You may be easily overwhelmed or stressed, which makes staying relaxed and connected to your heart a struggle. You may have heard about the benefits of regulating your own nervous system, not only for yourself, but for its capacity to create safety for those around you. However, you don’t know where to start.

In this practice, John will guide you to connect to your body's organic rhythm of breathing. This breath is not yogic or forced, like a pranayama, and it flows beyond any tension you might be feeling in your body. It's almost like breathing as if you are sleeping, but you are completely alert. This is how your body would breathe if it were just up to your nervous system and the capacity of your lungs.

What you'll be doing is aligning your breath to your parasympathetic nervous system - the nervous system that has its own intelligence - that beats your heart, allows you to breathe while you sleep, runs your hormones, and processes your food, without you having to tell your body to do anything. From this place, you will activate your heart without losing any of the deep relaxation you've established.

If you want to feel the absolute joy, peace, nourishment and ease of being in complete integrity with your nervous system while feeling alive in your heart, try this 13-minute practice.

To begin, find a way of sitting that feels both alert and completely relaxed. Direct and root your heart and sacrum toward the earth, and plant your feet as if you could feel the magnetism of the earth through the soles of your feet. Inhale through your nose when your body wants an inhale, hold the breath at the top of the inhale however long your body wants to hold the inhale, and then exhale through the nose when your body is ready to release the breath. At the bottom of the exhale, wait until your body wants another breath, and then take it in smoothly and fully, with no strain.

Allow each breath to be full, yet relaxed. At the top of the inhale, hold it just as long as your body wants to hold it, and then release it in the exact way that your body wants to release it. Continue that cycle for a few minutes. If thoughts come through, let them pass like clouds and come back to deeply listening to the wisdom of your body - when your body needs a breath, how long your body wants to hold a breath, and how smoothly your body wants to release a breath.

As you continue to breathe in this way, feel how your breath can more fully align with your parasympathetic nervous system, and with the organic truth of your body. It should feel deeply relaxing once you drop in and connect with that true breath; the breath that needs nothing. Feel the absolute joy, peace, nourishment and ease of being in complete integrity with your nervous system.

For the last minute of this part of the practice, on the exhales, allow all of the muscles in your body to soften and become heavy. Starting with the crown of your head, and down into the muscles around your eyes, jaw, throat, heart, shoulders, abdomen, groin, legs, and soles of your feet. Allow everything except for your spine and root to become completely limp, while your breath still remains deeply connected to the truth of your nervous system; the truth of your body. You might even feel that you're not doing the breathing anymore, as if the universe is breathing you.

From this place, go deep into the musculature of the heart, and using this connection to the cosmos that you can now feel through your breath and body, activate your heart a little bit more, without losing any of the deep relaxation or the rhythm of breathing that you've established. Imagine your heart is on an internal dial that you can control while staying fully relaxed. With each turn of the dial, pulse electricity from your heart throughout your body. Find that edge in which your heart is strong, activated and alive, but your body is still relaxed and connected to that beautiful, organic universal breath of your parasympathetic nervous system.

Taking 3 more breaths from this place of activated, relaxed truth, notice what impulse for the day, for your life, or for the moment wants to come through you now. Find some way to honor that today as a deep bow to the universal impulse.

Then slowly open your eyes.

Disclaimer: Although anyone may find this practice to be useful, it is made available with the understanding that we are not engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this practice intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual or spiritual problem. Each individual has unique needs and this practice cannot take these individual differences into account. Each person should engage in a program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist or other competent professional. Any person suffering from a sexually transmitted disease or any local illness of his or her sexual organs should consult a medical doctor and a qualified instructor of sexual yoga before practicing the sexual methods described in this practice.