Mindful Breathing

I had mentioned the other day that I did some breathing in my backyard.  Mindful breathing is an important think for ALL of us to incorporate into our lives.

Some benefits:  When we have stress of daily life or more specific stress, our brains launch our "fight or flight" response.  This increases our blood pressure and heart rate, muscles tighten and our concentration goes out the window.  This is great if you are going to be run over by a car and it helps you jump out of the way, but if you are worn from the day after day demands, this chronic stress and affect your emotions, your physical health, your thinking and memory.  Mindful breathing can help you pull your attention away from the stress.

Here are the steps:

1. FOCUS - think about your breath. take a full breath in filling your lungs, pay attention to the air leaving the lungs all the way.  pay attention to how your breath feels, warm, cool air? can you hear the sound.

2.  Observe: how you feel, the breath only, don't think about anything but that breath.

3. Don't work too hard on clearing your mind, sometimes that will distract you, just worry about the breath, and relaxing.  I like to think of my color or light pulling in with the breath, reaching all of my painful joints, surrounding my heard and brain. When I breathe out, I picture an ugly gray smoke taking the stress, pain, and worry out of my body.

I like to do this 10 minutes a day.  You can also take a few of these breaths before you have a hard conversation, before a job interview, before reprimanding a child, before eating. It is also good to relax yourself before you get out of bed after waking and to clear your mind and body right before you go to bed.

NAMASTE