What Does "Hold the Air" Mean in Meditation and Breathwork?

The Meaning Behind "Hold the Air"

The phrase "hold the air" is an instruction used in breathwork and meditation practices. It refers to holding or retaining the breath for a certain period of time before exhaling. This technique has several intentions and meanings behind it.

Creating Space

Holding the air is meant to create a bit of spaciousness within the practice. Rather than constantly breathing in and out, holding introduces a pause. This pause allows you to be simply present with the breath and creates an inner quiet where you can check in with your body and mind.

By holding the air, you're allowing yourself a moment to be still. This stillness can help calm the mind, relax the body, and bring an inner sense of peace or tranquility.

Working with Discomfort

Often when we hold our breath, some discomfort arises. You may feel an urge to gasp for air or even a slight tightness in the chest. This is perfectly normal.

Another intention with holding the breath is to build your ability to be with discomfort. Rather than reacting automatically, you practice observing sensations, allowing them space, and breathing through challenges.

This helps build equanimity, patience, and self-awareness. It allows you to see that even uncomfortable sensations tend to shift and pass if you give them room.

Regulating the Nervous System

Holding the breath in key points during meditation or breathwork regulates the autonomic nervous system. This includes functions like heart rate, breathing rate, and arousal states.

Holding can stimulate a relaxation response, lowering stress hormones like cortisol. But taken too far, holding can also trigger feelings of panic or anxiety.

Finding the right balance and dosage allows you to tap into the nervous system regulation possible with well-timed held breaths. This has a balancing and restorative effect.

Directing Energy Flow

In subtle energy practices like qigong, yoga, tantra, or tai chi, holding air also works with energy flow in the body. It's believed it can redirect the movement of prana, chi, or shakti.

By holding the breath at key points, practitioners consciously control this inner energy system, rather than letting it run on autopilot. The places you hold become junction points to accumulate, mix, separate or condense subtle energies.

This energy work can enhance vitality, body awareness, and even bring spiritual breakthroughs.

The Logistics of Holding the Breath

When you're new to meditation or breathwork, start by holding the breath in brief bursts. Even 5-10 seconds of held air allows you to tune into the physical and energetic effects.

Following the Exhale

A common place to hold the breath is after an exhale. Once you've fully breathed out, seal the lips and pause before your next inhale. Track sensations during this gap before gasping for the next breath.

This teaches you to find moments of rest and reflection between cycles of activity. It mirrors how you might pause before speaking or entering a new room.

Resting on the Inhale

You can also hold after taking a full, conscious inhale. Fill up with air, then suspend the breath rather than quickly exhaling. Feel how holding expanded lungs shifts your physiology and energy.

Since inhales activate the sympathetic nervous system, retaining the breath here helps teach activation and stimulation control. It allows you to get comfortable with "charged" states.

Between Inhale and Exhale

Finally, you can hold a breath between the inhale and exhale. Breathe fully in, hold the air, then complete the cycle by breathing out.

This middle retention requires balance and centeredness. It mirrors how in life, integration and composure emerge from balancing different states - activity and rest, tension and ease.

Building Up Slowly

As your comfort level grows, gradually extend your held breaths. But avoid strain. Pushing too aggressively can trigger dizziness or anxiety from excessive carbon dioxide or oxygen fluctuation.

Stay centered in the breath, expansion in the lungs or gripping in the throat. Keep connecting to sensations arising during held points. Let periods of retention open intuitive spaces.

With practice, breath holds become gateways to awakened presence.

Holding Air Supports Meditation

Many forms of meditation involve working with the breath. Since the breath mirrors states of body and mind, it becomes a portal for sinking into deep stillness.

In techniques like Zen meditation, Vipassana, or Tibetan Buddhism, holding air allows you to penetrate subtle layers during still moments between breaths. It takes practice, but these held transits lead to unity consciousness.

Watching the Mind

Holding air also amplifies awareness of mental states. Physical sensations become strong platforms for watching the monkey mind jump.

As you build ability to be with held breath and any discomfort that brings, you build mental muscle as well. You can watch thoughts from an observer space, seeing their ephemeral nature.

This develops concentration and equanimity - pivotal for insightful meditation.

Preparing for Long Sits

For those training for long silent sits, held breaths are useful capacities. If withdrawing to remote caves or forests for solo intensive retreats, these skills allow you to go deeper.

Tapping accumulated lung strength lets you modulate energy, direct attention precisely and penetrate subtle spaces undistracted during long sessions.

So consummate meditators often perfect breath holds as part of their overall practice.

Modifying Breathwork with Holds

In the growing fields of breathwork, energy healing or transformational coaching, teachers often integrate held breaths to amplify effects.

Some use these periods of retention to create heat and flush out emotional blockages or pain pockets. Others apply them to shift brain waves for altered states. There are many options.

Holotropic Breathwork

In holotropic breathwork, led by advanced facilitators, participants use accelerated, held breaths to enter non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Music, evocative imagery and emotional catharsis typically unfold. Retaining the inhale helps spark transportive breakthrough experiences during sessions.

Breath of Fire

Kundalini Yoga uses dynamic breathing exercises to direct subtle energies. One is breath of fire - forceful inhales and exhales through the nose with the throat constricted.

After a sequence of breath of fire, yoga students hold the breath out to allow energy circuits to consolidate. Then they inhale and repeat cycles to purify and unleash the body's power.

Strategically held exhales let vitality pool and uplift consciousness through intensive breath drives.

In essence, selective breath retention opens up possibilities across nearly all breathing-related practices.

Discovering Your Own Relationship

There is no single right way for working with held breaths. Different lengths, points of retention and sequences suit each individual.

Explore a variety of holds across the arc of breathing. Mindfully observe what each distinct interruption creates for your body and awareness.

Then organically discover what combinations have the most opening or integrative effects for your goals. Let direct experience shape your own breathwork rhythm.

Staying Safe

Remember to ease into extended held breaths, especially if you have health conditions affected by oxygen changes.

Retain only at comfortable lengths, release strain and avoid any struggle. Discomfort may arise but should pass once you complete the exhale and resume natural breathing.

With patience and care, breath holding unlocks capacities for inner stillness, awakened energy and present moment clarity. Let this phrase guide your journey inward.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new treatment regimen.