Breath & Energy · “Breath Is the Bridge”
Breathing Into the Heart to Connect With the Higher Self
Take slow deep breaths while resting attention in the heart centre, sensing an upward connection to one’s Higher Self, in order to drop out of head-reactivity into a calm, heart-centred state before invoking, meditating, or simply through the day.
Heart-breath attunement: Pause, take a slow deep breath, and bring your attention down into your heart. Breathe slowly as if through the heart for several breaths, sensing a gentle upward connection to your Higher Self. Rest until you feel calmer and more present — then either invoke the violet flame, begin a temple journey, or carry the heart-state into your day.
What it is
This is the breath-and-heart attunement that opens nearly all of Aurelia Louise Jones’s flame practices — and that she taught as worthwhile on its own.
The instruction is simple and recurring in her violet-flame and temple-journey material: “take a deep breath and connect with your heart and Higher Self.” You breathe slowly, rest attention in the heart centre, and sense an upward link to your own Higher Self, dropping out of head-level reactivity into a calm, heart-led state.
It is the doorway she places before invoking the violet flame or journeying to Telos — but it stands alone as a quick centring practice for any moment of the day. It belongs in breathwork energy because the active mechanics are the breath plus a heart/energy focus.
The Method
Faithfully described from Jones’s flame and meditation material (short attributed phrases only):
- Pause and take a deep breath. Stop whatever you are doing and draw a slow, full breath, letting the body soften on the exhale. Jones’s repeated opening is exactly this: a deliberate deep breath.
- Bring attention to the heart. Move awareness from the head down into the heart centre — the seat of all her practice, in keeping with her wish that we “live from the heart at all times.”
- Breathe slowly, as if through the heart. Continue several slow, even breaths, imagining the breath flowing in and out through the heart area. Let the rhythm lengthen and settle.
- Sense the connection to the Higher Self. With each breath, feel an upward, gentle connection from the heart to your own Higher Self — a sense of being held, supported, attuned. Hold this as a felt orientation, not a force.
- Rest in the heart-state for a few breaths. Stay until you notice the shift: calmer, softer, more present. This felt settling is the operative result (The Inner Creates the Outer).
- Continue or carry it. From here, either move into invoking the violet flame / a temple journey, or simply carry the heart-connected state back into your day. (Sourcing note: “take a deep breath and connect with your heart and Higher Self” and “live from the heart” are attributed phrases from Jones’s violet-flame and Telos material; the numbered breathing sequence is reconstructed from her consistent opening instruction. Short fair-use phrases only.)
Source & Lineage
Aurelia Louise Jones (c.1940–2009) used this heart-breath opening throughout The Seven Sacred Flames and her Telos violet-flame invocations and temple-journey meditations, channelled in the voice of Adama of Telos.
Lineage: the practice draws on the long esoteric emphasis on the heart as the spiritual centre (Theosophy, Agni Yoga) and on breath as the link between body and higher consciousness, set within Jones’s Telos / ascension framing.
Distinct from its neighbours: this is the preparatory breath-and-heart attunement, not a continuous lifelong discipline. It differs from Roerich’s (an all-day heart/psychic-energy discipline) and overlaps in mechanism with — but is framed differently from — (a measured, instrument-guided protocol).
The Traditions' versions
The move — slow the breath, centre in the heart, attune upward — is near-universal: - Heart coherence (HeartMath) — slow breathing paced to the heart, with a positive feeling, to raise HRV.
- Agni Yoga heart-attentiveness — holding attention in the heart as a continuous discipline.
- Hesychast / prayer-of-the-heart breathing — coordinating breath with attention lowered into the heart.
- Slow-paced / coherent breathing (clinical) — ~5–6 breaths per minute to down-regulate the nervous system.
- Centring breath before any practice — the universal “settle first” step before meditation, prayer, or invocation.
Common refinements
Forcing or over-breathing. Deep does not mean big or fast. Keep it gentle and slightly slow; forcing causes light-headedness.
- Staying in the head. If you’re narrating to yourself, gently return attention to the physical heart area and the breath sensation.
- Treating “Higher Self” as something to strain toward. Hold it as a soft sense of support, not a target to grab. The settling does the work.
- Skipping it before bigger practices. This is the step that makes the violet-flame clearing and the temple journey land; don’t rush past it.
- Expecting fireworks. The marker of success is quiet: a little calmer, a little softer, more present.