Our Breath

Our Breath

The breath is life. It marks life's beginning and end on earth.  Without it, we wouldn't be here, yet we tend to take it for granted. It's automatic. We don't tend to think too much about breathing unless of course we climb a high mountain, have a medical condition affecting our lungs, are in a smoke-filled room and so on.  Then it suddenly becomes really important.

With awareness, we can observe how our breathing affects our mental, emotional and physical state. Equally our mental, emotional and physical state affects our breathing.

In an anxious state, our breathing becomes rapid and shallow which actually increases our state of stress. It's a vicious circle. Anxiety fuels the erratic breathing and the panicked breathing accelerates the anxiety.

However, we can help ourselves.  If we focus on our breathing and take deeper slower breaths into our tummy we can calm this unsettled state.  Thus we break the self-perpetuating stress-inducing cycle.  It is also a distraction from our unhelpful thoughts as we shift our focus and attention to our breath.

Slower deeper breaths also increase lung capacity, thus improving physical and athletic ability and performance. I learned this from running! Athletes know this, yogis know this, singers know this. I guess we also innately know this, but do we use it.

So when we hear the wise words "just breathe" or "take a deep breath" we understand the wisdom behind the words. So we've heard it, now it's time to use it.

Our Thoughts

Our Thoughts

Where do they come from and where do they go to? We can't see or touch them but they sure do exist and can delight or torment us.

So our brain assesses situations, relates them to past experiences to tell us whether something is a threat or not and how we should feel about and react to it.  However, memories are not always accurate so can we rely on this observation?

If we are aware of this and take a mindful moment to ponder such, we afford ourselves the opportunity to reframe a troublesome thought or broaden our perspective on how we view things.

This may just enable us to take a more objective and helpful approach to how and what we think, preventing the chimp from hijacking our mind yet again

Let's compare it to taking a photograph from a potentially different angle, adjusting the focus to gain more clarity of what and how we see. Maybe making it brighter and increasing the resolution to see more clearly. Avoid using the cropping tool to view the whole picture with greater accuracy.

Just a thought but worth a mention.

Mindfulness "What is is, Why try it"

Welcome to my first blog post! Really out of my comfort zone and it feels great! So to begin let's just clarify what the buzz about mindfulness is and why.

In this digitally dominated and fast-paced world we live in it's hard not to get sucked into and dragged along the conveyor belt of life. There doesn't seem to be an off switch. We are constantly accessible 24/7 and if not disciplined and aware we may never get downtime. This is especially true for self-employed and those working from home.

Mindfulness is a way of being. Living fully immersed in the present moment, accepting it without judgment and with compassion and kindness. This means keeping your mind and senses connected to what's happening right now. How often are we in a conversation and not really listening but planning what we want to say. Or we arrive at our destination and really have no conscious recollection of how we got there....ah autopilot.

From the moment we get up we are thinking of and planning what's ahead. Well, that's all fine and good unless it develops into overthinking and our monkey mind starts creating stories and exaggerating ifs, maybes and buts. This can spiral out of control and the chimp has won. Causing unnecessary stress and anxiety and putting you into an agitated and tense state of being.