Answer this: Out of the last twenty-four hours, how many minutes did you spend connecting to your body? Feeling the tight spots, feeling the open areas? How many breaths did you take with simply feeling the inhale and the expansion of the ribs?
What feels daunting to a lot of people exploring yoga is making time for it. We all know we need to stretch and relax, and sometimes it feels overwhelming in our busy schedule to plan in time for peace and a returning to our body. If you don’t have ninety minutes for yoga or meditation, five will do. A practice I call Breath Ceremony can be done while your coffee or tea is brewing.
Breathing is a necessity. Thankfully, we breathe whether we focus on it or not. It requires zero effort and is controlled by our brain and body. Largely, our body and our breath are in control of us. We are at its effect. Walking through life unconscious creates stress in our body and our psyche. Want to feel relaxed, at peace and with enjoy living? Take control of your state and resist being in automatic pilot by intentionally breathing.
Don’t have time? Sure you do. We all do. There are twenty-four hours in a day and many sleep through most of it, including those hours at work, in relationships or other daily tasks.
Don’t have the energy to give any more? The simple activity of Breath Ceremony will energize and route heart energy from being sending outward to being sent back to the self.
When you wake up, get out of bed, immediately stand, and do this simple activity to start the day with a clear mental slate and increased oxygen to muscles and brain. This can also take place when brewing coffee or tea, or whenever you have a five-minute segment of “net time” (the ability to do an activity while waiting for another activity to finish).
Breath Ceremony – 5 Minutes Each Morning
- Stand up
- Bring left hand on belly, right hand on heart
- Close eyes
- Feel beating heart, keep belly still
- Inhale into heart and expand ribs, as long as feels comfortable
- Hold breath, as long as feels comfortable
- Exhale, as long as feels comfortable
- Hold breath, as long as feels comfortable
At first fidgeting may occur. This is the resistance of the brain wanting to “do something” in order to feel a sense of purpose. Catch when this happens during Breath Ceremony time and return back to your conscious breathing. This will get easier with time and consistency, and the benefits will be more rewarding than plugging in to Facebook, the phone, TV, video games, projects, work, etc.
As it does get easier, weave in mental focus for what you want to feel and experience in your day – building a strategy and plan for living each day with purpose and direction.
When you stop looking around at nature, connecting with your loved ones, and begin a pattern of isolation in the castle of your brain, survey all the places where energy is being closed or walled off from love. Rapunzel was lonely in her tower of isolation. Doing things doesn’t bring us happiness in the deepest sense; connecting to self and connecting with what or whom we love does bring happiness.
When we want or need to change our mind, we must first change our breath. This physiological action turns from unconscious to conscious breathing and changes our chemistry. We return to being at cause with our life. We return to being on purpose and return to feeling love.
Breathe that in and fill your body with love for living. Breath by breath.