One of the main points of breathwork is to integrate Breath Awareness and Conscious Breathing into our everyday lives. This adds a special quality to every experience. It keeps us connected to our spirit, it allows us to squeeze more juice out of life, and it helps us to be the best version of ourselves in all that we do.
Listening
During meetings or conversations, use your breath as a listening tool and to deepen your listening. Use your breath to take in a sense of the person’s words. Also, notice what happens to your breathing when you are triggered by something that someone says, or when you are waiting to interject your own ideas in response. Feel your breath from your heart. Use the breath to listen from your heart.
Public Speaking
When it is your opportunity to speak, feel like you are using the breath to power your voice. Put yourself into a high-energy state and use your breath to channel this energy and to project your voice. Use the inhale to charge up, feel it fill you with confidence, and straighten and adjust your posture. Be conscious of breathing with your diaphragm, and feel your belly button moving toward your spine as you speak.
Boredom
If your mind starts to wander or you get bored, turn to your breath and use the opportunity to practice a mindfulness technique. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel the breath in your belly. Take in fresh energy and decide to focus. Become the watcher of your thoughts, judgments, and the nature of the mind wandering. Keep returning to the feeling of the breath in your belly.
Standing in Line
When you are in the middle of an unruly crowd, or you are waiting and there is nothing you can do about it, it’s easy to get impatient and irritable. Instead, make a different choice. It’s a wonderful opportunity to affect change in the world without anyone knowing. Focus on your heart, and expand your inhales as you breathe compassion toward yourself and toward the people around you, who are in the same predicament.
Busy Mind
Give yourself three long, slow expansive breaths, sending the breath low into your belly, filling it consciously. Focus on your body, on the physical feelings and sensations of expansion, as the breath overflows upward and fills your chest, then let the breath out slowly and very consciously. Then do a few minutes of paced breathing, five seconds in and five seconds out. End by practicing internal and situational awareness. Yes! When you breathe in, feel a “yes!” deep inside of you. Make the breath itself an expression of that “yes!” As you exhale say yes to giving; as you inhale say yes to receiving. Let every breath be a big yes to yourself, to your body, to life. Breathing is the language of the soul. The way you breathe can express a yes or a no. Play with both. How do you breathe when you feel a no inside of you? How do you breathe when you feel a big yes? Notice the difference. Take some time right now to experience what a “yes” breath looks, feels, and sounds like.