Hi and welcome to episode 5 in my series all about the breath and how incredible it is.
Yeah I'm Ali Mills and I'm passionate about breathing and how this can help improve all aspects of our living and today we are turning towards how breath can help us show up in our relationships.
Yeah and it's kind of important right because you know yes we need to know how to self-regulate our thoughts and ease them and allow them to settle and allow our body and our nervous system to kind of release but what impact does that have on the people around us?
Hmm well learning to to navigate and direct the breath like this conductor can help with our reactions towards inflammatory situations,
Our ability to listen and hear what somebody's actually saying and ultimately the way that we can cope and look after ourselves and look after the people who we cohabit with on this earth.
This is like super important it really is because there's billions of us on the planet and every day whether it's over the phone in person in a car there generally for most of us we will be navigating situations every day with other people,
Conflicting agendas and priorities and and different people from different cultures and backgrounds you know political viewpoints and and we're all could do or I think it's really important that we all can access the tool of the breath to help us if we get triggered and to help you know help us navigate any challenging situation.
So I'm not going to talk about the mechanics of the breath very much but I think we've already grasped that when we are under stress or tension or too much pressure we begin to breathe with our sympathetic nervous system basically.
So what happens here as soon as this gets triggered whoop something comes in trigger and even when I say that I can feel my breath beginning to move higher up into my chest.
My belly isn't soft anymore I'm braced for action and I'm beginning to breathe a bit higher and sometimes if I get really stressed or if people get really stressed you can tend to not notice it at all because we're so focused,
So laser focused and ready for some kind of action.
And when this happens our nervous system is basically saying we need to prepare it's like internal system alarm system saying this moment isn't safe and we need to do something about it.
And quite often in our busy and hectic worlds we're a bit overloaded so it isn't like that saber-toothed tiger that's actually coming to bite our head off.
It's repeated continuous little pokes and you may be able to have quite a few coping strategies or you may not notice this nudging,
It's not gentle nudging,
It's pushing on the nervous system.
But what happens when we get stimulated this way we begin to get inflamed.
Our air,
Our breath stays higher up in our chest and our tension begins to hold our shoulders and we may furrow our brow and start getting really tense and this is where you know something can push us over the edge and we,
I mean I don't know if you've ever done that but you've been feeling stressed,
You've been feeling stressed,
You've been feeling stressed,
You're managing,
You're managing and managing and you might go home and somebody will say something and then before you know it like you're spurting out like toxic waste.
I know I've done it huh?
So short words can begin to fly out of our mouths or we've just had enough,
We can't cope with it anymore so we stomp off,
Have a little bit of a temper tantrum and again this all adds to the tension.
Obviously there are times when you know you're having to defend or justify yourself and protect like you've been misunderstood for one reason or other.
What else can happen?
Or you let down all of what is important to you and you decide that you want to people please and make sure that somebody else is okay and you put them before you.
You know there's lots of ways that this stress and tension and not breathing deeper into our bellies can really affect us and this is like the nervous system strategy.
You know this is like conditioned responses to what's going on around us and our nervous system is trying to keep us safe so it's going to do that in whatever way it feels like it can.
Yet when we breathe and this power of the breath,
When we begin to exhale with a longer exhale than we have in the inhale and we start following the breath with much more curiosity and following it moving in and out,
We begin to feel the chest soften and the belly begins to move more freely and from this place we can begin to heal our responses.
We can kind of go,
Oh it's the pause we need,
The pause we need to feel what chemicals are being activated in our system and to activate that vagus nerve,
The nerve down the front of your body to begin to soften all of the experience.
The exhale lengthens.
We are able to begin to listen more deeply to ourselves and the other and then we get ourselves into a place where we're less reactive,
We're not putting fuel onto the fire so we're a bit like going,
Oh hang on a second,
Do I really,
Is this really the response that is needed and we've become much more present so we can see,
Hear,
Feel with a whole being rather than in this tense and toxic state.
And when we begin to get more soft and into this more parasympathetic nervous system state we can be more open and have more compassion for the other.
I mean hurt people hurt people right so when someone's hurt and then they hurt you and you hurt them and then it goes ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong it's not much fun for anybody is it.
So the breath begins to read our nervous system as safe and begin to allow some regulation in our situation that is that we find ourselves in.
And this really really matters in relationships because this not only is for you but actually when you stand down your guard is standing down then you begin to send off signals to other people's nervous system.
You know they go oh I'm not under threat here so I don't need to prepare for action.
You know so it has this rippling effect that moves out and gets more expansive.
So there's a caveat here what I really want to say because it can quite often sound like like when I'm talking and I've heard people say it to me as it's like well sometimes people do do bad things or naughty things and things that are upsetting me and sometimes action does need to be taken and I completely I totally totally agree this isn't about me saying you know you have to be perfect or you have to force calm or you need to fit yourself into a neat little box of managing your behaviour.
You know it's not at all like that and I know people that have been working on themselves 10 times longer than I have and they all say it's really important you know that you still feel your emotions you know that those emotions are an energy in motion and so it's important that you still can act you know you know that they're there and we're not trying to push them away or push them out by using the breath.
What we're trying to do is be kinder to ourselves so we can be more accepting of the situation and navigate that situation with more dignity and grace so we can move forward without getting caught up in this whirlwind of ever ever fueling words,
Actions,
Deeds and by using the breath we can begin to to make these bridges or build these bridges or build this foundation you know from feeling triggered and being totally responsive and doing and saying things that we don't mean to staying connected and going okay this isn't right I'm not feeling happy but I can use my words and I can use my breath and we can start looking we can start sort of exploring and being curious about our old patterns and our old woundings and go okay I see you little one I see the one that is hurting inside you because of this reason or because of this that or whatever it is and I can start to begin to formulate new responses to whatever has triggered you and from these places from this simple tool of the breath that is always there always available to us from the moment we are born to the the time that we take our last breath we can begin to use that for not only the good of ourselves but our friends our family our work colleagues and and our wider communities ultimately rippling out yeah so it takes practice and it doesn't always come naturally but wherever you are or whatever you do the next time you feel that bite that bite of oh oh I'm going to respond in this way see if you can take that breath and stay with the breath even putting one hand over your heart and one hand over your belly to give yourself that little bit of extra tender loving care and and practice anyway I'm going to go now I hope that all made sense and thanks for listening namaste have a good day bye for now
