This is a wonderful introduction to bilateral stimulation, meditative breathwork and energy work. In this video I have simplified it to be solely breathing, though the original Nadi Shodhana combines certain yogic postures as well - that may show up in another video.

This technique is pulled from the ancient Indian yogic breathing technique Nadi Shodhana. Documented as far back as the 15th century, this is clearly a tried-and-true technique. It combines the power of your natural breath, which stimulates your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, as well as stimulates each side of your brain to keep your neural pathways on their toes. All of this helps you to get a handle on anxiety right in the moment, it can help calm racing thoughts and refocus your mind to handle whatever task you are up against.

Bilateral stimulation simplified: By using an array of techniques that stimulate both hemispheres of the brain, you are opening up and clearing the way for further communication between the two sides. Your brain handles so many different tasks without you even being aware (walking, breathing, muscle management, processing memories and new information input…) it is truly overwhelming. This is why your brain likes patterns and predictability. If it senses a pattern forming, it will likely latch on to it so that it can place that part on ‘auto pilot’ and allow itself to manage other tasks. Even if that pattern is a loop of anxious thoughts. If you can open the lines of communication between both sides of your brain, it is as if it opens space in your mind to process things that have been put in these holding patterns, which in turn frees up more space as it processes out.

Taping into this power that your brain naturally has is going to help you regulate emotions, process trauma and increase your ability to handle and process anxiety and stress.