International yoga and health lecturer

Breath of the Hero

From The Dance Between Joy & Pain by Rita Goswami and Mansukh Patel

Guilt is a very complicated and common emotional state. Often people will report feeling confused and stuck when they are feeling guilty, and do what they feel they ought to do. Not necessarily what they want to do. Guilt creates a major roadblock to living an authentic life and is a marriage of two emotions, regret and resentment. This is why it can be so difficult for most people to process.

In their book ‘The Dance Between Joy & Pain,’ Mansukh Patel & Rita Goswami recommend the Breath of the Hero to help alleviate and transform guilt to freedom. They describe this particular bending forward technique as starting from a sitting posture, with hands together and arms outstretched, and then moving into a gradual forward bend from the hips.

Mansukh and Rita describe the sequence:
As you bend forward you exhale almost completely from the lungs and therefore remove all stale air in this position. The body is folded and the spine rests with a natural curve. It is exposed to the heavens above and helps ease the mind as you simply breathe, creating space in between each vertebra.

Mansukh adds that, although breathing with this movement is included, for those with a heart condition its best to not hold the breath.

The effect of this posture? It will leave you feeling satisfied and fulfilled with an authentic sense of who you are.

You can find out more about the Breath of the Hero sequence in The Dance Between Joy & Pain by Rita Goswami and Mansukh Patel.

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In their book The Dance Between Joy & Pain, Rita Goswami and Mansukh Patel recommend the Breath of the Hero to help alleviate and transform guilt to freedom. Guilt creates a major roadblock to living an authentic life and is a marriage of two emotions, regret and resentment. This is why it can be so difficult for most people to process. Mansukh Patel and Rita Goswami describe the sequence on page 119:

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