiritual

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world, when we're in tune with our

soul, we understand the importance

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of this and these kind of things.

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Uh, I love a quote, this is a quote

from David Tackle and he's the

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author of Forming a Work of Grace.

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I've referred to him in other videos.

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For many Christians, the spiritual, the

spiritual life is like rowing a boat.

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Although it may become wearisome at times,

they do their best to remain and persist

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as consistent as possible, often in the

face of considerable difficulty, not that

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they try to do this all on their own.

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Having attended many seminars, workshops

and conferences on the value of rowing

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and the dangers of slacking off, they

keep up their energy by attending weekly

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meetings and praying for the Holy Spirit

to give them the strength and endurance.

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to row well.

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And you know, this speaks to the

fact that, that many of us in

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our Christian life, we're just,

we're, we're work hard for God.

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We want to be our best for God.

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So we go to conferences, we learn

things, we read books, we, we, we're

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pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves.

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But unfortunately we're, we approach

our Christianity kind of like somebody

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rowing a boat, you know, we're

just working hard, working hard.

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And David tackle contrasts this,

To a sail ship, you know, a ship of

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sails where, where, you know, where

it's the wind that blows it, not

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the backs of people working so hard.

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Um, we keep rowing because

we have good hearts.

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Because we want to do what's right.

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Because we want to love our enemies.

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We want to serve each other.

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We want to help the poor.

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We want to be pure and holy.

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So we work at it, and work at it.

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And as one person said, we

white knuckle our Christianity.

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Like, I'm going to stay pure.

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I'm going to stay strong.

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I'm going to keep reading my Bible.

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And even the very act of prayer

and reading our Bible can

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become an act of discipline.

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An act of, of self denial, which

is not what it was supposed to be.

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It should be an act of love.

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It should come from a heart

that is filled with God's love.

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And the point of all this that David

Tackle presents is sales, not oars.

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Being moved by the wind of God,

by the, by the, by the breath of

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God blowing us, our sails forward

versus rowing and rowing and rowing.

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You know, rowing is, is working hard.

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It's about diligence.

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It's about duty.

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But when you contrast that, To a ship

with sails and you see and not that

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that means there's no work to be done

There's still there's sailors They

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still got to put up masses and swab the

decks and all that stuff that sailors do

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batten the hatches and all that kind of

stuff But it's not Rowing, it's not the

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same Rowing wipes you out and that the

whole point of of Tackles work is it's

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Christianity should be sails not oars.

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And if you pictured your

Christianity, what does it look like?

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Here's what I'd like my

Christianity to look like.

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It just cranking going through, uh,

being blown by the wind of God and

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writing that writing the waves of God.

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That's what it's supposed to not again,

not that it's easy and trouble free, but

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it should be powered by God and not by us.

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And that's why breathing.

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Breath is so important.

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Breath is the bridge which connects

life to consciousness, which

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unites your body to your thoughts.

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This is Thich Nhat Hanh.

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I don't know if I'm saying his

name right, but he's a monk

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who has a lot of experience.

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With meditation, um, meditation

is got many, many practical uses.

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It's used for treating soldiers

with PTSD or anybody with PTSD.

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Um, it literally can.

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Manage somebody's high blood

pressure on a personal level.

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I had a period of time,

very high blood pressure.

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I was able to lower it and get

it under control with meditation.

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Not, not that I didn't need medication,

not that I didn't need to take care of

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myself, but it was a tool that helped me.

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Um, certainly helps with dealing with

stress and anxiety and can literally, you

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know, bring you breathing meditations can.

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Turn off the fight or flight mechanism

and put you back into rest mode.

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It certainly helps with depression.

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It certainly helps with fear and anxiety.

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It, it, it, it, it gets us to a

place where we can manage the many

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things that life is throwing at us

and the challenges we are facing.

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There's a lot of good material out there.

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on breathing.

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There's great books and I'm going

to be recommending books really more

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about meditation, but go into more

detail about breathing and, and there's

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some fantastic videos out there.

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Um, I started out with, um, if you'll

see on the screen there, the guided

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box breathing, where I just did that.

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I started out doing that was those are the

first ones in the box breathing exercise.

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It's called the Navy seal method.

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It's just, it's four by four or five

by five where you breathe in for five

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seconds, you hold it five seconds,

you breathe out five seconds, you

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hold it for five seconds and repeat.

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Um, fantastic video is Max

Strom's work on a breath breathe

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to heal and he's written things.

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He's made other videos,

fantastic resource.

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And then there's different kinds of four,

seven, eight, calm breathing exercise.

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And I put underneath each of those

where you find them, um, what channels

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feeling healing, take a deep breath.

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Ted talks, hands on meditation.

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These are all great resources

for just learning about it.

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And, and you know, the, the,

the, the simple basics are you

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position yourself in a good place.

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Um, you, uh, you can lay down,

but there's a good possibility

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you're going to fall asleep.

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If you lay down, uh, you close

your eyes, you breathe in deep and

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slow through your nose, in through

your nose, out through your mouth.

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You focus at least at the

beginning on your breath.

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There's many different kinds of,

of, uh, breathing meditations.

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And sometimes, but, but this,

because we're only talking about

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breathing meditation right now,

where you will focus on your breath.

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And it's, I would say it's the most

basic meditation, breathing meditation.

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You focus on your breath.

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You catch you, you pay attention to

the air coming in the air exhaling.

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And it's a great way to

just train your mind.

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Not to be bouncing around, not to be

monkey mind, not to be jumping up and

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down and going all over the place.

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Um, I'm going to be doing

some different meditations.

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That you can listen to guide you along

and do what's called guided meditations

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where I'm walking you through it But as

you get better and better at meditations,

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you'll be doing a lot of them on your

own with nobody else You know involved

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and that's fine and that's good and

that's a logical natural step ahead

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But the guided meditations help too

and and I love Uh, guided meditations

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as well, uh, where somebody will

guide you through thoughts and even

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through Lectio Divina and affirmations

and things like that, uh, will do.

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But this is one tool to help us get

closer to God, to help us understand

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scripture better, to calm us and, and

help us to learn to pay attention,

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to be mindful in what we do.

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to be mindful of our surroundings and

uh, it, it, it deeply, deeply changes

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how we walk through life, how we walk

in this spiritual journey that we

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are all on from womb to tomb, right?

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And how we handle the things that

come our way, how we handle the

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challenges, how we handle the victories,

how we relate to those around us.

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And our ability to be free and to be

at peace, even in the midst of storms,

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even in the midst of problems and

challenges, or to get back to that,

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you know, when we've been thrown off,

when we've been knocked down, such a

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difference, such a huge difference.

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It's part of the spiritual journey

coming soon under the broom tree

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where I'm going to be listing

resources and events that come out.

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Um, To stay in touch, please

subscribe at thewayofthepilgrim.

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com.

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Uh, we'll be, I'll be doing

book reviews and all kinds of

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great things just to help us.

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The goal of this is to help

us all be closer to God.

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This was a short video, a short

podcast on breathing meditation.

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God bless you and buen camino.

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Marcel: Thank you Roberts.

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Again, this episode is part

four of a five part series.

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Our last episode will

be about lemon tation.

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Thanks for listening to deeper

dive by the OSI church of Christ.

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If you want to get connected to us or

want to donate to the program, go to

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our website O C church of christ.com or

through social media at the O C church.

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Join us next time for

part five of spirituality.

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One-on-one.

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