Meditating with allergies

I have allergies and i find it is very difficult to meditate with them, i take medicin but it still dosnt help. I find it hard to count or follow my breath because my nose is pluged. What do yoiu suggest i try? Should i stick it out and breathe from my mouth? Any tips would be great!
Thanks alot

I too have problems breathing freely while meditating (or any other time really), due to chronically swollen turbinates (not allergy related though). I had laser reduction done and it helped a bit, but is still a problem. I do find that the process of meditation tends to improve my ability to breath after 15-20 minutes. My qigong master advises to just breath through the mouth if one has to. It's better to continue practice in a modified way that to quit, unless you just feel like quitting anyway. Good luck.

I feel ya man, I had allergies real bad in my home town my whole life...until I moved away. THough I'm sure you've tried several medication types, I've found nosesprays to be very effective. Also, maybe experiment with some biofeedback techniques as part of your meditation regiment. Try focusing only on your troubled breathing. I've heard of some monks stopping their digestive tracts for hours....maybe with a little practice you can convince yourself that you can breathe easily after all;-).

Best of luck.

Clayton

Andrew Hyslop (A.w.H) wrote: Should i stick it out and breathe from my mouth?

Yes.

Mel Barker

you bet

Allergies, sinus, and broken noses certainly don't help the nasal breathing part. Yep, like the rest, I tend to be a mouth breather even while I meditate.

Question, do you eat dairy? I used to have a lot of problems with asthma and allergies until I gave up dairy. There is a tremendous improvement in my ability to breathe through my nose, and I rarely suffer from allergies or asthma anymore.

I also gave up meat which also helped.

On a less life altering not you could use breathing-strips.

I agree, eating dairy and meat (particularly pork) makes me feel stuffy and asthmatic too. Pork aggravates all my allergic symtoms and makes my eyes itch like crazy, but if I avoid it then my symptoms are tolerable. A chiropractor did a kinesiology test on me and told me I have a sensitivity to certain foods, which he said are more likely to created toxins in my system so if I cut them out of my diet I'd feel better and it would help the asthma. Maybe you can check around and see if you have food sensitivities also. But the advice we get regarding meditation is not to let runny noses and pains etc. bother us, just be aware of it and focus on the breathing. As an aside, nothing will make me focus on breathing like not being able to breathe.

Linda Morimoto (kung fu hamster) wrote: As an aside, nothing will make me focus on breathing like not being able to breathe.

Couldn't agree with you more. That's actually how I got started in all this meditation/martial arts jazz, as a way to regulate my breathing and control my asthma.

Breathe easy

It is possible to breathe through your nose while your nose is stuffed, due to allergies or whatever it may be. It took me awhile to figure out, but it is possible. I have fairly bad seasonal allergies and cat allergies, so this happens to me every year.

I think it will be even harder for me to explain than to learn how to do, but for me it worked to imagine that I was to breathe from the back of my nasal passages, and concentrate on using my diaphragm and back muscles, rather than how I would normally breathe, which feels like I'm using the front of my nose.

If that made any kind of sense at all to anybody....

=wl