Breath & Energy · “Breath Is the Bridge”
Conscious (Impregnated) Breathing
To ‘impregnate’ the inhaled air with a single vividly imagined wish or quality (health, peace, success) felt as already real, so that calm, intentional breathing becomes a vehicle for installing one chosen state.
Bardon’s conscious breathing: Sit relaxed, breathe slowly through the nose. Pick ONE wish (health, peace, tranquillity, success) and, on each inhale, feel it pour into your body with the air — so vividly it’s already real, with zero doubt. Don’t over-fill the lungs; keep it calm. Start at 7 breaths morning and night, add one at a time, cap around 10 minutes. Stay with the one wish until it’s realised before choosing another — and keep the same wish in your eating.
What it is
This is the breathing practice of Step I of Franz Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics. Unlike pranayama systems built on volume and retention, Bardon’s method is explicitly about quality, not quantity: you breathe slowly and calmly while “impregnating” the inhaled air with one vividly imagined wish or quality — health, tranquillity, peace, success — felt so intensely that it is experienced as already accomplished.
The breath is treated as a carrier: with each calm inhalation the chosen state is imagined passing through the lungs and blood into the whole body. Crucially, you work one wish at a time, staying with it until it is realised before moving to another.
As a standalone practice it is a clean fusion of relaxed breath regulation and single-pointed, present-tense intention.
The Method
Bardon’s instructions (Step I, “The Mystery of Breathing”):
- Sit comfortably and relax the whole body. No special posture is demanded beyond ease and an unstrained, upright comfort. Breathe in through the nose.
- Choose ONE wish or quality — and keep it general and unselfish at first. Bardon advises beginners not to start with egotistic desires but to confine themselves to health, tranquillity, peace, or success.
- Impregnate the inhaled air with the wish, felt as already real. As you breathe in, imagine that with the air, your chosen quality “will pass into your body through the lungs and the blood.” Bardon’s key standard: “The eidetic image of your idea must be so intense that the air you are inspiring is so strongly impregnated with your desire that it has already become reality.” Allow not the slightest doubt.
- Breathe slowly, calmly, and never over-inflate. Bardon is explicit that it is not the quantity of air that matters but the quality of the idea impregnating it — so do not pump the lungs full or strain them. “Do your breathing exercises slowly and calmly, without any haste.”
- Start with seven breaths, twice a day. Begin with 7 inhalations in the morning and 7 at night. Increase only gradually — by one more breath per session, morning and night. Do not hurry or exaggerate.
- Stay with the one wish until it is accomplished. Do not switch to a different desire before the first chosen one “has been completely accomplished.” Bardon notes results may appear in as little as seven days for the highly apt, or take weeks or months depending on the wish and the strength of one’s imagination.
- Keep it short. Never extend the exercise beyond about half an hour; in time a standard ten minutes suffices. Coherence rule (links to his eating practice): if you are breathing for health, do not concentrate on success while eating — keep the same single desire across breath and food to avoid “opposite vibrations.” (“He who chases two hares will never catch one.”) (Sourcing note: the 7-breaths-twice-daily count, the gradual one-breath increase, the “already become reality” standard, the warning against over-inflation, and the one-wish-at-a-time rule are all Bardon’s, faithfully paraphrased with short quoted phrases from Step I of IIH.)
Source & Lineage
The exercise is the Magic Physical Training of Step I in Bardon’s Initiation into Hermetics (Der Weg zum wahren Adepten, 1956). Bardon held that air — like food — is “tetrapolar” (carrying the four elements plus the akasha/etheric principle), and that conscious breathing lets the akasha of the air carry an imagined idea via the “electric and magnetic fluids” into the body and, beyond it, the soul and spirit.
He pointedly distinguishes his method from hatha-yoga pranayama, criticising extreme retention practices done without a teacher as having damaged people’s health, and claiming his “universal” approach reaches the goal more safely.
The deeper lineage joins breath-as-vehicle traditions (pranayama, the prana/*qi/pneuma* family) with New-Thought-style present-tense affirmative wishing. → (Franz Bardon node).
The Traditions' versions
Pranayama (yoga) — conscious breath as the vehicle of prana; Bardon adapts the principle while rejecting forced retention.
- Coherent / slow nasal breathing — modern evidence-based calm-breathing; matches Bardon’s “slow, calm, don’t over-inflate.”
- SATS / affirmation in a relaxed state (Neville, Coué) — impressing a single present-tense wish “as already real” in a calmed body.,
- Qi/prana visualisation breathing — drawing imagined vital energy through the body on the inhale.
- Box / diaphragmatic breathing — the autonomic-calming substrate Bardon’s quality-focus rides on.
Common refinements
Over-breathing. The single most important refinement: Bardon says don’t fill the lungs or force it. Big, fast breaths risk hyperventilation and miss the point — quality over quantity.
- Future-tense wishing. “I will be healthy” keeps the wish at a distance. Bardon’s standard is to feel it already real on the inhale.
- Switching wishes too soon. Stay with one until it’s accomplished; rotating desires dilutes everything.
- Mixed signals across the day. Keep the same single desire in breathing and eating; don’t breathe for peace and then strain for success at lunch.
- Impatience. Results may take weeks or months; the slow, daily build is the method.
- Treating it as a panacea. It is a focusing/calming practice, not a cure for organic disease.