There is scientific evidence that breathing affects the mind. Regular smooth breathing prevents stress. Breathing for your health and well-being requires you to breathe diapharamatically. This type of breathing is also called Belly Breathing. It is quite different from chest breathing. In the Yoga tradition, a variety of breathing techniques refered to as Pranayama are practiced or after the yoga asanas. Qi Gong in the Chinese traidtion has a variety of moving breath exercises.

I recently discovered several good tools that I run on my laptop and wanted to share those. These tools help me practice conscious breathing..

1. Mindfulness Bell. The first of these tools is a Mindfullness Bell. It is a free software that I downloaded off the Washington DC Mindfulness Community. This is like a buddist meditation bell and has options to ring on an hourly basis or very 15 minutes. There are wav files you can download  to get bigger sounding bells. When the bell rings I try to close my eyes and focus on the sound of the bell until I can hear it no more. I was recently working from home and we had someone help us with some jobs at home. He was fascinated by it and kept refereing to how authentic the bell sounded. Check it out
2. Smooth Breath. This is a deep breathing assistant that installs on the computer. I downloaded it from CNET.com and they have verified that it is spyware free. It displays a soft slow moving animation at the bottom of the screen. I had to tweak the settings to get it moving at a pace that worked for me. It had plenty of shapes to choose from. Go ahead and try it. This software I was surprised to find was from a Portland Company called Coherence Resources Inc.

I am looking into a couple of more devices. One of them is called Resperate. It is a simple device that has 3 components, a breath sensor, a headphone, and an analyzer. It is basically teaching how to do deep breathing and getting the breath to under 10 breaths a minute. The other device that I am thinking about for my yoga class and also for sleeping at night. My daughter who is 8 years old often has trouble falling asleep. I have tried to teach her belly breathing and that sometimes helps. But this device seems to have the right technique. It is called Nightwave and it projects a soft blue light on the cieling of the darkened bedroom. The