Day 19: Breath- Our Instant Medicine

Live in the Orange Zone - Day 19

30 Days of Self Study, Meditation and Reflection

Today is day 19 of living in the Orange Zone. 

Let's start off this particular session with breathing. 

Take a long inhale. And a longer exhale. Breathe through the nose in. And out.

When Iteach breath, I go in, all the way up through the body, top their head and out, exhale exhale exhale.

How do you feel? 

You feel calm, relaxed, at ease. I have been teaching yoga for 25 years and in the field of psychology for 35 years. I have helped people with anxiety, depression, people that have trouble sleeping at night, digestive issues with different breath techniques.

There are breath techniques to help us raise our energy. Breath techniques to help us calm down. Breath techniques to get us ready for a performance. 

There are as many breath techniques as there are songs in the world with just four notes: 

1. Inhale
2. Exhale
3. Inhale-hold 
4. Exhale-hold

There're so many different ways that we can change our own body's chemistry, physiologically, and also our thinking bodies, and our feeling bodies, and our gut bodies, just by the way that we breathe. 
It is something we do automatically. It's part of our autonomic nervous system. So when we're anxious or we're stressed or we're excited or being chased by a tiger, we breathe with our mouth and we breathe short. 

We need to. It fires us up. It fires everything. 

When we need to calm down and rest, we breathe slowly, long breath, long exhales through the nose. We can change up the techniques of breathing depending on what we want to accomplish, how we want to feel, what we want to do with our moods. 

Today, I'd like to give you this particular technique. It’s very simple. If we're talking about creating a space in between for us to make better choices about how we want to show up for situations in our life, for the precious moments of our life, if we're talking about energy and wanting to make good decisions on how to spend our valuable energy, then breath is the key. 

Let's begin today with being able to modulate from a sympathetic system where we're excited about something. It is what's happening in our modern cultural lobbies, where oftentimes just throughout the day anxious about work, money, our health, the news for watching. We're not modulating out of it to feel restful at night, to feel restful throughout the day, to be calm. 

So the space in between is wonderful because it gives us an opportunity to first see that. And once we see that we're still in that anxious state, we can then do the simple breathing technique where we're going to inhale for four and exhale for five or six. Inhale for four and exhale. 

Just by doing that, you feel peaceful and calm and it gives you that space to start to make decisions. Do I want to keep being upset about this? Do I want to be anxious? Do I want to be worried? You also move your body, not just your thinking self, but also your feeling self. It’s your body's medicine cabinet where you can dump some medicine into it that will help you be more calm and relaxed. 

Join me today to just remember throughout your moments of your life, to just take this simple technique. It's like pulling a little pill out of your pocket and taking it. The great thing about it is the effects of this are instant.

Day 19 Inspiration
Today's inspiration comes from the poet Hafiz
Today, vote for love and happiness, let your breath work assist you.

When all the desires are distilled, you will cast just two votes. To love more and to be happy.

Click the links below to find out more:
The Orange Zone - A 30 Day Practice - YouTube Playlist

​Daily Inspirational Quotes for 30 Day Meditation

Blog Post: What is the Orange Zone?