Everyone breathes. Everyone takes air in and lets it out! If breathing is a an avenue to openness, enlightenment and clarity, why are we not all sitting under the Bodhi Tree flexing our enlightened muscles, sipping green tea and solving world hunger?
There’s an incredibly high percentage of the population that has what is called interrupted breathing patterns created by stress and tension. So, no, everyone doesn’t breathe the way their bodies are designed to. (Dru Pilmer, Voice Professor at IU Southeast)
For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth. This advice, also considered a proverb, short on words yet long on wisdom comes translated from Sanskrit, regarded as a ‘high’ language used mainly for religious and scientific discourse.
There is for us a great matter of interest here, the idea that a language considered what you might term “holy” is used for the purpose of reminding us to breathe, a language reserved for both “high” arts of religion and science.
Chris Tickner, a Somatic Psychologist in Pasadena California uses breathing and body awareness as treatment for stress and other life interrupting issues. When he presents his seminar on stress and trauma he reminds participants that, “There is one body process that you can easily control, one body process that connects you back to our reasoning mind, your neocortex, the part of your brain that can immediately bring you out of the stress response, and that body process is the simple act of breathing.”
When your mother, father or whomever it was said to your red-faced cookie-denied child self, “Take a deep breath and count to TEN!” They were then tapping directly into the place where the modern scientific and spiritual worlds of study have now found common ground. The purpose of those ten breaths was to get you out of your immediate response and into a place of perspective, so your neocortex could click in and help you reason your way through the difficulty of the moment.
Breathing will put you in the moment. All the difficulty you experience in that moment is due to expectation, which is not about the moment. Expectation is not about being present. When we expect we put ourselves into the future, the unknown future. We are simply trying to make the future known, very specifically, to us.
Now there is great power in being expectant, in positive visualization. If you follow any of Ester and Jerry Hicks works you know the power of the Law of Attraction and how expectation is a large part of that, but the kind of expectation your child self had when wanting a cookie for breakfast, which actually seems like a pretty good idea to me, is still a child’s idea. No thought about the reality which is, cookies come after you eat something better; the adult rule created to help spare your little body the impact of sugar at 8AM (not a pretty sight).
When you are expecting a cookie NOW, you are not able to hear the offer of a cookie for later. The promise of a cookie in a later moment did not override your emotional reaction; all you heard was “NO.” You were incapable letting go of the thought of that cookie, you could not understand the compromise, the reasoning, and you might even have lost that future cookie because of your inability to hear!
If you were able to do even three of those ten breaths, you probably got that cookie, later. Your neocortex, this of course depending on your age at the time, was able to click on and respond. That part of your brain starts developing at the age of two, and never stops by the way. You can understand the “terrible twos” a bit more when you realize that autonomy begins at that same age. With your neocortex on line you understand a future cookie can bargain for it, you can reason that a cookie later is better than none at all.
When we are looking for the moment, we let go of any expectation. ALL expectation. We simply understand that there is a moment in which we exist. And one of the most gentle and easy ways to click into that moment is to develop awareness of our breathing.
If you are holding your breath, I guarantee you that you are holding a thought. And I guarantee you it is connected with some, however minor, stress.
You get stopped at a red light, you hold your breath. Why? Because you wanted to keep going, to be gainfully on your way, to be on time, to keep up appearances, to keep your job, to feed yourself, to stay alive. That’s quite a journey to take in the length of a stoplight!
If you took every stoplight as an opportunity to breathe instead of think of possible future consequences, text or check a message, you’d be engaging in the direct pathway to enlightenment.
When you shop for food and pick up a can of tuna you are likely not thinking, I need this tuna so I can live my best life, be happy, care for my family, pursue my dreams, stay healthy and alive. I LOVE THIS TUNA CAN! (If more people did think this way about buying food, the United States would lose the honor of being home to the largest people on the planet.)
So why, when we find ourselves at a stop light don’t we engage in something similar? Why instead do we frequently go through a negative thought process?
The future tuna sandwich is helpful, the future late to work or wherever is not helpful. And we buck against the non-helpful things like a fish on a hook. We have a drive to survive.
Yet, it is still not helpful to get stuck in a negative thought at that red light. It will not make the light go any faster, it will not create a pathway to better thinking, and it will not sustain you. In fact, it will tighten your muscles, raise your blood pressure, cause your heart to race, make your hands and feet cold, give you tunnel vision so you won’t see the late pedestrian and you’ll hit the gas hard and then where will you be? All because you had one negative thought and held your breath.
What is WRONG with us? 
We get so tied up in our thoughts we actually stop ourselves from breathing, and wreak havoc at a stop lights.
The sorcerers of antiquity…viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle… (Carlos Casteneda, The Art Of Dreaming)
It is a magical vehicle. Breathing allows us to continue living. When breath stops for 3-5 minutes, a brain can die. We have not figured out how to keep on living here without our brains. Well, some people may seem to be doing so, but that’s another matter!
The thing that we can do for ourselves, which means we do it for everyone around us, like late pedestrians at crosswalks, is to give ourselves the gift of using that magic. Let ourselves loose from the tight thoughts that cause us to hold our breaths, to hold negative thoughts.
Here is an experiment! Try it and tell me what happens!
STEP ONE: Think of something negative, and hold your breath. Really get into that negative thought. Expand it! Here’s mine:
I hate rude people who cut in line, I hate rude thoughtless people who cut in line and ignore that everyone else knows how to behave in public. Who do they think they are to act like that? They think they are better than EVERYONE else here? OOoo this reminds me that time I was pushed on the ground when I was waiting in line for a drink at October Fest, some huge jerk pushed through the line and totally pushed me down!!!…..#$%&@*^!
Notice where you hold tension! Are your shoulders higher, held tight, is your stomach tight? Are you hands and fingers tight? Your face? Are you able to hold that breath for a good long time? I bet you are! I sure can!
STEP TWO: Think of something positive! You can use someone you love like crazy and they love you back! Hold your breath
Here’s my thought:
I love my tiger cat. OH MY GOD I LOVE HER SO MUCH. I wake up and she is sleeping in the crook of my arm, I didn’t even know she had gotten in bed, and she is purring and purring. When she stretches out in the window her stripey legs full out she is such a lover muffin kitty girl fatty pumpkin I HOVE HER!! AHHH!!
What is your body doing?!?!? Was there tension? Where? How did your body feel? Did you feel the urge to breathe?!
My personal experience, using exactly that thought above, is that I have such an overwhelming desire to take in more air, that I can’t hold my breath. And when I do take more air in, it feels awesome. I get goosebumps because of the thought I am letting in with that air.
When you engage in the positive thought process, and when you fill your self with air, you are not just helping yourself. But you are the first concern you should have. Put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then assist others. (Southwest Airlines)
So, when you hit that next stoplight. You know what to do.
Smile, breathe and go slowly. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Andrea Marie Stark is a Pasadena Psychic, Intuitive Counselor, Reiki Master, Energy Healer, Tarot Reader, Bach Flower Consultant, and Psychic who studies Mystic Shamanism and offers Chakra Balancing, Aura Clearing, Aura Reading, Reiki Training, Reiki Atunements, Shamanic Healings, Psychic Phone Readings, and Healing Workshops in and around Pasadena, CA. Andrea also studies Animal Communication.
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