You may be thinking to yourself that this is a ridiculous blog post. After all, everyone knows how to breath, it's part of our autonomic nervous system, the part of the body that takes care of things like breathing and heart beats without our needing to consciously control it. That's a good thing. I don't know about you, my dear friends, but I would probably forget to breathe if I had to consciously think about it all the time.

But automatic doesn't mean it's the best. Sometimes it's necessary to take control of things to make them work better, and that's what this blog post is really about, learning a better way to breath. As I was pointing out yesterday, one step along the road to a less stressful life is conscious choices about how we react. This is another step of learning to apply wisdom to distinguish between what we can change and what we cannot.

Take a moment and consider your breathing. If you are like most people, those are somewhat shallow breaths, enough to bring oxygen into your body and exhale waste gasses. By paying a little attention to your breathing, you can not only relieve stress but feel better as well. What we're going to do today is based upon प्राणायाम, a Sanskrit word meaning lengthening of breath. In English, it would be Pranayama and it is the art of learning to breathe and, in it's simplest form, it is three simple steps:

Step one is to breathe in air. Sounds simple, no? We do it all the time, our autonomic nervous system bringing in life giving air our entire life. But this is different. This requires taking deeper breaths. Try that now. Sit up straight and take a deep breath. Let the air fill your lungs. Feel your chest expanding and, as it expands, feel your shoulders pushed back. Now, with your shoulders held back, exhale but don't let your shoulders droop back down. Take another deep breath, this time letting your diaphragm do all the work. Your back may feel strange being in that position but let the fresh air fill your lungs as you take deep breaths.

Step two is a little more difficult, but we are talking about making conscious changes and this will require more work than simply taking deeper breaths. Take another deep breath and this time, hold it for a couple of seconds before you exhale. Do this again. Breathe in deeply and hold it before exhaling. This requires more work because the autonomic nervous system simply inhales and then exhales. By holding the air in our lungs, we give the body time to absorb more of the oxygen.

Finally, step three is exhaling, but it is not just exhaling. This time, take a deep breath through your nose, hold it, and then exhale through your mouth. By exhaling through a different route you lessen the chance of inhaling anything you've just exhaled. This helps increase the oxygen in your body and that keeps you more alert.

Practice this daily and it can become as natural to your body as, well, breathing. I'll have a new MP3 up this weekend to help with this exercise for registered users. Even now, doing this simple exercise can help lower your blood pressure and stress levels.

As you do it now, do you feel calmer? Feel free to comment on this post with your own insights as to how this advice can apply to your life. Anonymous comments must be approved so you may want to register and also get all the benefits that come with that.