How open are you to accepting what you need from the world?
How well do you let go of what no longer serves you?
Let's start this post with a 4-count inhale ... a 4-count hold ... and a 4-count exhale.
Good. You just engaged in your life's most important relationship. And you will do this about 20,000 more times in the next 24 hours. Yes, 20,000! You can live for up to 8 weeks without food. About 3 days without water. But only 3 minutes without breathing.
It's fascinating that breathing - your most immediate need for survival - is a simple, automatic, and constant exchange between "you" and "not you". The world contains the air that your cells need. With an inhale, you accept it into yourself. With your exhale, you give back to the world what you don't need - the waste that your cells need to eliminate.
Beyond basic survival, your level of health, wellness, and quality of life is simply an extension of this simple relationship. On every level, how open are you to accepting what you need? On every level, how open are you to letting go of what no longer serves you? The more open you are, the more you thrive.
Simple attention to your breathing is a powerful way to enhance your life!
The Biology of Breathing
Breathing is typically an unconscious act - for a good reason. If you had to make yourself breathe, you would never be able to sleep or engage in other activities. You would quickly perish. Despite its importance - and because of its automatic and unconscious nature - you might pay little attention to it, to the point of woefully under-valuing the role it plays in your health.
Your inhale oxygenates your blood, which then nourishes your cells with what they need to function. When you inhale, your cells are in a state of readiness and receptivity. About 25 percent of the oxygen you inhale is used by your brain, 12 percent by the kidneys, and 7 percent by the heart.
Your exhale signals your cells to let go of the waste that has built up inside. You breathe out carbon dioxide and other waste gets excreted through your blood. The exhale phase of this cycle is the state of relaxation, letting go, and repair. Breathing is your primary detoxifier. It is the function that clears waste from your cells.
Ideally, your breathing is a smooth and open cycle of receiving and letting go. But you can develop breathing habits and patterns that can negatively impact this function - like shallow breathing, breath-holding, long inhale and short exhale, short inhale and long exhale, staccato breathing, etc.
Becoming familiar with your breathing patterns is key to improving your wellbeing. Your breath is a simple and powerful tool for wellness.
Breathing As a Practice
There is a good reason why breathing is the foundation for most mindfulness and spiritual practices. These practices aim to focus your awareness on how you are showing up and being present in the world. Even though it is an automatic and typically unconscious function of your daily life, your breathing reflects your relationship with the world - it is the primary example of how you are showing up and being. Therefore, breathing serves as the most direct route to self-awareness.
By paying attention to your breath and your breathing patterns, you can learn a lot about how you relate to the world on a deep, subconscious level.
Do you experience the world as a hostile and dangerous place, a supportive and nurturing place, or maybe a mix of both? Your deeply held worldview will create your breathing patterns.
It also works the other way around ... your breathing patterns can impact how you view the world. Posture, stress, emotions, thoughts, and activity will have an impact on how you breathe. Those breathing patterns will reinforce certain worldviews. If you purposefully alter your breathing pattern, you can create a shift in your worldview.
Adding breathing practices to your wellness routine will enable you to quickly and efficiently create beneficial shifts in your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states.
Inhale What You Need
In an ideal world, an abundant level of relaxation, safety, and comfort would enable you to breathe freely, which is the foundation for fully accepting what you need and want in life:
air to maintain and fuel your cells
nutrition from the food you eat
support, acceptance, appreciation, recognition, and love from the people around you
self-esteem and confidence
a sense of safety, security, and abundance
purpose and meaningful experience
But you don't live in an ideal world. Life comes with stress, anxiety, uncertainty, threats, pain, and
suffering. It's part of the package. Your life experiences impact your breathing and establish your worldview in ways that are specific to you. Your openness to receiving what you need from the world is impacted in a variety of ways. For example:
Your breathing may be shallow or held, resulting in your cells not receiving what they need on a regular and reliable basis. This alerts the system to a threatening environment ... which becomes a subconscious worldview (the world will not provide what I need).
Chronic stress and not feeling safe (the world is a dangerous place) will limit how open you are to accepting what you need.
Uncomfortable relationship experiences affect your trust level and tamper your expectations (I cannot trust those close to me) causing you to close yourself off from receiving what you need and want from others and from being free to express yourself.
Stress and anxiety can impair the functioning of your digestive system making it less able to absorb the optimum level of nutrition from the food you eat.
Overstimulation (and under-stimulation) of your senses will impact how open you are to receiving pleasing experiences through your senses.
Your life experiences play a role in how open you are - to inhaling, accepting, and receiving. Fortunately, you can use breathing practices to self-correct and enhance your wellness.
Exhale What You Are Ready to Let Go Of
The best-case scenario is that you are freely able to process and let go of what no longer serves you ... cellular waste, stress, a grudge, a loss, useless possessions, anger, fear, anxiety, a nagging thought, a toxic relationship, and unhealthy habits, for example. But it's not that easy, is it? As a human being, you form attachments and mental/emotional patterns about letting go of things. When you are reluctant or unable to process your experiences and let go of what is no longer serving you, the result can be an accumulation of unhealthy residue that impairs your health, wellbeing, and quality of life. When a cell in our body can't expel its accumulated waste, it loses the ability to function, becomes diseased, and dies. Letting go makes room for what you need. It makes space for maintenance and repair. As mentioned earlier, the exhale stimulates the relaxation and repair functions of the body. Breathing practices that emphasize the exhale, help you to shift into a place of willingness to let go of what you no longer need or want. And doing that makes space for deeply restorative activities to happen.
Let Your Breathing Be Your Compass
Your breathing may be the simplest and most effective tool for creating positive change. It is so powerful because it is so fundamental to your survival. Paying attention to your breathing patterns can point you in the direction of a healthier way to move through life.
You can gain insight into how you hold yourself back from receiving what you need and want.
You can get a glimpse into how and when you resist letting go - in big and small ways.
You can experiment with how a mindful change in your breathing can open you up to better health and quality of life.
Try this simple breathing practice. You can do it anywhere that you have a moment to focus.
At this moment I am safe, comfortable, and grounded. The world outside myself is my partner in life. I can trust. With this inhale, I am open to receiving what I need and want from the universe. With this exhale, I am willing to let go of what I no longer need or want. With this inhale, I am nourished and cared for. With this exhale, I make space to rest and restore. With future inhales, I will be supported and protected when I need to be. With future exhales, I will be able to let go of what is not mine to carry.
Final Thought
In the end, what matters most is
How well did you live
How well did you love
How well did you learn to let go?
Comments