Retrain your body to breathe

Everyone breathes but as it is, very few people breathe fully or make connections betweeen how they breathe and their day-to-day behaviours, addictions or other issues. No wonder retraining the body to breathe is gaining momentum and growing more popular than basic yoga or meditation. When ready, a range of breathwork practices enter your scope.

Why take steps to decode our breath? It reveals much about the state of our bio-psycho-social health and empowers us to take responsibility for our lives on a whole new level. Breathing training boosts lung volume and prevents the loss of respiratory capacity. It helps us connect emotions with breathing rhythm and heart rate. What if we could strengthen our posture, heart and spinal health? Breathwork makes us more flexible and resilient and it facilitates the body’s natural self-healing powers. Ready to dive right in?

What if I highlight that breathwork helps us to heal tension, manage chronic pain, fear, depression and anxiety disorders when drugs and other traditional methods are ineffective? It improves our moods, emotions, and sleep states. In addition, breathwork helps us to expand awareness, confidence, intuition, self-esteem, self-appreciation, and self-love and acceptance.

Further, gaining insight into the breath supports heart health and boosts mental health. It allows us to hack into our immune system, our nervous system and our brain, to reclaim or regain control over issues such as high blood pressure, inflammation, asthma, chronic stress, chronic fatigue, and a variety of addictions.

Conscious Breathing techniques trigger the release of opioids (natural pain killers and anti-depressants), as well as dopamine and serotonin (“happy and calming” hormones—neurotransmitters of pleasure, motivation and memory). And they also reduce cortisol levels (the stress hormone) the repeated release of which can itself become addictive.

And what about eating disorders? breathing training helps improve digestion and it supports weight loss. Ever wonder where our weight goes as we lose it? Studies show that most of that weight is eliminated through the breath!

So how do we discover the nature of our habits? Poor breathing habits, especially in children, are known to cause unhealthy development and disturbing changes in facial muscles, joints, bones, and teeth alignment. Our ancestors had naturally healthy breathing habits, and they all had straight teeth! So, even the state of our teach is a clue to our breathing habits and deeper issues that may be unconscious!

Many people also ask whether breathwork can assist with healing emotional issues. Breathwork training clears stale stagnant energy from our system. It helps us to access, manage and release suppressed emotions, to control our nervous system and alter our brainwaves. We can recall how this feels and tune into the natural rhythm by retraining the body to breathe. Breathing properly allows us to relax and energize ourselves on demand. What if engaging in breathwork could change our vibration, outlook and attitude? Even a spark of curiosity arising prompts one to explore this more. Get ready to uncover the unexpected, experience life more fully and breath in ways that enable feeling more alive.

Get More out of Life

To get more out of life, its useful to get in touch with our thoughts, emotions and feelings and also be aware of what is happening in the body.

By practising breathwork, we may grow acutely aware of grief, fears, loss, anger, physical pain, emotional pain and energetic imbalances. Many people have heard of the unconscious mind but you may not be aware of the difference between conscious and unconscious breathing and how unconscious breathing plays out in your body.  What if growing aware can improve your health and be a turning point for positive change?

There are periods or situations in our lives when we feel unsafe or unloved. We may hold onto emotional pain for many years, if not lifetimes, until we are ready to address those feelings.  By growing aware of the emotional body and allowing it space to communicate, we gain insight into ourselves and opportunity to heal past or ongoing wounding.  Being present to painful or uncomfortable emotions does not mean acting them out in harmful ways.  Rather, breathwork and related meditation practices allow us to be present with and feel these emotions. To get the most out of life, we are invited to love, accept and integrate all of ourselves. 

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Breathing exercise

Take a few moments to relax and focus on your breathing. Tune into the path of the breath (does it reach the lower, middle or upper chest or diaphragm-tummy area before the exhale?)

If possible sit crossed-legged on the floor.  If this is difficult, then imagine you are sitting cross-legged on the floor. Imagine energy flowing through the top of your head, down through the  limbs and torso of the body into the floor and back up and out your head.  Imagine the energy simultaneously flowing up from the floor through to the top of your head and back down. These are two simulataneous pathways of energy flow.

Imagine you are gently sitting cross-legged then floating up and up into the air until you are looking down on yourself and all that is happening around you.  It is an exercise in levitation that enables stepping back from what is happening inyoru life and the world around you. breath deeply into this refreshing new perspective.

Take a moment to focus on what is happening within.   Look down on your body and feel at peace as you float in the air.  This is more than a simple breathign exercise. It is a remidner you are not the body, not the mind, not the emotions, but far more. 

Now lift your right hand up in front of you and imagine you pause all the activity below. In that stillness, allow your mind to clear. Watch the energy flow out in front and beyond you. Feel it flow out of you in all directions.

Simply allow your mind to flow and tell you exactly what you need to know right now.

When ready,float back down. Be aware of the new perspective you gain.

7 Steps to more Conscious Living

To get into the vibration and consciously create a new normal, its helpful to ground ourselves and be more aware of where we stand. Living more cosnciously is a choice for each of us. The question is, where are we, how do we view ourselves and the world, and where do we go from here? Consider 7 Steps to shift into more conscious living:

1. Create a Conscious Living Journal

 

This ia a place where you write, sketch, create collages or whatever orients your journey forward. Its not a place to rant or complain. Its important to get clear on how you view yourself and a sense of what matters to you. Adding daily entries enables you to see shifts in perspectives, priorities and the blossoming for yourself.

2.  Devote time to doing what you love

 

At this stage, the focus may still be unclear. To help the process, respond to these questions in your journal:

a. What would I do right now if I knew I would die tomorrow ?

b. What kind of legacy do I wish to leave?  

b. What evokes heartwarming feelings and excitement to motivate me?

c. How can I love myself and the world more?

d. Which action will I take right now to share more of who I am?

3. List you fears

 

Fear is linked to unconscious living. It is linked to heart-brain IN-coherence.  Coscious living is linked to heart-brain COHERENCE. What If I told you that if you change your thoughts and feelings, you have power to change your brain chemistry, shift from default settings to live more consciously?  Conditioned thoughts and behaviours that evoke fear are felt in resistance, withdrawl and doubting who you are. Its helpful to take a close look at ourselves.  You are invited to explore fears, write the opposite to get comfortable with new possibilities. Imagine how it feels to face and conquer fears. What is life feeling like in the present moment? Do what you fear and feel yourself reclaiming power you unconsciously gave away. Only as we make the unconscious conscious do we empower ourselves to live a more naturally loving, enriching kind of existence.

4. List 5 blessings in your life

 

Being aware of what we appreciate gets us in touch with uplifting feelings of balance and wholeness. We benefit from growing more conscious of joy, pleasure, bliss. The more we focus on balanced energy, the more we invite creating more experiences that evoke similar feelings.

5.  Learn about sacred geometry

 

Geometric shapes are the building blocks of nature.  Everything is formed by vibration and geometry.  Geometry is the way in which universal energy manifests on the physical plane.  It communicates to and through every living thing on earth.  this, in turn, is how we communicate back, consciously and/or unconsciously.  Conscious living is about growing more aware of the power of our thoughts and feelings

6. Set an intention

 

The power of intention is often underestimated. Reflect on yoru sense of direction and motivation right now.  This is an evolving process. We can have personal, family, community, planetary, universal or even galactic-related intentions. As our perspectives shift and change, our sense of intention changes as well.

7. Engage in breathwork

 

Breathwork is one of the most effective actions you can take to make the unconscious conscious, live more in integrity, enrich the overall life balance and align with well-being. A range of breathing techniques are available to help you learn to decode and read your own breathing rhythm, as well as techniques that facilitate deeper emotional trauma release. Follow your intuition. Everything is synchronicity.

Know you are worth it

Form the moment we fuel our dreams with a mystical force, we are living as if we are worth realizing our visions and dreams. This takes shape as heartfelt trust.  It is imperative to live as if we deserve and embody what the mind tells us we are working toward. We must be the change we wish to see and feel. Unconscious conditioning might be temporarily holding us back.

We are either driven by a mental focus on perfectionism, logic and a dualistic connection or, by a focus on soul love and self- appreciation.  When we forget to love ourselves, moment-to-moment, we manage this though self-sabotage, denial, co-dependence and other unconscious addictions. Notice whether we are critical and shaming about ourselves or whether we are willing to snap out of it, love ourselves fully in this moment and live more consciously, the best we can.

Even now, it is possible to be fully present with our true selves.  What does this mean for you? The soul is our ever-present support system we can live by to rise above illusions and to help us see through the mind games we play.   Growing aware of who we are and what is possible requires self-acceptance. How is this arise? Well, its about diving deep, being with all the emotions rising within ourselves the best we can, knowing we are enough. How do we get here?  Affirmations are helpful. We benefit from reminding ourselves we are amazing, exquisite, talented, beautiful, gifted and perfect as is. Are you ready to receive compliments?

Turns out, positive affirmations are not the ultimate way to find yourself and feel better right where you are. Breathwork is a useful tool on the journey to deeper self awareness and self-love.   It is one avenue to get in touch with fragemented parts of your soul or shadow self, so these may enter your conscious awareness for healing and integration.  Every process is unique and divinely timed. Know you are worth it.