Latest / #BeMoreLobster / Breathe Don't Leave

Transcript

Breathe Don't Leave · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Breathe, don't leave.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that one of my favorite online trainers says to us when we're in the middle of a workout and she's like, if it feels really hard, just take a breath, regroup yourself, but don't leave the session.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it got me to thinking about what a fantastic way that is to look at life as well.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So today, let's have a conversation about how simplicity can look like nothing more than simply pausing to take a breath.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready, grab your chamomile tea and let's dive right in.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: To start off this episode, I've been thinking about some other ways that I notice when I am almost forced to pause and take a different breath.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first things that came to my mind is when I'm swimming.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm swimming, I would normally breathe on every third stroke because I do front crawl.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm particularly tired or particularly if I'm feeling anxious, every now and again I have to breathe on a two because I can feel my heart beating so fast and so hard, I can feel it and hear it in my ears.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I just choose to breathe every two for a little while and bring myself back to center.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed actually just last night, I got on my Shakti mat for the first time in what feels like forever.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I did the Wim Hof breathing.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really surprised that I couldn't even get to the 60-second breath hold.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I didn't feel anxious, but I haven't been sleeping very well because of the new moon and other things.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it really showed up.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I just was like, okay, it's fine.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to hold my breath.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can just take a breath now.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if I want to, I can just rejoin.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there are going to be some areas, instances in your life where you perhaps naturally take a breath so that you can continue.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you could think about that now.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But what I want to do now is offer you some other ways to consider where you might want to inject a breath into certain areas of your life that will allow you to continue or will allow you to even possibly change an outcome.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I've come up with five.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first one, and I think this is so important, and I have had to practice this a lot, is to take a breath before you react so that you can turn it into a response.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So often, when we get triggered by a person, by an experience, an event, it's like this mist, this red mist takes over, and we're speaking or shouting, uh, reacting before almost we've even had time to think about it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to offer you that when you can just take the time to inject a breath before you react, it actually gives you the opportunity to create a response, and that can change everything.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you wanted another little bit of advice, if it involves somebody else, taking a deep breath and a deep sigh whilst rolling your eyes probably isn't going to create the outcome that you want.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: See if you can quite subtly take a deep breath, and maybe with a smile on your face, if you can manage that.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you can take a deep breath without actually physically taking a deep breath.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You could take a pause, you could take a moment, you could take three breaths instead of one.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you get to choose how the breath looks and feels for you.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: But breathe before you react, you can turn it into a response, which is likely to give you a better outcome.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is to breathe in order to create space around a particular action or a particular project.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the moment, as an example, if you're feeling a little bit stressed, if you're feeling uptight, if it, you know, if you feel like you're banging ahead of your head against a brick wall, take a moment just to breathe.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe just leave the desk, maybe even leave the room and just breathe through.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: As you breathe, I love to invite my clients here to almost imagine pushing space around them, pushing away the stress, pushing away the anxiety, pushing away the overwhelm and just creating space around it, like a little moat, a little moat around you that says, okay, no availability here for any of those emotions.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just need some breath.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just need some space.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I need some grounding.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need some expansion.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that super helpful.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you that are a little bit more um kinesthetic than visual, it might be that you actually sort of feel yourself pushing the feeling away from your body, out of your body.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: That can be very helpful as well.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing here is also about creating space around the project by punctuating your schedule.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So punctuating your schedule with some specific times and specific actions that allow you to take the breath.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Doing some downward dogs, sun salutations, putting your feet on the grass outside, taking a glass of water, doing some jumping jacks, I don't know, five minute meditation, drawing something, making a loaf of bread, like whatever it is, intentionally ahead of time, punctuating your schedule, your day's plan with specific times and actions that actually fuel you, that feed you, that just give you your vaba voom back.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is to breathe, create a breath by cutting down on your to-do list.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is it absolutely essential?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is your life depending on you getting that thing today?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something that I've cut out a lot of is housework.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I move from a three-bed, three-story to a two-bed bungalow.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I have like half the house and I do less housework than I've ever done.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like, it's just not that important.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I certainly don't touch the ironing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you can create some breath, a space to breathe.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You create the space to breathe by cutting down on your to-do list.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you could cut back and focus on just one to three items at a time.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I work with so many clients that come to me and they're working on all these goals, and they're trying to do 10 things in every goal and they're just exhausted and they're running at a fast pace and they're breathing high up in their chest.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: They can't remember the last time they took a took a belly breath and they wonder why their bodies, you know, like wired and tired.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So create the breath by just scaling back your focus to one or three, one to three items.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you can even do that by saying, okay, what's the most important goal for me to work on right now?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're in a society that says, right, we need to work on our health and we need to work on our finances, and we need to work on our relationships, and we need to do this, and we need to do that.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've got the capacity to do that, great.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're going to be working on more than one thing, you definitely, I would suggest for the time being, you scale back that you only do one or two things in each of those things.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So just scaling back creates the space for greater breath.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Number four is breathing in a certain way in the morning when you wake up to set yourself up for the day.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some beautiful four four breathing, breathing in for four and out for four.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you wake up and you're feeling particularly stressed, you could do some four-eight breathing.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in for four and out for eight, because that helps you with like activating the parasympathetic, the rest and digest state.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can find all of that on YouTube.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But breath in the morning can really set you up intentionally because the truth is all of the patterns, all of the identities, all of the things that we're doing in life, we've we create a breathing around that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a breath associated with all these different patterns in our life.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So many people are stressed so much of the time, but their breathing, like I say, remains high in their chest, and the diaphragm doesn't get used properly, and the lower ribs don't get used properly, and it kinds causes all kinds of like somatic experiences in the body.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So breathing intentionally in the morning to set yourself up for the day is really, really key.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the good thing is, you can do that before you even get out of bed, which I love to do.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I would like you to think about how you can breathe through those tough emotions and feelings like uncertainty, fear, and overwhelm.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you can bring some consciousness to your breath in those moments, you can breathe yourself through those things.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can allow your body to be like, oh, okay, I can I can feel safe here.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to feel like I'm fight, flight, fall, nor freeze.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I feel a little bit scared about this thing that I'm going to about to do, even though I feel a little bit overwhelmed with my to-do list, I notice that if I just slow down, if I slow down my breathing, if I feel into my lungs, if I breathe through into my lower rib cage front and back, if I just slow everything down and focus on my breath for just a couple of minutes, I can breathe into and through these difficult emotions.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: This too shall pass.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is such a helpful practice to have that will help you stop embodying these difficult emotions, to stop you taking these difficult emotions as a pattern in your body because it's going to then take longer to reverse it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there we are.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: How we can breathe, don't leave.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole purpose of this, I hope you can see is that don't give up on yourself.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give up on the things that you want.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give up because things get hard.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give up because you might feel overwhelmed or uncertain or there's some disbelief about whatever it is that you're wanting to create in life.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Stay present to your life by breathing into it and be breathing through it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Schedule your breaks, inject break times.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you punctuate your days and your hours with things that fuel you up.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Breathe, don't leave.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed this.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know what to do.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you did, please do leave me a review on iTunes.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be so grateful.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And share this with your friends, and I'll speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.