Working with the Breath and Self Compassion: Affectionate Breathing

We breathe all day long, many times a minute so we can carry on without worrying about getting oxygen and staying alive.

If we had to make a conscious decision to breathe each breath, we wouldn’t have time to do anything else, and the human race would have died out before even getting started.

Evolution had to figure out how to keep the organism alive and decided to put the function of breathing in a remote part of the brain, one that, for the most part, we have no conscious control over.

Mindfulness uses the breath as an “anchor”, a place where we can rest our attention and, when our mind wanders, a place to where we can return.

Since the breath is directly related to states of mind, anxiety, anger, pleasure, gratitude, etc., attending to the breath helps to downregulate our nervous system and decrease states of emotional turmoil, we can pause and avoid getting caught up in the net of reacting in a way we usually regret.

At rest in the pause between stimulus and response, there arises a sense of equanimity, of peace. It is a non-activated space of awareness and acceptance.

When we add positive emotions, we get the added result of building a more positive relationship with ourselves. If we expand our awareness of the breath, we begin to include things like warmth, the awareness that each breath is vital, that the body breathes all by itself, that we get to live moment to moment with each breath, that the rhythm of the breath is always with us, we bring to deepen our appreciation for the mere fact of our existence, making room for gratitude.

Gratitude is a gift. It can change our perspective even in the most difficult of times. The book, The Gratitude Project helps us expand our awareness of the abilities we have to manage well when the stressors of this human existence beset us.