Take A Breath

I used to be a champion breather. I taught Pilates for nearly 20 years, and the diaphragmatic breathing became automatic… inhale through your nose as you expand your rib cage like an accordion; exhale through your mouth, squeezing every last bit of air out as you contract your core and pelvic floor.

Breathing was my best friend as I navigated the passing of my parents in 2010 and 2011. (I’ll share my seven reflections from Wide Awake. Every Week from January 8,-14 the dates they were featured with the publication of the book in 2015.)

I learned Channel Breathing from Dr. Sue Morter a few years back. I absolutely love visioning my breath coming down from the heavens, moving down my spine and connecting to Mother Earth. Up and down, up and down, filled with white or purple or gold energy. It’s just so centering and healing.

Somewhere along the way, I lost it all. Specifically last month when my youngest sister was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a direct outcome of the chemo she received for breast cancer in 2010. <sigh> Add that to my older sister’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and I just shut down, too overwhelmed to even focus on the oxygenating breath of life.

My journal showed me I was going all wrong. As I ranted and raved and begged for the healing of my loved ones, I ended each writing with a list of three. My “What’s important today” lists showed me that breathing was the priority — breathing back into my body and also breathing healing energy to my sisters.

And so I embraced BREATHE as my word for 2023. I started using my HeartMath breath pacer to get back in tune with my body, better manage the stressful emotions, and increase resilience.

Doc Childre, HeartMath Founder, says the HeartMath technology can be life changing:

As you bring your physical, mental and emotional systems into coherent alignment, you begin to experience increased access to your heart’s intuitive guidance.

Tuning into your heart’s wisdom creates a profound shift within that helps you approach situations with more emotional balance, compassion, clarity and personal confidence.

I’m also re-reading the New York Times best selling book, Breath, by James Nestor. I think it’ll help me get back to the basics:

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

I’ve already experienced huge benefits as I BREATHE into the New Year. This word will serve in so many ways as I BREATHE life into all that I choose to pursue in 2023. And sending healing breaths to my sisters feels like a positive way to support them.

And that leads me to today’s JOURNAL PROMPT:

Sending love, light and the healing power of breath.

Leslie

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