and a longtime meditator.

I've been to Tibet to learn meditation

with the masters, done ayahuasca in Peru

with shamans, and spent 20 years regularly

studying meditation with neurofeedback

on my head, even started a neuroscience

company focused on that.

And one of the most powerful things

you could do to accelerate your meditation

isn't glue electricity things to your head.

It's to learn how to breathe effectively.

And there's one breath that stands out

more than any other for going to sleep

and for deep relaxation quickly.

You can stack this kind of breathing

with other techniques I've trained, like box breathing.

This technique is called Ujjayi breathing.

What it is is something that's almost a snore but not quite.

What you do is you close your mouth

and you breathe in through your nose.

When you breathe in through your nose

it normally just sounds like air

but you wanna almost get to the point

where you're snoring, but not quite.

And it should sound like it does when you put

a sea shell up to your ear.

So what you do is you can close your eyes

or keep them open, but it works better

with your eyes closed.

Close your mouth and then breathe in.

And you're constricting your throat slightly

so that you have that deep sound.

A meditation teacher or yoga instructor

can tell you exactly whether you're doing

it right based on the sound but you can learn this at home.

You know you've gone too far if it sounds

like this (snoring) because you're basically snoring.

You wanna be right on the edge of that

but not quite there, so (inhaling).

And when you do this right, you'll find

that your abdomen moves forward.

So you can actually feel your hand move

if it's on your abdomen.

If instead you do it like this (inhaling)

and it's only in the top of your lungs

it doesn't work as well.

So when you lay down at night, if you're having

a hard time going to bed, there's thoughts

racing through your mind, you just do this breath.

Breathe in for five seconds.

(inhaling)

And you can breathe out normally (exhaling)

or you can breathe out with an Ujjayi breath as well.

(inhaling and exhaling)

Either one works.

Slow, deep in-breath with a slightly

constricted throat completely changes how your body reacts.

If you're measuring your heart rate variability

you can see changes in it, but more importantly,

(fingers snapping) you fall asleep.

So there you have it.

The Ujjayi breath.

You can use it for stress reduction

before a meeting and you can use it

to go to bed at night.

It's way more effective than a normal breath

and it's more effective because when you

constrict your throat like that, it puts

your body in a relax mode faster.