Cloudy days are to show off my new scarves I guess. Another day, another walk taken on the Blackfrair Bridge in London, shot in the beautiful river scenery. Strong wind and rain made the conditions perfect to practice my resistance to cold and mindful breathing.
So speaking of the air and thoughts, that I find now being two inseparable elements of conscious-unconscious programming. If to be honest, I really treat this post as a reminder to myself. I am quite new to breath work and it would be nice to make some points on here that could be used for the future references later on. About two years ago, I remember it was a mind-blowing experience to realise that a specific breathing technique could help me fight my back then continuous insomnia. Throughout the years, mixing it in my meditation and yoga practices, I got closer to figuring out the essentials and types of breathing and how crucial it is to any of the mentioned to be effective. Yoga was relatively useless until I brought in my conscious breathing, meditation wasn't fruitful without consistent healthy breath pattern helping my body to relax. It seemed like a miracle. Today I got accidentally reminded of my own breath by hearing the amazing ideas by Caroline Goyder first thing in the morning. She mentioned the idea that Air is our thought, every in-hale is a thought. We consistently breath in ideas and programme our minds, if you ever doubt written affirmations, try to breath those in. That might be your game changer.
It is also true that our breathing patterns give away our personalities. We can easily tell if the person is confident or stressful just by noticing how one breaths. I personally used to adopt a stress influenced breathing pattern, the one with a long pause and strong sigh at the end or rapid shallow breaths which is an opposite of what a calm and mindful person would do. Fortunately enough, what makes our species distinctive is that we belong to a small percentage of mammals who can choose and control their breathing methods (as mentioned in Fanny Tulloch article who looks at breathing through an anatomous perspective). And brilliant Calorine mentioned that it is our bridge to unconscious mind, by breath work we can literally shape our unconscious mind patterns just how we like it. If I feel stressed out, the first thing I do is focus on my breath, on the air coming in my nose and coming out my mouth, strengthening my breath and applying a simple "box" technique or doing double inhales, exhales. It gets even weirder with cleansing 'lion' breath which is used to clear energy blocks or treat trauma-affected areas in the body. Super interesting, I dropped you some interesting podcasts to take a look if you want to know more:
