Deep Breaths

My first exposure to breathing deeply came when I was a runner.  That feels like a former life to me know (though, one I'm trying to get back in touch with), but I remember often hearing during workouts not to forget to breathe.

That seems silly.  Who forgets to breathe?  Especially when we exert ourselves.  And yet, I have caught myself falling into that trap.  I'll catch myself holding my breath during an ab workout or subjecting my body to the effects of panicked, shallow breathing when I'm tired during a run.

These experiences made me more open to the idea that we might not breathe as deeply as we should or, at the least, we could benefit from deeper breathing.  As a society, we have gotten away from simple solutions, and in many ways, we do not believe that simple solutions work.  We have come to a point in time where we think that the answers have to be complicated, and often we just give up. 

Simple solutions do exist, however.  Simple changes to our body posture affect our outlook and mood.  What we eat can make us feel good or bad, physically and emotionally.  And breathing deeply relaxes us. 

We know it does, too.  It is apart of many relaxing and calming strategies.  When we are stressed we are told to take a deep breath.  When we are angry, we should count to ten and breath deeply.  What is interesting to me, is that 1)we often don't take that advice and 2) we don't apply it to other situations.

Breathe deeply one time as you read each of these benefits and assess how true you think it is for you:
Breathing deeply releases tension. 
It is calming. 
It oxygenates the blood, it gives your brain time to catch up to whatever you're thinking about or dealing with and simultaneously gives your brain more oxygen to work with, increasing your ability to think. 
Breathing deeply helps you emotionally while improving your posture.
It boosts energy levels and lifts your mood.

These are benefits you can feel right now.  Think of all the long term benefits for your body and mind that you aren't even aware of!  I've read studies of other benefits, but have not conducted any myself, so I'm sticking with what I can know. 

I've read accounts of people who trained themselves to breath deeply as the default instead of usually taking shallow breaths (until they really needed to catch up, or decided to take a deep breath).  This took a long time, and lots of forgetting, but the basic method was to try to remember to breath deeply more.  Every time you realize you've forgotten to breath deeply, start it up again.  They say it takes six weeks to form a habit, this would take a pretty continuous effort.

There are websites that train people how to breath well.  (MarksDailyApple and Get Fit Guy)  What to look for and how to do better.  Mostly, it just takes focus.  It's easy to tell ourselves that we don't have time to deal with things like breathing, since our bodies seem to be doing alright with how they breath now, but that might be a mistake.  This falls into my "this will probably help me, and certainly won't hurt me, so why not?" category.

As an added benefit, deep breathing is the most basic type of meditation.  To focus on one thing, be aware of it, enjoy it, keep thoughts from wandering.  It's the next best thing to doing nothing.  Meditation is becoming mainstream and there are more and more studies on the benefits to mind and body.

At any rate, what have you got to lose?  Take a deep breath, and then another, and then another.  When you realize you've been forgetting to breath deeply: breath, breath again!

The Beginning

There's no time to start quite like right now.  So here I am, giving it a go in the middle of a hectic cross roads.  But then again, why not?

To explain: I believe in simple changes for improving life.  A better life doesn't have to come from a total
overhaul of the way we do things.  In my experience, and I believe that it holds true for most people, trying to change too much or too boldly is unsustainable and is ultimately discouraging.

 After two years of adjustment to life in Honduras--I finally felt normal walking everywhere, shopping for food in the short term because all the food was fresh, seeing people around town all the time (and therefore chatting, and always being late to my destination, just like everyone else), waking up before dawn, eating breakfast, and many other things that I had never done regularly before I moved away.

When I moved back, I found that it is the simple things that I miss most from my life abroad.  Some of these simple changes are easier to replicate in my life here than others.  I miss watching the sunrise over the town nestled in the valley below my balcony while drinking coffee--it was a phenomenal way to start the day. 
Here, I have no balcony over a valley even if I wake up before dawn (though I can dream of moving to the mountains again some day in the future). 


There are aspects of my life in Honduras that I try to intigrate into my current day to day life.  For not, I plan to dedicate myself to finding more simple changes to improve my life.  I don't believe in settling.  A healthy, happy life depends on what we eat, how much we sleep, and how we find balance.

Improving life is not ever a finished task.  As life is constantly changing, adjustments must be made to find a new balance to fit the shifting mold.  My aim is to continually improve myself: in health, my work, and my
personal relationships.  So much in this world is out of our control, the only thing truly in our power is ourselves.  We make our decisions and control our behavior.  When we are not happy with ourselves, the only logical course of action is to change how we handle similar situations in the future.  And when we mess up, take note of it and do better next time.

The best thing we can do is pay attention.  Life is interesting and we deserve to notice the little things that make life so interesting and we can assess what makes us happy, and what doesn't.  When we know what drives us, we can do better for ourselves.