Take A Deep Breath | Breathing Practice

How often do you find yourself holding your breath? When we withhold our breath or breathe shallowly, we block vital life force from flowing into and through our lives. This causes our emotions to get stuck and stops us from being fully able to process life. In this podcast episode, I guide you to reflect on your current state of being and take you through a super simple breathing practice to help you move into a space of deeper relaxation and presence.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast. I am here to, I don't want to say tell you, But kind of tell you, A little bit tell you, To take a deep breath. So this is going to be a little bit of a different episode than what we're used to in the sense that there's also going to be a little bit of a practice in this episode, But I just want you to take a second and kind of reflect about how often you catch yourself holding your breath. So this can be two things. This can be either just you genuinely holding your breath and not really allowing yourself to breathe, But it can also be like shallow breathing and not really, Not really taking in the amount of air that we need to be well. So the reason why my business is called, Well, Wild Freewell, It's not really called that, But anyways, That's like the tagline, I guess. One of the things, Like the foundation of my business and the reason why is because those are the words that mean the most to me, Like freedom and being able to do what I want. And like for me, Wild means like being so wholly ourselves, So authentic. And then well, I mean, I think it's obvious just being and feeling and living well. And so, Yeah, I wanted to dive into this because this is definitely something that trips me up. When things get really hard, I think this is like our default. It's like one of the first things that we do is kind of like, You know, Hold it all in. Like we, We don't allow ourselves to process or to flow through whatever is coming up. And it's, I mean, It's, It is what it is, But it's not the best way to be going about doing things. And it's really challenging for you to move through emotions, To process life if you're holding your breath. And so I wanted to take you through like a little practice, But the first things I want, The first thing I want you to do is to take a second, Pause me if you have to, And really pay attention to the sensations that are present in your body right now. So if you were to just to, If you were to do just a quick scan from like, I usually go from top to bottom, That's what feels good for me. So from the top of your head all the way down to your feet, Just like take in a breath and kind of send that breath. Imagine it kind of flowing through your body like a wave from the top of your head to your feet and pay attention to anywhere that feels sticky, Stuck, Stagnant, Uncomfortable, Tight, Tense. So all of those kinds of heavy body emotions, Pay attention to anywhere that you find those. So just to help you maybe connect, If you've never really gone through this process before, A lot of places where we commonly hold tension are the base of the head where the head and the neck kind of meet the neck itself, Shoulders, The jaw, Muscles, And the like clenching your teeth. The muscles behind your eyes, That's a big one for me. Sometimes we can feel built up tension or trapped emotions in our chest or in our stomach. And so much of this too is connected to how you process the world and how you even feel your intuition. I think there's a huge connection between where we tend to hold tension and where we are also denying our innate gifts and our innate capabilities. So if you're somebody who tends to get a lot of gut feelings, You might have a little bit of tension in your stomach, Just right below your ribs. You might have a little bit of tension in your diaphragm in that area just because you're maybe denying some of your gut feelings. So for people who are clairvoyant, Maybe your eyes are more tense if you tend to see things or if you tend to hear things, Maybe it's your ears or whatever. But just feel into your body. No one knows you better than you. That's one of the things I talk about here all the time. I don't know where your tension lies, But you do. If you slow down and if you actually go through this practice that I just said of allowing your attention to kind of flow through your body, You will feel where it is. Maybe you have it, Especially to like even with like if you're intuitive in like more of like a again clairvoyant kind of knowing way or claircognizant, You might have some tension in between your eyebrows around the area of your third eye, Which is kind of like our innate knowing, Right? So really feel into where that tension is showing up for you. And what we're going to do is we're going to go through and we're going to breathe together. And I want you to really pay attention to how that shifts before what you're feeling now before breathing and how that shifts after we've done the breathing. So I wanted us to do three breaths, But I'm actually going to shift that. Three breaths is the minimum. If you really want to like reset yourself energetically, Three breaths is going to do that for you on a really micro level. But I'm getting the sense that we could all use maybe a little bit of a longer practice. So I just want you to take a second and we're going to breathe together and just kind of play along with me. And don't push yourself beyond like, You know, Your own capabilities, Like stay within a place that feels comfortable, But like you're still breathing deeper than you normally would. That's really, Really important. It might feel uncomfortable to breathe this deeply if you haven't been doing it for a really long time, If your body's not used to it. So do push yourself, But not to the point of discomfort. And then at the same time, Remember that we're not staying in our comfort zone either, Because that's kind of what's gotten us into this position in the first place. So what I want you to do is breathe in really deeply through your nose. I'm going to ask you to hold it at the top. So I want you to hold it for, I don't want to give you a specific amount of time, But I usually tend to hold it for longer, Probably minimum four seconds. I need that suspension for me. I need that suspension of air in order to really sink into the release on the exhale. If I breathe in deeply and exhale immediately, I don't get the same relief personally again, And you're going to want to play with this. So maybe before we breathe, Let's talk about this. There are quite a few techniques. One technique for anxiety is called box breathing. And essentially what that is, Is you breathe in for, Let's say four counts, Okay? You can change this to whatever you need it to be, But you breathe in for four counts, You hold it for four counts, You exhale for four counts, And then you hold it again on empty for four counts. And this is supposed to help calm the nervous system. All breathing helps with nervous system work in general. You can also activate your body depending on the kind of breathing that you're doing, But that's not what we're here for today. We're going to be doing some like relaxation stuff. But box breathing is one of the simpler ones. I don't love box breathing personally. I don't find that it works for me. Even if I would say that I do have a tendency towards anxiety, I don't find it works for me because I find the holding on the out-breath actually anxiety inducing. And so this is one of the things that I'm always going to tell you guys, Don't listen to anybody else's bullshit. So just because every expert on God's green earth tells you that box breathing is great for anxiety, If it doesn't help you, It doesn't help you. I don't care who said it. I really, Really don't. I don't care how many degrees they have. I don't care how much they've studied it. If it doesn't work for you, That's the truth. It doesn't matter where the information came from. If it's not a good fit, It's just not a good fit. There's no two ways around it. So don't ever force yourself into doing something that I or anyone else tells you because they are an expert or because they're a scientist or because they know better because nobody knows you better than you. And if you need a refresher on that, There is literally an episode of the podcast called No One Knows You Better Than You. Find it. Listen to it. Love it. Really sink into that. Okay. So we're not pushing beyond. We are not pushing beyond what feels good in our bodies. Okay. So I'm going to take you through a different breathing exercise today. Like I said, We're going to breathe in, We're going to hold, And we're going to exhale and we're going to breathe in immediately thereafter. We're not doing box breathing. We're not holding on the exhale. You can if you want to. That's not the process that I'm going to be taking you through. So the counts are going to be a little bit different, But feel free to do that if that feels good. Okay. So what I would love for you to do is maybe give yourself a second, Do the scan again. So take a deep breath in. And then as you exhale, I want you to really imagine the air flowing through the different parts of your body. So just really flowing that from top to bottom and connecting with anywhere that feels uncomfortable. And we're going to start to breathe in a second. Another kind of bonus step, I guess, Or like a little bit more of a challenging thing is to send the air that you're breathing in. Imagine it going to those places where you feel tension. So if you felt tension in your jaw, When we start the breathing exercises, You can send, Okay, Metaphorically speaking, You can send the air to those places. You can send the inhale to those places. And then on the exhale, Really feeling them release, Really feeling the tension going away. Okay. So yeah, Not so, Let's do this. Let's do it. So I will get you to breathe in really deeply, Hold and exhale through the mouth. Again, Inhale, Hold, Exhale through the mouth. Inhale, Hold, Exhale, Maybe with a little sigh this time. Whatever feels good, Right? Inhale, Hold, Exhale. Again, Inhale, Hold, Exhale. Last one. Inhale, Hold, Exhale. Okay. Take a second now, Pause me if you have to, But just let me know. Let me know. Well, I guess let yourself know and let me know if you want to. I'd love to hear, But, Um, What are the sensations in your body now? How do you feel? Do you feel lighter? Do you feel more relaxed? Do you feel slightly less anxious if we didn't get all the way to relax? Cause it was really short. We did maybe like a minute, Right? So where are you at? What's, What's flowing now that wasn't flowing before? And imagine now taking this a step further, Imagine what your life would be like if you incorporated this into your life on a daily basis. Like if you incorporated this practice more often into, You know, Even doing it multiple times per day or having a trigger, Like when you're in the bathroom, You take three deep breaths. When you're looking in the mirror, Just as an idea, Imagine how different you would feel. Imagine how different your lived reality would be if you took this moment to like really sink into the body to release tension, To ground yourself and center into the present moment. Think of the shifts that you could make. And like, It's hard as shit to do this when you're stressed and when you're really anxious and stuff like that. Normally, Because especially if we've been living in that state for a long time, We are attached to that feeling. We like it a little bit. I know that sounds really shitty. And if that's triggering for you, I'm sorry, But I want you to really think about those moments. Think about when you're triggered, Whether that be with anger, With sadness, With anxiety, With stress, With overwhelm, With overstimulation, Whatever. Think about it for a second and think about how often you deny yourself doing something simple, Like taking a deep breath because you know it will make you feel better and you feel justified in whatever it is that you're feeling. This happens especially with anger. Okay, When we're angry, We tend to want to stay angry because we want to prove a point to somebody else. Not always, Not with all anger, But you know the situation I'm talking about because you are, You know, A sovereign and evolved being and you know yourself well, Because if you're listening to this podcast, You're only here listening to me because you're one of those people, Because otherwise you wouldn't care about anything that I have to say. You would have no interest in these conversations. So think about that for a second though. How often do we kind of hold on to something that we know is bad for us or refuse to release it because we feel justified in having that experience, Right? Sometimes in those moments we really need to make the decision to choose something better for ourselves. Sorry, And that starts with, You know, Taking a deep breath. Something as simple as taking three deep breaths and closing your eyes. For me personally, Because I find that safe, It makes a huge difference. It allows me to connect in even deeper. So that's also another layer and another level if you if you feel like trying that. So yeah, That's today's episode. We are going to kind of leave things here, But I'm so curious to hear about your experience. So if this helped you or if you felt a shift, Please, Please, Please reach out. I would love to hear. Yeah, And if you like this episode, You know, Feel free to rate, Subscribe, All that jazz, Leave a review, Leave a comment, Whatever. I'd love to connect with you. I hope this serves you. I hope you breathe deeply into your weekend and I will see you on the next episode of the podcast. Ciao!