“Just Breathe It Away” are the wise words once uttered to me.
And which I’ll never forget. They’ve stayed with me since and have brought me great freedom from life’s difficult times.
The truth is there are going to be difficult times on your life’s journey. Moments of unease, frustration, anger, fear, weakness or pain.
But it’s up to you to choose your response, your approach to whatever’s thrown your way.
You can let things consume you, get at you, aggravate you, have power over you. Or you can choose to Breathe It Away and thereby release yourself from any hold.
The breath is a very powerful tool, that we are all so fortunate to have. At your beckon call it comes forth, in any state that you so ask for.
Allow the breath to guide you, steer you, strengthen you, free you.
You won’t always have the security, the comfort, the peace of being under your covers, wrapped in your blanket, on your meditation cushion or under the dimmed and assuring lights of your yoga class. Sometimes you have to face the music – directly.
So say you’re sitting opposite someone and they say something that gets your back up, that annoying or ridiculous thing they’ve said before and you just know they’ll say again! “How dare they!” When they know how much it upsets or annoys you why are they doing it? Why aren’t they changing?” Or you see something that makes you see red, you hear something that makes your heart sink, your stomach churn. And you feel like there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. “No escape” you say. “I just can’t cope, I’m just so argh right now, my heart is thumping uncontrollably and I need to shout out!” “I need to leave this space. I need to go back to my room, shut the door and stay under my covers, until they change.”
And this is perfectly natural. As human beings, you will feel things, experience different emotions, be ruffled in different ways.
But another truth for you, which may seem shocking: They don’t need to change. They simply are, it simply is this way. You need to change.
You can only ever work on yourself.
So when you feel so strongly in such a way that it causes you pain. Bring it back to you – see the effect, the unhealthiness this is creating for you. Know that it is time for a new response. You can change the cycle, start afresh!
Start by surrendering to your powerlessness. You don’t need to deny how you feel – feelings will change in time with new habits – you just need to bring acceptance to where you are right now and learn to feel your breath.
Breathe It Away. Breathe It Away.
Wherever you are, whatever the difficult situation bring a conscious awareness to your breathing, slow it down and count to 10. And just stay present. You don’t need to escape.
In doing so you will find new answers, new meaning, new responses and new guidance you may not have known could exist.
Try it – Breathe It Away – and find your release.
