Deep Breathing
Table of contents for How to Relax
“Ninety percent of metabolic oxygen comes from breathing. Ten percent
comes from food.”
- Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
When I was a kid I swam on the swim team in our small city. I remember one of the favorite antics for us kids was to see how many laps one could swim without taking a breath. Ugh, what damage must have been done. Luckily people are born with more brain cells than they need.
Breathing is involuntary but we have the ability to breathe deeply. When we breathe deeply we take control of our life and absorb (literally) more of life. As the quote above attests, breathing deeply accounts for most of the oxygen feeding our body and brain. When we take shallow breaths, we starve our mind, body, and inspiration. If I am not feeling inspired or if I have a lot of huge troubles hanging over my head, that is expecially the time to try and find inspiration by deep breathing.
We need to schedule one or two focused breathing times each day. These should be in realistic scenarios like for instance, breathing deeply until the first commercial on your favorite television show, or taking a walk past three mailboxes until you resume normal, involuntary breathing.
Dunn wrote in a comment today how it is hard to relax when you have troubles in your life. That is very true. But I will say that when I mediate on the mountaintop, I don’t have to be on the mountaintop. I can meditate from the valley looking up and marveling at the mountaintop. Either way, relaxation techniques and the practice of daily deep breathing twice a day will replenish our cells and feed our inspiration to take on whatever troubles might be crouching at our front door. How can you practice daily deep breathing?
I hope you benefited from reading this. Next: The passive attitude …
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Tags: Health, relaxation, stress
I need to do that, I shallow breathe a LOT! And I have a habit of holding my breath when I am around chemicals or exhaust - but maybe that is a good thing - well it would be if I could hold it long enough to get past it, instead I gasp for breath and probably breath more of it in.
I have, though, Damien, in a stressful situation, actually said in my head, “Breathe, 2, 3, 4″ or similar to make me concentrate on calming down. And without exception it has helped.
I’m going to try the three mailbox thing on our next walk. Thanks.
Marcias last blog post..Positive 4 - A letter
Marcia: Great! I hope it goes well. Last night while watching TV after I wrote that post I did it. It was hard to relax at first, but pretty soon it kicked in!