One thing you can bring more of in your life right now is the focus on the breath as it is the direct line to your emotional body. One of the fundamental perspectives in yoga is we are multi-dimentional beings, we are not just physical beings, we are breath, mind, senses, we have emotions, we have deeper intellect, and then there is something deeper than all of it, which remains happy and free and unbounded regardless of the outer circumstances. In yoga, these layers are referred to as the koshas …the physical, the energetic, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual.
When you respond to stress or feel stressed, it just means you are stuck emotionally, things are not moving. And most of us seem to get stuck emotionally during the crazy Month of December, but we don’t necessarily have to join in on the madness running around feeling mad and off centered. One of the simplest thing to do is to remind ourselves to breathe. When you modify any one of these dimensions listed above, you will notice how all the others are affected. To really grasp and notice the intricacy of all the layers, practice the following when you have the opportunity,
When someone is stressed out or freaking out for whatever reason, rather than doing a full frontal attack on someone’s emotional barrier – why are you stressed, stop stressing out, don’t stress, not worth stressing out – in fact that’s the worst you can do -sneak through the back door, ask them to move and breathe, instruct them to raise their arms as they inhale and release them down as they exhale.
These are evocative movements, they are not just physical, these gestures hold deeper meaning, they have connections to what is going on, they are connectors to something more than the mind or the body, they are the link to spirit. And when you start to recognize the breath as spirit rather than a physical function of the body, things start to shift and change for the better in your life.
In summary, one of the most efficient ways to unstick yourself is not by huffing and puffing but by inhaling and exhaling….and you need to do loads of it this month.