Experiment Part One Suggestions: Set up your phone to “twinkle” every hour.

Do two rounds of Left Right Breath. Begin with an exhale on the left side. Split your internal awareness. Focus on the sensations on the left side of the body when inhaling through the left sinus. This is much easier than your mind probably thinks.

Bring the depth of your morning Left Right Breath Meditation into your day, every hour. You will be surprised and exponentially rewarded.

Experiment Part Two Suggestions: Every hour include a beneficial thought on your phone. Have your mind keep repeating wholesome beneficial contemplative thoughts, such as gratitude, loving kindness, the ethical precepts of yoga and ideas like that, throughout your day.

After one day, nothing happens. After 2 days, nothing much happens. The mind is like a tape recorder and keeps repeating the thoughts you think. After a month, … the beginning of huge life transforming shifts start to happen. When we mindfully inhale through one sinus, with elevated mind states such as loving kindness or gratitude, it becomes especially charged with potency.

What if you did this every hour for a month, 2 months…? Good to make a commitment to try it for a month and then make a decision.

You are in the process of reprogramming the thoughts that go through your mind all day long and you get to do your own reprogramming. You mentally become a different person according to the thoughts you think.

Experiment Part Three: Instead of Doing a round of Left Right Breath every hour, take a “Mindfulness Moment,” a la Thich Nhat Hanh, where you stop all doing and just BE for a minute. Doing versus Being. Compare a day of “Mindfulness Moments” versus a day of “Split Breath” at the top of every hour. What do you expect will be the result, before the experiment? After the experiment, what do you discover? Are you surprised?

Results so far: Every Hour Breath is an experiment since Dec 1, 2024. The first 3 months, I worked with the Yamas and Niyamas. It was amazing to contemplate the ethical precepts throughout the day, every day, every hour. My mind got tired after 3 months of contemplating Non-violence, Truth et al, and I found the hourly reminders were losing impact. Therefore: Switch it up.

I switched the “programming” away from contemplative ideas. The focus now is on action, “A bias towards action.”

Five times a day, I focus on one person at a time, at the same time everyday … and after a breathing awhile, send them love. Whoa!

“Send love to _______” is the highest practice a human can willfully initiate. And the more you do it, the stronger it gets. And with each passing hour, everyday, every week, every month… “what I practice gets stronger.” This is going in a good direction.

We live in a house of thoughts.

What thoughts do you want to dominate your mind?

Yogic thoughts to put on your phone

Experiment #1: Dec 1, 2024 - Feb 28, 2025

Experiment #2: March 1, 2025 - the present

 

“Your electronic Cuckoo clock is driving me crazy.” ~Ellen

Its a practice. It is an experiment.

The Every Hour Practice of Split Breath Mindfulness is just that. I don’t know where it leads, but the direction is very promising, rewarding and fruitful. Ellen began the practice with me and still joins me most of the time, but it is imposing on her world. She did not make the choice to do this experiment and is going along to humor me. I tried putting the alarm on vibrate and very low, which did not work well. She is putting up with me.

Other inspiring phrases you might use

What you practice gets stronger

What you focus on gets bigger

What I keep doing, is who I become

The whole world is One Family

True Friends are the greatest wealth

Have fun and play

Dance

This too shall pass

Do your best, Let it go

Plant good seeds in the unconscious mind

Dig the well, before the house is on fire

Be still and know thyself

Your purpose is loving service

What is inside, leaks outside

You are always on a trajectory with your habits

What you do today does matter

You are always in the process of habit formation

My only job is to be curious about the present moment

The Slight Edge is always at work.

I am always strengthening habits, whether they are good or bad.

Presence! Positivity!

Linger after the inhale

Linger after the exhale

Become the Witness

“Showing up is essential.

Showing up consistently is powerful.

Showing up consistently with a positive outlook is even more powerful”

“Try not to become a man of success, but become a man of value.”

What I think repeatedly, becomes who I am.

Continuous breath awareness

Always connected to the breath

If we keep going in the direction we are going, we are going to wind up where we are headed.

Looks hard, but this is the easiest thing in the world with a huge impact on your life.