Oh well, we all breathe and it’s a pretty normal thing to do, hey? So how important can it be?
In the last lesson we talked about all the ways in which you bring yourself into BEing present. We’ve discovered some cool stuff to help you with your breathing and here it is.
Here on Fast Track, we have done the healing work that has released fright imprints which has released tensions in your body and we’ve learned this incredibly powerful and stable riding position that is knocking everyone’s socks off with your magnetized butt and how good you feel on your horse.
What the right kind of breathing can do is help you access your magnetized riding position under difficult circumstances. When you combine that with ALL the ways of feeling and BEing Present as per the previous lesson, you can have the emotional stability that goes with that beautiful, stable riding position.
What this would mean is that – say your horse was reacting to something suddenly, maybe you were competing, or someone was watching you, or you found yourself on a very difficult part of a trail or basically if there was anything that was going on with a higher energy than you are used to – then you can bring yourself into that powerful physical place in the saddle and the powerful emotional place in your mind – you can anchor yourself into that powerful and relaxed place with your breathing.
So breathing becomes more than that thing that we do automatically to stay alive…
Breathing through your nose naturally and easily is an essential part of using your breath as an anchor like that and it’s very good for all kinds of health issues too. So here is a Youtube that will give you a way to breathe naturally and easily through your nose.
Here is a link to a very short public Youtube showing you The Buteyko Method of breathing.
I love his Irish accent, but if it is a bit much for some of you where English is a second language then just Google another video – there’s heaps of them out there.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do that exercise 5 times, a few minutes apart, for 5 days in a row.
THEN allow your gentle attention to wander over how you feel inside. The intention is to use your awareness of your breath, to be able to find that inner awareness space under pressure. Practicing will make that possible.
The health issues improved or even fixed by Buteyko breathing range from asthma (my uncle who spent vast amounts of his life on a machine, got rid of the machine and got a new lease on life with the Buteyko method) a reduction in allergies, improved dental hygiene (mouth breathing adversely affects your teeth) to…
DRUM ROLL PLEASE…
This way of breathing can reduce or even eliminate snoring – all the way to reducing or eliminating sleep apnoea!
So now your horsemanship course is solving your marital problems too! 🙂 Get your partners to do this breathing exercise with you. And if the snoring (or asthma) isn’t reduced enough, find a Buteyko practitioner near you and do the whole course.
Remember…
If Physical Feel is part of our natural talent for feeling our connection to others, then tightness in OUR breath, could well be us feeling the tightness in OUR HORSE’s breath, caused by their tension. So we would pause, open to the idea that it may not be our breathing problem / tension, back off if we had to and find some way to help our horse to relax again. The breathing in this lesson is just one of those ways.
Photo credit: Larissa Judd’s lovely horse in South Gippsland