Breathing

Awareness starts with the breath, that’s why ancient traditions from the east, focus their practice on breathing, the Yogis from India do a practice where they focus their attention on breathing cycles which they call Pranayama; Prana (Energy) Yama (control). It’s the mindful awareness of the breath,  The Tibetans do a practice called Apana which means “The outgoing breath”, so you can see how important its to start becoming aware of the breath.

The breath is the flow of life passing through ourselves,  is the energy that creates the rhythm of life and the most important aspect of our existence… 

We need to become aware that life is a process of inhaling and exhaling, the first thing that we do when we are born is breathe; this is what marks the start point of life and also the endpoint of it.  

In our internal functionality, we have 2 systems that control the rhythms of the energy that passes through our body. The Parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of restoring the body to a calm and composed state and the sympathetic nervous system is in charge of the body's fight and flight response. 

The sympathetic nervous system accelerates the heartbeat to prepare the body to act and respond to any circumstances that appear in life, this system is the one that predominates our human nature, for now, that’s because in our evolution process this system was needed for our survival and keep us alert to any circumstances that appear in our reality. The functionality of this system, cut off the circulation of air to keep the brain alert and clear, using the mind to have a bigger perspective of what is happening, the actual problem is that we use this system in our modern living in a constant motion, this keeps us in a survival response mode,  where the adrenaline and actives hormones are the ones that run the show. 

As we already see, if we overused this system unconsciously in any circumstances throughout our life, that means we cut off the air, the breathing cycles and we don’t let the flow of energy to pass in a harmonious motion.  Blocking the flow will create an unbalanced in our functionality and this will affect our state of being. A practice to balance this system in a harmonious way is Breathing consciously, taking a moment to inhale and exhale in a conscious state of mind. So when a situation appears to us, we let the flow of energy pass through us doing conscious breathing, and instead of reacting to the situation, we act from mindful, conscious awareness, We bring balance to both systems. And the harmony is restored.

On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system is the one that we need to start waking up and purring our attention more often. In our human functionality, we didn’t use this system to often in the past, that’s because the survival situations don’t allow the Homo sapiens to be in a restful, peaceful state of mind. But now it’s the time to start bringing the harmonies and restore this system to enhance our capabilities to rest and live from a peaceful state of mind. We improve the connection with this system through meditations related to breathing and conscious awareness. 

Both systems are related to breathing, so this will be the start point to finding the balance within.

Our human psyche tends to react instead of the act from a conscious place, and that’s because as we mentioned before, our systems are more on one side than the other. 

Reflection time *I want you to take a moment on this topic and become aware of the importance of breathing.