Somewhere between the inhale and the exhale there is a moment when nothing is moving. Most people never notice it. In a two-and-a-half-minute video posted to YouTube in June 2013, the teacher Don Reed Simmons asks viewers to pay attention to exactly that pause, and to treat each phase of a single breath as a stage in a small, repeatable practice: renewal on the way in, reaffirmation at the top, release on the way out, and review at the bottom before the next breath begins. The framework is openly devotional. Simmons asks you to imagine that God is the air itself, so that every inhale is a breath of God's love and light. But the structure beneath the imagery is simple and portable, and it holds up whether or not you share the frame. This article walks through each stage, explains why the pauses matter, and suggests how to turn a short talk into a daily habit.
Simmons begins by setting the frame before he names any stages. "Wherever you are, God is right," he says, and then makes the central move: "God is the very air that we breathe" (0:15). The breath stops being a background process and becomes a point of contact. You are not trying to get air; you are receiving something that is already everywhere.
This is an old kind of contemplative move. Many devotional traditions use the breath as a bridge between attention and something larger than the self, and the instruction here is correspondingly gentle. Simmons does not ask you to feel anything in particular. He asks you to imagine. The imagining is the practice, and it gives the rest of the cycle a direction.
The first stage belongs to the inhale. "As we breathe in, think of you and just imagine that you are renewing yourself in God's light, in God's love, in God's compassion" (0:22). Renewal here is not a dramatic event. It is a slow filling, a restoring of your sense of who you are before the day has had a chance to wear it down.
What makes this stage useful is its specificity. Simmons names three qualities to bring into the breath: light, love, and compassion. You can keep the theology and still use the list as a set of attributes to hold while you inhale. A reader who finds the word "God" difficult can substitute a word of their own choosing, though the video itself does not suggest this. What matters is that the in-breath has a quality and a content, rather than simply being the mechanical start of a cycle.
The second stage is the one most people will recognize without being told, because it happens at the peak of the breath, when the lungs are full and the body pauses before letting go. Simmons calls this "that very apex moment" and says it is "the point in time when we are reaffirming ourself" (0:40). The sequence is deliberate: you have received the renewal, and now you stand in it.
Later in the video he returns to this stage and describes it as "that sense of conviction" (1:35). That word is worth lingering on. Conviction is not the same as certainty or excitement. It is a settled sense of what you are doing and why. At the top of the breath, the question Simmons wants you to hold is whether the renewal you just took in is something you can stand on. Reaffirmation is the moment you decide what your life is for, at least for the length of one exhale.
Musicians will recognize the logic. A phrase in a song needs its peak, the note where the line arrives before it resolves. The top of the breath works the same way. Without that held point, the release that follows has no shape.
The third stage belongs to the exhale, and Simmons is direct about its purpose. "As you breathe out you're moving into the stage of releasing," he says. "I'm jumping into the world. I'm jumping into my renewal space" (0:53). The image is one of motion outward. The renewal and reaffirmation are the preparation; release is the doing.
Simmons then connects this to the way you move through a real day. He describes releasing yourself "out into the breathing out of the doing of it" (1:43). This is where intention meets action. You have renewed yourself, you have affirmed what you are doing, and now you go and do it, without holding back the thing you just decided on at the top of the breath. The release is a commitment to act from what you have already taken in.
The fourth stage is the one most people skip, and it is where the video becomes most unusual. At the bottom of the out-breath, after the air has left and before the next one arrives, Simmons asks you to review. "How did I do? What am I doing?" he asks (1:10). Then he adds the condition that gives the whole cycle its character: "Without judging yourself. Remember, meditation is observation without judgment" (1:14).
That sentence is the hinge of the talk. Most people approach self-reflection as a verdict, a quick trial in which the day is found wanting. Simmons asks for something closer to a field note. Did the release match what you thought it would be? If not, how do you do something different next time? He frames this as a question of change rather than fault. The review is a moment to see clearly, and then to return to the next renewal with that knowledge in hand.
The bottom of the breath is a good place for this because it is the quietest point in the cycle. The body has finished one movement and has not yet begun the next. Simmons's instruction is to use that gap for honest observation, not for self-criticism. Done well, the review becomes the thing that keeps the cycle from hardening into routine.
Simmons ends the talk by moving the practice off the cushion and into ordinary life. He asks the viewer to "think of something that's going on within your life," or something you have wanted to do and have not done, or have not done lately (1:58). Then he gives the sequence as a set of questions to carry through a single breath cycle: How do I renew myself with God? How do I reaffirm what I'm doing? How do I release myself into it? And after I've done it, is it what I thought it would be, and what do I need to change?
This is the most practical part of the video, and it works well as a template. Choose one concrete concern: a difficult conversation, a project you keep postponing, a habit you want to change. Take the four questions in order, one per phase of breath. You do not need to solve the problem in a single cycle. You are only using the breath to slow down the decision-making process and to put a space of observation between the impulse and the action.
The video gives no set duration, so the following is one way to start, drawn directly from Simmons's sequence rather than from any additional instruction of his. Sit comfortably for five minutes. Let the breath move without forcing it. On the inhale, bring to mind the qualities he names, light, love, and compassion, and let the breath carry them in. At the top of the breath, pause and ask whether you stand in the renewal you just received. On the exhale, let yourself move outward toward the thing you intend to do. At the bottom, pause and review, without grading yourself. Notice what you observed, and what you might do differently in the next cycle.
After a few days, the cycle may begin to feel less like an exercise and more like a rhythm, the same way a groove settles under a band once everyone stops counting. That is roughly what Simmons seems to be pointing toward: a way of living in which each breath is a small, complete unit of renewal, action, and honest self-attention.
Simmons's video is short enough to watch several times, and it rewards repetition. Watch it once for the framework, and again for the specific phrases: "renewing yourself," "that sense of conviction," "without judging yourself." Then try the practice for a week, using one real question from your life each time. Keep a few notes at the bottom of the breath, the way Simmons suggests, and read them back at the end of the week. You will find that the review stage has as much to teach as the others. For a teacher who speaks in a few gentle lines, that may be the point: the breath already holds the whole practice, and it is available whenever you stop to notice it.
