Our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) connects our brain to our body. It turns out this beautiful connection is a two-way street. If you ever feel anxious or nervous or stressed, by little moments or your own thoughts or the crumbling world around us, your brain, via the nerves of your ANS, will likely turn on the Sympathetic part of that system, otherwise known as your Fight or Flight response. This response leads your heart to beat faster, your breathing rate to increase, your blood pressure to rise and other physiologically stressful responses. The beautiful thing is that your lungs and heart can feed back into this system; they can convince your brain that things are calm and peaceful, even when they are not.
How?
Through your breath.
So beautifully simple.
You see in each round of breath, as your breathe in your heart get stimulated to beat a little bit faster. Then, as you exhale, your heart is told to slow down a little. There’s very little change in our everyday moment to moment, but when you sit and consciously breathe or meditate, over the course of several moments, as you allow each exhale to last a little longer than each inhale, the accumulated effect is you physically calming your mind and your body, shifting into the Parasympathetic part of your ANS, which allows for the rest, digest and relaxation response.
This brilliant design is the most magical and simple metaphor to my spirit. It teaches me that, like a greater exhale over inhale promotes inner calm and peace, that giving more than you take in the long run gives more to yourself at the end of the day.
If you allow your own light to brighten others’ days more than you seek others’ light to brighten your own existence, you are rewarded with bountiful joy and a sense of gratitude, for in letting your own light shine you unconsciously give others permission to do the same. In helping others more than you ask for help. In smiling to more strangers around you before needing a smile to round the corners of your pink lips. In paying it forward, in even the smallest of ways, without being asked or prompted to. In showering your love on your tribe, simply because you have a heart that can. All of these little moments, they lead to a profound sense of inner calm, inner joy and a very real and tangible feeling of everything-is-going-to-be-alright.
So breathe in.
Deeply.
With intention.
Breathe in all that serves your spirit.
Breathe out longer, releasing whatever you’re holding onto that no longer serves you.
Radiate in your being, in your beautiful, strong, wise and brilliant bodies. Be your own calm in the storm, if even for but a moment, and relish in the magical whirlwind that is you as you let your light and love and calm spread far and wide, sunny and bright.
