How to focus on your breathing

In this blog I'm going to share with you how you can calm your mind and your body in just a few seconds. In the first part of looking at our breathing, I talked about three of the reasons to focus on your breathing (Read more here). In that I covered getting more relaxed, being able to manage your pain and also to be able to have greater focus and concentration. 

In this blog I'm going to show you simply how to get started.

So the first way to get started with breath work is simply be aware of it.
Are you breathing up here, in the top part of your chest? 
Or are you breathing further down into your lungs and expanding your abdomen? 

Because like I said previously, breathing deeply into the bottom of your lungs is important, that's where we get the most benefits. That triggers the receptors that tells our minds and our body that we can calm down, that were not in danger. 

When we're breathing from up here in your shoulders, that's where we would breathe if we were running from something, if we were in fight or flight, if we're anxious, that's where we take our breath from. 
Just being consciously aware of where you are breathing. 

If you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling concerned, then being able to just take a breath into your abdomen let it expand and bring it back out again. Allow your thoughts to follow that breath, in and out, and maybe just take three deep breaths, you will automatically feel calmer. 

The great thing about this is you can do it anywhere, you could be at your computer, you could be in bed, you could be talking to someone, could be at the bus stop, you could be watching TV, it doesn't matter. 

If you want to incorporate a little bit longer, a little bit more time, it only needs to take a few minutes, then take yourself somewhere quiet. You can choose to lie, sit or stand, but make sure you have good posture, so that your organs aren't all compacted on top of each other. 

Then just again start by observing your breath, breathe in to your abdomen, a count of five and breathe out. Then in that calmer state do a body scan, and just notice where you might be holding on to some tension in your body or where there's aches, where there's pains, where there's stresses. 

You can then help this by squeezing that area if you feel some tension. It actually sounds counter-productive to begin with, but actually squeezing those muscles. Either within your body, you can just sort of tense your shoulder, if it's your shoulder or physically have another hand on it as well and then breathe in and out of that pain and that ache. Consciously follow your breath into it and out of it, and just observe how you feel from having done that for a few breaths for a minute maybe. And then return back to the central breathing or following your breath in and out of your abdomen. 

So that is two ways to start being more aware of your breathing. Firstly, being able to use it anytime to calm your mind, calm your body. And secondly to maybe take a few more minutes, if you've got particular aches and pains, or even if you're just wanting to spend some time going into a more mindful place, then the second one of just going in and out of your body and being aware, doing a bit of a body scan will really help with that.

Anna
Pura Vida Living
I help busy people to incorporate simple health and well-being habits into their life so they can, not only feel calmer in their mind and their body but, as a result that could be more productive and more efficient within their day to day life

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