The Original Message of the Breath

Categories: Blog Dec 06, 2021

Chances are, if you breathe the way you were born to breathe you are probably enjoying a good quality of mental, emotional, and physical health. Breath truly is life and it truly enhances the quality of life you experience. When we move away from this design we compromise our wellbeing. 

 

What is the design of breath?

 

We are designed to be nasal breathers, with our tongue resting on the roof of our mouths when it’s not in use. We have a breathing muscle, the diaphragm, that is designed to pull air down into our lungs, to the bottoms, backs, fronts, and tops of our lungs. We also have accessory breathing muscles that are used to help us pull in more air when we are in the middle of of emergency. At rest though, when we are resting in our design, we don’t really call too much on these emergency breathing muscles. 

 

A natural breath of life is an easy breath that invites air down into the bottom of the lungs. It doesn’t grasp, gasp, hold, or cause tension. It’s relaxed, smooth, quite, easy, fluid. It invites (inspires) and it lets go (expires). It’s gentleness is what makes us great. 

 

How do we move away from our design? 

 

Many of us lose our way when it comes to our breath. Trauma, fear, stress, catastrophic events, imagined events, they can all “take our breath away.” Remember those accessory, or emergency, breathing muscles? If their door gets knocked on too hard, or too often, they tend to keep going. Fear does this, it wrecks everything; the mind, the emotions, the body. When we are faced with fear, or when we can’t let fear go, we lose our ability to breathe in our natural, resting default state of breathing and we begin compensating in other ways like breathing with our mouths, or resting out tongues on the floor of our mouths, or bracing our stomach muscles while we are breathing with our neck and chest muscles. This is the path to non vitality, inflammation, anxiety, sickness, and “blah.” 

 

Is it hard to return to our natural design of breath? 

 

It might be. But it can be done with one intent breath at a time. Your body knows how to breathe it just may take some practice to remind it. And while it could be challenging to return to the natural default way of breathing, it’s NOT complicated. There is no secret, fancy, method or algorithm that must be followed. Simply look at a baby breathe and then do that: Close your lips, put your tongue where it belongs, relax your belly (relax your whole body), let the air in your lungs out, then let your diaphragm invite the air back in. Immediately, this will tell your nervous system that you are safe and the quality of your life will begin to be restored and enhanced with each breath you take. Breath by breath your design will mend itself. 

 

Can breathing really make a difference in my life? It’s just breathing…

 

YES. Your breath is the foundation for everything about you. It upholds all your body’s functions and processes, it influences the quality of your thoughts, and tones of your emotional state. There is nothing about you that isn’t held up by your breath. Not only that, each breath you take sends a message to your nervous system. The message is either, “I’m safe,” or “I’m not safe.” Think about that - You can send the message “I’m safe” to every single cell in your body and to every single thought in your head. Or, you can send the message, “I’m scared” to every cell in your body and every thought in your head. Your breath is the message. If you want the best life possible, send the right message to yourself. This means if you want to change the quality of your life, you need to examine how you breathe. Make sure you are breathing the way you were born to breathe to send and receive the message you were born live from, “I am safe.” 

 

 

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