We Must Remember to BREATHE!
With all the stressors and tensions around us, we all seem to be forgetting to BREATHE!
Now, I know there’re some of you who’re going to say “but breathing is autonomic, we just DO it!” But, breathing is more than just allowing breath to enter and exit our body. The way we breathe activates our brain, our mind, and our body. It will affect our mood, our health, our blood pressure, our tension, and our inflammation.
Our current situation: pandemic fear, social distancing, isolation, sadness, today’s 9/11 memories, worry, politics, climate change, fires, smoke, weather patterns, along with what we all deal with normally, has cause us to tense up. When our bodies are tense, we don’t expand our diaphragm, don’t expand our lungs, our chests or our backs enough to get a good, emotionally and physically cleansing breath in.
We may not notice it all the time… but we should make efforts to attend to our breathing!
Let’s Try It
If you doubt you’re breathing fully, let’s do a test.
Focus on your breathing… yes, stop attending to other things for the moment, and notice your breath.
Now, in a normal and natural manner, exhale – COMPLETELY and fully. And, hold it for a slow count of three.
And now, breathe in naturally, and notice where the air goes.
Do you feel it? Did you notice the first part of your torso to expand? When we do this exercise, our breath will tend to naturally fill from the bottom. The diaphragm will move further into our abdominal area, our lower rib cage will expand first, and the breath will go far deeper, filling up from the bottom!
Try it again. Feel where the breath goes, and continue to consciously make that continue. Once you’ve practiced this a few times, your natural breath will deepen. Allow the natural breathing to occur. If you feel you need to take a deep breath – DO IT! If you feel you need to yawn – YAY! DO THAT FULLY!!!
Imagine that the air moving into your body is cleansing you, and drawing in energy, as deep as the air is going. When exhaling, imagine that you’re pushing toxins, tensions and stresses out of your body.
Do this a few times a day. Do it when you feel tense. You should notice a difference in how you feel.
You may even notice you speak differently, using a more natural, relaxed resonator (this is a great actor’s exercise! Actors may want to check out this book.)
Give it a try – you may find you want to bring this further, with meditations and hypnosis. If you’d like to learn more about what can be treated with hypnotherapy, check out this page!
In most of my hypnotherapy sessions, this is how we begin to enter hypnosis. A deep, calm, relaxing state of intense focus and open mindedness.
For more information, you may be interested in this article.
0 Comments