Welcome to Day 9
The task for today is to practice and appreciate the effect of Reverse Breathing on you and your horse and notice how your Quiet Mind is getting deeper and deeper and easier and easier to find.
Sit quietly with your horse for at least 10 minutes, noticing the pause at the bottom of your outward breath, feel how the inward breath gets sweeter and easier and just flows as you focus on the outward breath. Set your intention to extend that pause and only breathe as much or as little as you need to. Notice what happens to your horse’s breathing while you’re doing this.
If you’re doing this with another animal, I sooo… particularly want to hear about your experiences. IS anyone doing this with a fly or something really unusual?
Back to the lesson: IF you can do this at the same time – and only IF – be aware of all the different ways that you can feel in your body as you are breathing – your heart beat if that’s easy for you, any energy moving, any thoughts, any emotions, any physical feelings, any thoughts and ideas – knowing that we are all different.
Don’t make it complicated, don’t TRY and feel anything – just be aware of whatever is going on in your body as you are ever so gently aware of your out breath and with your soft, smiling ahhh eyes, go with whatever feelings are flowing for you today – appreciate and celebrate it as the uniqueness that is you.
Keys to Success
1. Right now, as you’re reading this, notice how much better it feels to be allowing the pause at the bottom of your out breath to get longer and longer. Feel how the flexibility of your spine and the expansion of your ribs all feels effortlessly smooth, just as it should be while you are doing this…
2. Keep It Simple though – any time you feel that what you are trying to do is an effort or too complicated, then drop back into just paying gentle attention to your out breath and allow the intention you have set to do the work for you. Just being aware of what the pause at the bottom of your out breath is doing – whether it’s there or not, whether it’s lengthening or not – and soaking, appreciating and celebrating when you notice the pause coming back or getting longer – THAT is what will make the changes you are looking for, as fast or as slow as is perfect for you, right now.
3. For those of us who struggle occasionally in emotional overwhelm, bathing the brain in carbon dioxide by allowing that pause at the bottom of your breath to get longer, is a physical access into a Quiet Mind that gives us more opportunity to find the clarity we need in order to understand what it is that we need to know or do to come out of that overwhelm.
4. Allow the magic of restoring a healthy oxygen/carbon dioxide balance to improve your health and well being. Spend more time during your day noticing your out breath and the pause at the end of it lengthening – and remember to take a moment to soak up and appreciate what you are feeling.
5. For those who are interested in better breathing, here’s a short Buteyko video about clearing your nose so that you can breathe comfortably through your nose and reduce over breathing.
6. What we’re doing in these meditations is cultivating a habit of focussing on the outward breath to trigger a Quiet Mind and the understanding that flows within that Quiet Mind. Then when something happens that makes us get tight and tense, we can focus on our outward breath and that habit can trigger the flow of relaxation and understanding. If our riding seat is secure to start off with, this breathing in an emergency situation, allows us to keep that stability and then the confidence that brings us is communicated to our horse.
7. As you’re paying gentle attention to your own breathing and noticing the lengthening of the pause at the bottom of your out breath, with very soft smiling ahhh eyes, just observe what’s happening to your horse’s breathing.
8. Some horses are not in any state to be able to support a human in such an active way. So if you’re working with a horse that you think might be distressed, then you can take this exercise outside and sit where you can see the sky and the clouds to do this work first – Quieten your Mind and then take that Quiet Mind back to help your horse.
Lesson Resources
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Additional Resources |
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| Buteyko YouTube video (link) | Click here |
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Program Support |
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| Email Jenny | Click here |
Up Next
There’s a natural pause place here, if you need to put Day 10 on your calendar and allow some time to process some healing.
Up next is a new layer of lightness of spirit to a deeper connection to our horse.