“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
You’re reading this. You are reading this. Now I have your attention.
Take a second and let everythinggg slowwww downnnnn. Let everything unwind, release, and wash away.
Notice how fast you’ve been moving through this day.
Take a quick breath in through the belly, and very quickly let it out through your mouth. Now take a deeper, longer beath through your belly, and very slowly let it out through your nose. On your next deep and long breath, imagine the world slowing down around you, as if you turned the knob to slow motion.
Aha. Your breath is your metronome. It is your pace setter. Short, shallow, impatient breaths… and you’ll find yourself out of alignment, both internally and externally. Look at what results from a short, shallow, and underperforming breathing system:
Lower oxygen levels in the blood and lower co2 levels
Decreased energy production (that’s all you really need to know)
Poor concentration and memory lapses
Increased cardiac workload, which strains the heart
Metabolic stress and dysfunction
Decreased organ function
Weakened immune function
Poor quality of sleep and sleep complications
Activation of the sympathetic nervous system, signaling the body to remain in a state of stressed fight-or-flight, which compounds all of these problems and more
If you are ignoring your breath, you are denying yourself of lifeforce. Your breath is the foundation of your lifeforce. Don’t believe me? Stop breathing — keep it up and you’ll be dead.
Notice when you are angry, your breath is hasty. It is impatient. Notice when you are impatient and antsy, your breath is impatient and antsy. Your breath is always setting the tone of your lifeforce.
The great news is you can train your breath — and receive more lifeforce (why would you turn that down?). The first thing you can do is attune your awareness to your breath more often during the day. In perhaps your most unsettled moments, take a moment to come back to the breath and return it to a patient state. Imagine your breath like the ocean on a calm summer day — the wave comes ashore slowly but surely, and just as it came, it retreats back. The ocean is patient, not hasty.
The second thing you can do is take seven minutes in the morning to explicitly train your breath. The Buteyko method often yields fantastic results. This guided video is all it takes.
Do you have the patience to train your breath for seven minutes every morning, or nah? Mother Nature awaits.
