The Breathing Book: Good Health and Vitality Through Essential Breath Work

“Deaccelerate” some of your activities. Your breathing will mirror the rate at which you do things.

They included but were not limited to fatigue, exhaustion, heart palpitations, rapid pulse, dizziness and visual disturbances, numbness and tingling in the limbs, shortness of breath, yawning, chest pain, a feeling of a lump in the throat, stomach pain, muscle pains, cramps and stiffness, anxiety, insomnia and nightmares, impairment of concentratio

Given the simplicity of breathing one would think it was the easiest thing to do in the world. However, if it were truly so easy there would be few unhappy or unhealthy people in the world.

Breathing is the most readily accessible resource you have for creating and sustaining your vital energy.

Is my need to hurry real or imagined? Is this task so important that it is worth losing my peace of mind? And the clincher, Will anyone die as a result of this not getting done today? Question whether hurrying will really help you arrive at your destination

Breath therapy, sometimes combined with other healing practices such as biofeedback or yoga, has been found to alleviate

Ground yourself in the present and be aware of any tendency to hurry unnecessarily. Notice when your mind is racing into the future.

The next time you catch yourself hyperventilating notice if your mind is catapulting itself into the future, planning, rehearsing, and often imagining difficulties that haven’t yet happened (and may never happen). You might try reciting the short poem of Vietnamese monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh as you breathe: Breathing in, I calm body and mind.

Use a cue like every time you put the phone down, or every time you see your favorite color, to pause and feel the moment between your inhalation and your exhalation.

A deep, abiding sense of ease, surrender, and relaxation will arise when you allow yourself to drink in the peace of this pause.