Grant Yourself Another Chance, You Are Still Breathing

If you are breathing, you grant yourself a chance to try again. Breathing is a fundamental part of living. We can survive about a week with no food, a few days without water, but try 5 minutes without breathing. Yet we don’t prioritize the importance of our breathing much. Thankfully, it can occur without our knowledge. Imagine if you must manually breathe all the time. We wouldn’t ever sleep. We would risk dying or waking up every minute as we struggled to gasp for air. Life really would not be worth living. But we lucked out; our bodies will just do it for us and that is amazing on its own.

The connection between the mind and body is awfully complex. Your brain right now can tell you that you can always see your nose, nonetheless, it doesn’t block your view (unless you actively look for it). Also, the brain regulates all these other functions and processes of your body without you doing anything. We assist in digestion by chewing, but we don’t knowingly make stomach acid or push food through the rest of the tract (until the last step, *wink). So, your body is aware of all these things, but it will not tell you how it does it.

It starts to seem like the mind and body are two separate pieces. Your brain knows where your organs are, but it won’t tell yourself where. You cannot tell your skin to heal from a cut faster or slower. It just does. The body has knee-jerk reactions to stimulus that we don’t control, like when we touch something hot. The body heals itself all night, while the mind is busy dreaming.

Here is the point. Your mind and body are connected through your breathing. Your body can do it on its own and your mind can override it as you see fit, like during exercise. Now when I think about these separate entities working together, this is how they communicate what to do next. It allows us to endure the stressful things around us and not hastily and become the shithead other begin to expect from everyone. People don’t actively want to be shithead people. Mostly, shithead people don’t even know they are shitheads.

The key is to then allow the mind and body to communicate, often. It can be a single minute of focusing on big, full, chest bursting breathing. There is no need to rush the breath. But after a couple inhales that would impress Snoop Dogg. There can be a moment to brace at the top of the breath. This moment is when the connection restarts. Feel yourself then completely empty out your lungs. Right away, a space of tension will start to comply. For some it’s the shoulders spilling down to your hips, or other it may be a relaxation of the face. This can happen in seconds. At first, learn to stay right there; calmly embrace it. Before you know it, your mind wonders and might shut off for a split-second. It’s slightly more peaceful, if only for a moment.

As a person trying to learn more patience, this is unquestionably better when practiced continuously. Just a minute. That’s all it took to start. There is just a better feeling of trust with my body. It’s getting easier to understand stress. Sometimes, it’s like I can hear it, but it’s not a voice. It’s a sensation. The body then points to where to go.

This is why I focus on telling clients to let your heartbeat fast and your breath be full. Losing control of the breath is now breaking the link of mind and body. The body freaks out for more air and the brain get anxious and develops its own pattern of stress. Then we admit to ourselves that we can’t do something challenging. We give up. However, if you maintain control of your breath, you can reminder yourself that you are okay. You can remind yourself that air is there and will keep coming. It will remind you that you can endure tough things and survive it. Grow. Improve.

Now every time you earn your breath back, you build self-trust. This builds self-confidence because you will be inclined to slow down and focus on what decision to make next. It gets easier. Now because you are still breathing, you can grant yourself a chance to try again. And again. And again. You might even get to a spot, where you can try again through each breath. For the rest of your life you could breathe, restart, breathe, and try again.