Providing treatment to adolescents can be tricky. It’s hard for the teen, and it’s hard for the family that brought them there. To connect with and help a struggling teen, you have to be creative. One particularly bumpy day, I turned to the Nine Breaths of Purification. (See below for the origins of the Nine Breaths.)
The group sat in a circle, restless and skeptical. Within minutes, the room began to settle. Shoulders dropped. Faces softened. Breathing deepened. At the end, my eyes met one of the teens. He smiled slightly and I said, “It’s like emptying the trash in your mind; you gotta do it.”
These practices aren’t just for teens in treatment or yogis disappearing into caves. They’re for everyone. Every one of us needs to breathe and to understand that there are poisons keeping us from being present. According to the dharma, there are three main poisons: anger, attachment, and ignorance. Psychologists understand this. Teachers understand this. Anyone who has ever felt tension, confusion, or overwhelm understands this. These poisons plague our days.
In a world that never stops interrupting us, this ancient Tibetan practice offers a way to reset body, mind, and spirit, clearing these poisons in a few breaths. The Nine Breaths of Purification, a foundational practice from the Bön tradition, feels surprisingly modern in how it soothes overstimulated nervous systems and restores inner balance.
The Lineage and the Why
About a decade ago, while volunteering in a prison, I met a Tibetan monk during orientation. He turned to me and asked, “What is the most important job you have in this world?”
Trying to sound wise, I offered a few answers: being a parent, a therapist, a practitioner. He smiled and said gently, “Your most important job is to breathe.”
That moment has never left me.
The Nine Breaths of Purification (Tibetan: Lung Ro Gu Chu Dupa) comes from the Bön tradition of Tibet, the indigenous spiritual tradition that predates Buddhism and later co-evolved alongside it. It’s a foundational preliminary practice (ngöndro) in several Bön Dzogchen lineages, especially those transmitted through the A-Tri and Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyü (Oral Transmission of Zhang Zhung) cycles. According to Bön texts, these teachings descend from Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, the founder of Bön, said to have lived approximately 18,000 years ago.
The practice balances three subtle inner channels associated with anger, attachment, and ignorance. In modern language, it resets emotional clarity and recalibrates the nervous system: an antidote to the poisons of the mind, delivered in its most efficient form.
Bön teachings view the breath as a bridge between body and mind, awareness and release. This lineage is deeply somatic and reverent toward nature. Many of its practices anticipate what we now recognize as advanced ecopsychology and somatic work. As a clinician, I find Bön to be sophisticated and vibrant technology for Westerners seeking holistic well-being.
The Body as Ground
Traditionally, the practice begins with the “five-point posture”: sitting upright, spine straight but not rigid, shoulders relaxed, chin slightly tucked, and hands resting four finger-widths below the navel in the meditation mudra.
But don’t worry too much about sitting like a yogi. A chair will work. A couch is fine. What matters is that you build a relationship with this practice.
I often tell teens, “It’s your athletic stance for awareness.” Setting up the body helps the mind learn over time: We are about to practice. Let’s get ready. Consistency is our friend here. When the body feels grounded and open, the mind follows. This is the somatic foundation of practice; attunement through embodiment.
The Inner Map: The Three Channels
In Bön teachings, breath flows through three energetic pathways that mirror the structure of the nervous system:
- Left / Red Channel – skillful means and calm
- Right / White Channel – compassion and clarity
- Central / Blue Channel – wisdom and wholeness
These channels converge at a point four finger-widths below the navel, which is also the area Western medicine identifies as the center of the diaphragm and core stabilization.
Think of these channels as the charging cables of your emotional body. When they’re clear, energy and awareness flow easily. When blocked, we feel anxious, depleted, or unfocused. You don’t need to believe in energy to feel this shift. Simply imagine releasing what is stagnant with each exhale. The body will do the rest.
The Science of Breath
Modern neuroscience helps explain what yogis and shamans have known for centuries: diaphragmatic or belly breathing changes our experience of consciousness.
Deep breathing directly stimulates the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve that travels from the brainstem down through the heart, lungs, and stomach. It’s the main highway of the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” branch that counterbalances our stress response.
When we breathe slowly and deeply into the diaphragm, we activate this nerve, lowering heart rate, regulating blood pressure, and signaling safety to the brain. Just as muscles strengthen with repetition, the vagus nerve becomes more responsive with daily practice.
The Nine Breaths are not only ancient spiritual technology, they’re applied neuroregulation. The more we practice, the stronger our vagal tone becomes, and with it, our ability to return to a calm baseline.
The Practice: The Nine Breaths of Purification
This practice can take five minutes or unfold into a deeper meditation. Each set of three breaths purifies one channel and the emotional energy that clouds it. You can begin by gently noticing what emotions are most present.
Anger to Compassion (First Three Breaths)
To clear the left channel, raise your right hand and use your right ring finger to close the right nostril. Breathe in slowly through the left nostril. Then cross over, close the left nostril with your right ring finger, and exhale through the right.
● Visualize green light clearing the red channel on the left side.
● Feel the tension of anger dissolve and compassion begin to arise.
● Pause briefly and notice the space that follows.
Repeat three times.
Attachment to Skillful Means (Second Three Breaths)
Next, raise your left hand and close the left nostril with your left ring finger. Breathe in through the right nostril. Then cross over with your right hand, close the right nostril, and exhale through the left.
● Visualize white light clearing the right channel.
● Let go of grasping for control or approval and feel steadiness and trust return. ● Again, pause before the final sequence.
Repeat three times.
Ignorance to Wisdom (Final Three Breaths)
For the final cycle, keep both nostrils open. Inhale deeply through both nostrils and exhale through the crown of your head.
● Visualize blue light rising through the central channel.
● Release confusion and allow wisdom and clarity to return.
Repeat three times.
Each breath can be held at the navel for a few seconds, just long enough to feel the breath’s subtle pulse without strain.
After the ninth breath, rest. Let the body be still and the mind open, like the cloudless sky. Still, clear, vast.
The Reset Within
Once the channels are clear, simply stay in that openness. Allow yourself to become familiar with the feeling of clarity and spaciousness. Over time, this practice strengthens your capacity to sustain that awareness for longer periods. It becomes not just a temporary reprieve but a shift in how you experience life itself.
Many of the people I’ve worked with use this practice before group check-ins, family calls, or therapy sessions. It becomes a way of reconnecting to self without words, it’s direct and reliable. One mother once told me that after a fight in the car, her daughter said, “Pull over, Mom, we have to do the Nine Breaths.” That’s what this practice is for.
The Nine Breaths remind us that the breath is our first teacher. We don’t need to seek clarity outside ourselves. It already lives within the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling.
For teens and adults alike, this practice is a gentle revolution, a way to clear what weighs us down, to reconnect with the body, and to remember that every breath offers a chance to begin again. We can open the heart and the mind with each breath. What a gift.
