Connecting with Your Breath

 Throughout the day, check in with your breathing.  Is it shallow and tight?  Are you tense, angry, anxious, or depressed?  If so, it is most likely reflected in your breathing.  You might even be holding your breath as a way not to feel your emotions, particularly if they are negative.

Your breathing serves to connect you with yourself and others, so that not breathing fully can be an unconscious defense mechanism for disconnecting from emotions you’d rather not feel.  Even though shallow breathing can lessen your ability to feel your emotions, it  can also repress them so that you create a pressure cooker of emotions internally, creating dis-ease in the body. 

If you realize that your breathing is shallow, take deeper breaths and check in with how you are feeling.  Are you able to expand the lower abdomen as you breathe in, opening the lower chakras with the breath?  With every inhalation, mentally reinforce that you are opening your body to a healthy flow of energy.