Category: Coaching
Benefits of Building Awareness
The body’s connection to mind and spirit can be a practice. We build health through building awareness of our breath . By building breath awareness, you may experience a greater sense of overall ease, lower blood pressure, decrease worry, inflammation, and build calm into relationships. Our breath is a powerful, accessible, and available means to connect and ground ourselves. After all, the word for breathing is inspiration.
Experiment with developing a breath practice in small bytes. Begin by noticing your breath during activities you often do. Movements such as walking, lifting weights, yoga, gardening, or cleaning the house provide opportunities for a breath check-in. Other times to tune in may involve praying, meditating, cooking, petting your dog or cat, hugging your family. With so much work or personal interaction by phone or video, it’s even more important to notice our breath. We can notice, with curiosity where we hold tension in our bodies.
If you are a human on earth, preCOVID or present, you may be living your daily life doing everything you can to tune out, rather than in. It’s not about blaming yourself, it’s simply a reality of how much of our external world operates now. And yet, if we want to build overall health, self-compassion, and live a life more according to what really matters to us, we can choose. Choice, however, requires not only often shifting perspectives, but noticing, and noticing takes tuning in. In her 2010 book An Altar In The World, Barbara Brown Taylor calls the practice of paying attention reverence. She says,
“ The practice of paying attention is as simple as looking twice at people and things you might just as easily ignore. To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should I imagine doing such things? I cannot imagine–unless one is weary crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are.”
For a new bestselling resource on the breath, check out journalist James Nestor’s 2020 book Breath: The New Science of A Lost Art.
Adaptation
How can you stay open and build adaptation into body awareness, in our ever-changing world? I regularly practice shoulder openers like this one…good ‘ole Goal Post Arms. I find that my body needs this type of stretch due to working even more at my laptop and phone in recent months. I am grateful to have work I love, that aligns with my life purpose, while simultaneously honoring that the way in which much of work is delivered now requires extra loving care of how my body responds.
We humans experience discomfort in our bodies for many reasons. One of these is tuning out our bodies as we move throughout our day. What I mean is that we actually ignore how our feet, hands, face, shoulders, hips, spine etc are experiencing our life as well. So when we hold tension in an area for a long period of time, or roll our shoulders forward while working online, we can feel all sorts of unease at the end of our day.
How do you notice cues your body is sending you? How can you use this information and adapt in a new way, as best you can? Something simple yet with impact. Something that promotes self-compassion. Next time you are on your phone, or any screen, try taking a full breath and let your shoulders drop away from your ears. Simply tune in, with a curious friendly attitude. What is present? That in itself is a practice of self-love.
On a deeper level, we know how we move our bodies and hold them is a powerful way we show up in the world. No matter what configuration your body presents to the outside world, what is it that you want to create? Who do you want to be in and for the world?
Three A’s for Now
Three A’s for Now
Awareness, Acknowledge, Action
When I was a nurse in a university medical intensive care unit, a large percentage of patients died, or at least it seemed. My memories of those times, our patients, and the team of brilliantly skillful nurses are colorful and vivid to this day. I remember the young man dying of AIDS during the advent of the disease. I remember his full name, his face, the feeling of gowning up and going into his room. I remember the nurse who chose to be his primary caretaker in the unit. I remember a patient who we kept sedated and medically paralyzed in order for him to recover from tetanus. He walked into our unit months later recovered; a tall smiling man who I instantly recognized, never before seeing him conscious or upright. He was so grateful to all of us. I remember many more moments. I remember my comrades, those super smart, adept RNs who were dogged, tenacious, and present in their moment to moment hands on care. I remember Donna who shared her crackers with me when we were not able to leave the patient’s bedside. I remember the sounds of the ventilators, all the equipment. I remember the magical spirit and effect of teamwork. So last night I cried when reading an article about a nurse in the Bronx, caring for ICU patients during this pandemic. I cried out of empathy, and grief our world is experiencing. This morning I danced to George Harrison’s iconic album All Things Must Pass.
My Three A’s for Now are related to my experience, that I am labeling as empathy; empathy as related to compassion; compassion for self, others’ suffering. Empathy helps us connect with our humanity, our fellow human beings in this predictably unpredictable human life. Empathy is an emotional state to become AWARE of, so that we can ACKNOWLEDGE what we are feeling, and as yoga philosophy says, take right ACTION.
Who are you called to be right now, in this moment? How will you acknowledge and gain awareness of what you are experiencing, whether it be sadness, confusion, joy, anger, comfort, laughter, tears, love? We can only change or shift what we are aware of. Mindfulness, paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, body is acknowledgement…because we are already feeling all those things. Why not note them and take action? Action could be taking a breath. Keep it simple. Look deep into what and who really matters to you, what your strengths are, what you know is good and true about yourself. We are a human circle. We all need each other. We are resilient.