How to be Rid of Ear Pain While Flying!!!

I have always had this problem, whenever I travelled in a flight. By the time I landed, I used to experience excruciating pain in the ears which would be severely blocked as well, I could not hear properly and used to take at least a day before I was rid of the pain. I tried a few remedies like using a mint or trying to sip water in small quantities during descent. Nothing seemed to have worked in finding a lasting solution to this nagging problem. Then I found a product called "earplanes" which I tried. This took care of my problem most of the times. I always carried it on my trips to India.  But I was never completely cured of this problem. Just before this post, I wanted to see if there were any solutions to this. There were a few sites like metafilter and Yahoo answers with no real solutions other than the psuedoephedrine, which also seems to be an expensive drug. There was also a mention of "earplanes".

A couple of weeks back we were going to Orange county for our Son's college orientation and I forgot to take the "earplanes" with me. I was dreading the pain that was in store for me. Half an hour before the plane was to make a landing, on a whim, I wanted to try deep breathing exercise to see if it calms down my worries. I started doing this deep, deliberate and slow breathing, which I learnt while doing Yoga. Miraculously, I experienced no pain at all. My ears weren't blocked and I stepped out of the plane as if I hadn't even been airborne. Since then, every time I fly (which I have been doing more frequently now-a-days), I have been doing this deep breathing half an hour before landing, when the Pilot announces that the Plane is on descent. I have not experienced the ear pain again so far. I wanted to share this information so that it will help others, in finding a cure to their problem. As they say the world's most precious things are always free and we do not have to pay anything. I believe it will work for others too!