Howe Sound, Canada
One Deep Breath | Breathe
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We have spent our lives totally involved in the material world, yet we feel deep down we are of the shared spirit.
"Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts."
"One Deep Breath" is a weekly mindful newsletter that brings heart connected content straight to your inbox. Each edition features easy to read insights, and personally practiced tools to share and support you in deepening your felt connection to the present moment and the wonders of the world around you.
Welcome to this weeks newsletter, on Breath!
I feel it may be helpful and relevant to bring you in to my personal journey with breath..
As I've shared in some of my social videos, my struggle has largely been overcoming chronic sinus pressure, pain, and congestion behind my right eye, that has caused a difficulty with my relaxed and natural breathing, and created a lot of personal suffering over the years.
During this time span of 8 years, I met with different doctors exploring potential causes through traditional medical approaches, ENT's, Neurologists, Respirologists, Allergists, including in 2020 undergoing sinus surgery. I experienced at times temporary, but little sustained relieve. Through the years I stayed curious and open to explore non traditional Naturopathic approaches. The frusteration, and energy depletion, left me feeling defeated, and at times hopeless to find a resolve.
"My life feels like it should be good from the outside, but in all honesty I am fighting myself on the inside. I don't understand what's going on. I haven't changed anything from how I've always been, but now it's not working. It's really frusterating.
All I want is my health. I am willing to give up any luxuries for peace. Peace is all I want.
My chest is so tight it feels like my lungs want to collapse, I canāt get a breath in from my nose because my sinuses, and lungs feel dry and resisting air. Iāam done fighting." -April 24, 2022 GM Journal Entry
āI just want it to go away. - the suffering, the pain, the congestion, the pressureā.
-July 2, 2023 GM Journal Entry
After countless years of working with medical professionals of various disciplines, Iāve come to terms I may have to take responsibility and ownership as a contributor of my own symptoms. Through years of pushing myself through unchecked chronic stress, inner critic fear stories, and an inability to slow down, kept me living in years of shallow breathing.
Over the years, I was hearing all the hype of breathwork, and reading on it's health benefits and healing potential.
If I am honest I was quietly terrified of breathwork; because I knew I would have to face a barrage of my inner critics shaming me for not being able to do the breathwork practice properly. Further highlighting how I was "broken."
A large part of this work is coming from my own personal healing journey, the cumulation of self experimentation, trial and error, and deep research, of trying to find a way to bring my body back into balance, and health without having access to my relaxed breath..
So what did I learn?
After years of struggling through my own self experimentation in dealing with chronic pain, a travel into my own trauma and emotional healing, a path that eventually led me to train in a model of IFS coaching/therapy, and a deep dive into stress science research.
I now am in a place to say.. I don't believe there is a way.
Hence the name of this Newsletter.
As my own reminder that anytime I am in imbalance, a path home,
is "One deep breath."
Part of this personal journey has inspired me to continue to write in a blog series focused on the 8 L's of Stress Resilience. Stay Tuned in the near future!
Meeting the power of our Breath..
Breathe in Health
Health and wellbeing, is fundamentally tied to our relaxed breathing.
Health is the experience of our bodies ability to relax into homeostasis, or dynamically operate in a natural balance of adaptable Allostasis.
Allostasis is our bodies ability to regulate our nervous system balance. Fluctuating betweeen Sympathetic nervous system (Action/adaptation mode), and equal and opposite slowing down into the Parasympathetic nervous system (Rest, recover, and replenish mode).
Breathing rate has a direct influence on which state or spectrum of our Nervous system we live in.
As a result of a (Real or Imagined) perceived stressor, the brain initiates the sympathetic nervous system (Fear, Fight or Flight response), a chain reaction of chemical and hormonal sequences that transpire via our HPA axis and endocrine system. Shifting and regulating our major organ systems into ENERGY Production mode.
This is healthy and adaptive in the short term, but carries significant negative consequences when kept in the "ON" position, as the body tries to cope with chronic stress (constant production of energy), without adequate time to rest and recover.
Our breath's natural exhale acts as our stress response "BRAKE", sending a direct signal from our lungs, via the Vagus Nerve, (Our main Heart/Lung/Gut/Brain communication system) to our brain, signalling that the body is safe. We can now activate the Parasympathetic nervous system. We can relax, and restore.
Each exhale we are activating our rest and relax system. Elongating the exhale in relation to the inhale further signals to the brain, this sense of calm and safety.
A Caution with Calm.
A calm breath alone doesn't indicate optimal health/vitality.
Steven Porges in his work with Polyvagal Theory, discovered another branch of the Parasympathetic rest/relax state which is Hypo Arousal or Dorsal Vagal Shut down.
Dorsal Vagal state is commonly experienced as burnout/exhaustion, and is the last state the body goes after chronic, prolonged, hyper activation of the stress response.
This can look like calm, but is actually the body's way of giving up, showing signs of immobilization, defeated, flat, or depressed.
Healthy Allostasis, a balanced and regulated nervous system, operates with flexibility, variation, and resilience in relation to the present moment stressors. Polyvagal Theory names this our healthy "Window of Tolerance."
HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is the most commonly used metric for measuring recovery responsiveness, and overall Nervous system health. Wearable technologies like Apple Watch, Whoop, and Oura ring track these fluctuations accurately.
Practice Invitation:
Resonant breathing is considered the gold standard of breathing when it comes to health, where our heartbeat and breathing patterns fall in sync.
I have personally really enjoyed the simple Box breathing practice, for it's simplicity and peaceful empty space between breathes.
Visualizing my breath following a box pattern:
4sec Pause 4sec Exhale
4sec Inhale 4sec Pause
I welcome you to explore a breath work pattern that works for your unique Mindbody.
Breathe in Energy
Caffeine acts as a tiredness mask, rather than an energy source.
Caffeine acts by blocking adenosine receptors (Sleepy signals) in the brain, while the actual fatigue builds up in the background. Often leading to a crash, or increased tiredness later when the caffeine wears off.
Breathing through inhaling oxygen is our true Life force energy.
Breathing brings in new oxygen which combines with glucose, and gets distributed by our blood vessels to fuel ATP energy generation in our cells. (Cellular respiration).
Every cell, muscle, and organ (including the brain), in our body relies on the oxygen delivered by our blood, making our body a complex oxygen sharing system.
Breathe in Connection
In our modern world we have become largely identified with our thinking/problem solving minds, which disconnects us from the doorway to our felt connection to our bodies, presence, life/spirit.
Our heart space and breath remind us, how to return.
Connection to life, our present moment surroundings.
Breath is perhaps our most direct and intimate connection to the present moment and the immediate world around us.
The air we breathe is a shared resource interconnecting us with the collective atmosphere, including all other plants, trees, animals, and organisms that rely on energy through oxygen/co2 gas exchange.
As we lovingly breath in life from the oxygen provided by trees, we return the gift of life to them via co2.
Connection to Interconnected Energy/Shared Spirit.
The Latin root spir or spire means "to breathe", giving us the origin of the word Spirit.
What if, to Breathe is to allow life force energy/Spirit to effortlessly flow through all of us..
Breath is our direct connection to the safety of the present moment.
Breath has the direct ability to activate our parasympathetic nervous system of calm, balance, and health.
Perhaps, if we stay curious, Breath may have a relationship and connection to an energy/spirit/source beyond our individual bodies, and separate selves.
Breath is our ever available anchor for anxious and scattered thoughts.
Reminding us of our access to presence, and encouraging us to live in the moment, connected to ourselves, and life around us.
Breathe as would the animals, as would the trees of nature. Breathe in the beauty of life.
Spirit/Life/Love is all around us, our job is to learn how to let it in..
Breathe in Healing
So then, what pulls us out of our connection to our body and relaxed breathing?
This is a large topic, but at its core is PAIN, feelings we don't want to feel.
Combined with the Nervous system/Mind's efforts to brace/protect from, or escape/solve the pain, through keeping our attention in the disconnected thinking/problem solving mind.
A mind driven to get somewhere other than here.
Healing is in large part a practice of being with, and breathing through discomfort.
Instead of thinking about it.
Practice gently breathing with it..
Know that the emotion is not all of you.
Allow it to move through you.
This is a powerful stage of stress resilience and healing, in allowing ourselves to FEEL again in our bodies. Completing the stress cycle, through consciously inviting our emotions to be felt, moved through us, and then released.
How spacious is my breathing?
Can I allow myself to breathe diaphramatically from my belly?
How am I living in my body right now?
How in sync/connected to the greater flow of life is my system in each moment? (Staying open to understand when it closes off in self protection.)
"One Deep Breath" Newsletters all share in the guiding intention to gently support us into exploring the practice of Surrender.
Each week staying curious to a new concept that invites us to return to our embodied beingness, a deeper felt connection to ourselves, and the joy in connecting more fully to the energy of life around us.
Spacious Breath Invitation: Breathe in Spaciousness & Inner Peace
Breathe in Spaciousness
Meditation - 5 minute Somatic Breathing exercise for Whole body health & healing.
Allocate time for a 5 minute breathing meditation.
This is a Meditation from Karena Neukirchner's Somatic Healing Meditations.
I am grateful for her offerings, and will share a link for those wanting to experiment with the practice through listening to the Meditation on Spotify Here.
The guided instructions may initially feel awkward to the mind, I encourage you to stay open to the practice as an embodied and connected experience.
I find it a powerful way to connect to the felt experience of my body, and invite inner spaciousness.
Sharing in a Collective breath.
With Love,
Greg
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