Learning to Breathe

meditativerelaxer@meditativerelaxation.org — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:51:40 GMT

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.

LiveJournal Tags: Stress relief,Meditation,Life changing,Peace,Pranayama

Take a Deep Breath

meditativerelaxer@meditativerelaxation.org — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:11:49 GMT

If you listen to the news at all, it seems like things are bad. And, to be honest, things are not as good as they were 12 months ago, but all hope is not lost, my dear friends.

Yes, times are tough and probably will get a bit tougher before they start to improve, but that doesn't mean that it is time to abandon hope; rather it is time to take a step back and start the process of taking control of your life.

Reinhold Niebuhr is famous for the little prayer that he is credited with writing that you may have heard:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Regardless of which God you may believe in, it is a good way to life your life. Take just a couple of minutes and consider the following in light of that.

You're driving somewhere on the highway and someone whips around you, cutting you off and speeding away. If you are like many people, this is going to irritate you. Your blood pressure will rise just a bit and you'll get irritated because someone who is obviously an idiot just cut you off. But there's another way to look at that.

Perhaps the driver of that car was in a hurry because they had just received word that their significant other had been in a wreck and they are on their way to see them. If you knew that was the case, you'd probably be a little less upset with what had just happened.

Given that, the two possible scenarios, consider some differences between them. In the first, the driver cut you off, you let your blood pressure go up, triggered the stress response, and probably didn't help your mood in general. The driver of that car, however, was in no way affected by your actions.

In the second scenario, the driver cut you off but you stayed calm, your blood pressure didn't go up, and you prevented triggering the stress response. The driver of that car, however, was in no way affected by your actions.

And that's the key point. In both cases, your reactions made no difference to the driver, they only affected you. Understanding this is one of the steps on the path toward both wisdom and peace; or, to paraphrase Mr. Niebuhr, it is wisdom to distinguish between what you cannot change and what you can. You cannot change the other driver's actions, you can change your response.

Think back over the last 24 hours and name something that stressed you. Did your response, stressing over what had happened, impact the situation in a positive way? If you had remained calm, would that have changed the situation any? 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.

LiveJournal Tags: Stress relief,Meditation,Life changing,Peace

Thoughts on Relaxation, Meditation and Stress Relief

Learning to Breathe

Take a Deep Breath