Breathing and Inner Peace

When I'm nervous or upset, my breath gets shallow.  I may even hold it.  During my meeting with a lifecoach yesterday, every time we talked about something I found intimidating she had to remind me to breathe.  It's not uncommon.  Most people rarely use their full breathing capacity (except maybe during strenuous exercise), and it's even more rare to witness a person under extreme stress pausing to take a breath.  Can you imagine how many terrible decisions we could all avoid if we just took a moment to breathe before acting or reacting to something?

I was such an angry young person - always just one piece of unpleasant news away from a complete meltdown. Those meltdowns became all-encompassing fits of rage. They got so bad at one point that I completely blacked out, emerging on the other side of an episode without any recollection of what I had done. After that happened, I ran. I avoided situations and people who caused me distress because I didn’t want to lose control again. I was afraid of what might happen. I was afraid of what the consequences would be. I was afraid of myself. I lived with that fear through my twenties. It wasn’t until I took my sabbatical at age 34, when I traveled alone to Thailand to spend two weeks in silence with the mountain monks, that I really became acquainted with my true, centered self. 

Since that trip, I've held fast to the belief that most of us are perfectly capable of creating balance and happiness in our lives if we just SHUT UP AND BE STILL for a damn minute.  If it's not life or death, there's no need to immediately jump into action.  It's important to give ourselves time and space to feel whatever we feel without judgment.

So... My lifecoaching homework (layering on my existing assignment to rebuild my morning and evening meditation practices in 5-minute intervals every week - I'm up to 15 minutes now) is to notice my breathing.  Whenever anything exciting happens, I pause and return to my breathing, making sure it is even and relaxed.  I have some pretty exciting activities planned, so it should be interesting.