Don't Forget To Breathe

Doesn't this sound silly to hear this?  I mean, don't we all know we need to breathe.  Why on earth would anyone tell you, "don't forget to breathe!"  Unfortunately, far too many hold their breath at times or diminish how much they breathe.

I remember a therapist often telling me when we were in a counseling session, to not forget to breathe.  I was like, but I am breathing.  However, as she kept working with me on this, I could sometimes begin to tell that I was not fully breathing.  I was holding my breath and I was not even aware that I was doing it.

When I'm working with someone in a healing session, I will see the breath being held.  They often will not notice it or be aware of it.  Usually they will think they are breathing as normal, but they are not.

Trauma, stress, and other experiences in life cause us to hold our breath, even if it is for a short period of time.  It is like seeing that startling scene before you and you gasp and stop breathing as it shocks you.  The daily build up of stress does the same thing and so do traumatic experiences from our past.

It is like the body and mind are preparing for your escape and so by conserving breath for just one second, it gives you a burst to take off running as fast as you can.  The body and mind also hold the breath when it is trying to be very quiet so the tiger in the jungle doesn't hear you.  Please note, that the tiger in the jungle is the abuse or trauma you may have gone through.

If we don't hold our breath, we fail to fully breathe.  We breathe shallow or rapid.  We don't breathe in a full breath and our breathing is at the rate where we are preparing to run like mad to get away from the tiger.  Again, it is trauma, stress and other experiences that can continue to cause this long after we are out of those situations.

One of the best things you can do for your own health is practicing deep breathing.  Learning to breathe fully and slowly and connect with it.  It isn't just about breath work, but fully connecting internally in a deep way.

Learning to breathe and remembering to breathe can help alleviate some of the issues in the tissues of the body.  A slow and deep connected breath is very healing for the body as it brings nutrients to the tissues and takes away waste from the cells.

The more stress we've been under or the more trauma we've been through, the more we need to practice deep and slow breathing.  I use the resperate to help me practice and 15 minutes on this in a day, I get up feeling much more peaceful, centered, and an overall sense of feeling better.

Don't go through life forgetting to breathe.  It is too crucial for our body and our mind.  We need it to function at peak efficiency.  The more oxygen we can breathe in, the more healthy our body and our mind is.  The more deeply connected we breathe, the more we can release the stress and trauma that we carry through our days.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

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