And don’t we all know how to breathe?
Maybe you already know or maybe I’ve shared it before, but I’m a workaholic…a happy one! I like my corporate job, I like being busy, I like planning, making forecasts, assessing different scenarios, creating tools, spinning excel files with numbers until my computer gets vertigo, I like finding solutions and I truly love the pleasure of a freshly solved issue and a long (and working!) excel formula, that has translated the “if/and/or” of my mind to a beautiful number. One might think that this is crazy and probably that’s not far from the truth, but for me it’s how I’ve been all my life.
So what changed then?
My responsibilities have changed or shall I say increased. The “mysteries” I’m solving have grown bigger, more complex and with much more serious impact than just a “wrong number”. What has not changed is my eagerness for perfection, hunger for knowledge, drive to deliver and passion for what I do. If you imagine a scale, that was perfectly balanced between those two in my 20s, now in my 30s, this same scale is starting to weight more towards the responsibilities side and to create a imbalance that has been growing over the last couple of years.
When it appears in people’s lives and prevails, there is usually one word that accompanies it from the very beginning – “stress”. Shortly after that, there comes its sibling “anxiety” and somehow without even noticing, the cousin that no one likes, joins uninvited and is planning to stay – “burnout”.
Years ago it was a tabu to even say the word “burnout”, nowadays it’s normal (thank God!) and used freely, without shame or hiding. Have I had a burnout – I believe so and I also believe it wasn’t only once. I would not bore you with details, as I’m sure most if not all of us, sadly, have been there. What changed for me over the years is:
- One – I’ve started noticing how stress is affecting me without waiting to be completely overwhelmed. I don’t wait for the red light, I alarm myself with the first nuance of orange.
- Two – I’ve changed my approach to stress and have found what works for me.
- Three – I started implementing tools to proactively support and maintain the balance rather than having a “Reaction plan”. One of which is the Yoga Breathing!
Now, where does BREATH come into play?
I suffered with awful back pain last year – long hours of sitting in front of the computer, not moving after work and having the first visitor “stress” enjoying his stay with me were few of the reasons why I woke up one day not being able to get out of bed. From my neck to my lower back all muscles were blocked in contraction and could not be released with any medication. I couldn’t move freely, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even lay in bed…
That’s when my GP sent me to physiotherapy. I’ve been in this situation before, not to the same extend, but I was familiar with the “expected result” of the therapy and was not really counting on it to do a miracle longterm. Little did I know that the physiotherapy approach I was about to get in Switzerland had little to do with the one I was used to in Ireland.
It took more than a month to release my muscles, so I can start doing exercise and address the pain. That’s when I got the surprise of the method we’re about to use – it was simple diaphragm breathing exercises. I had done yoga breathing before mainly for balancing/calming, but I had never done it to help with my back pain. I did the exercises diligently until I was fully recovered and then I continued doing them every day, as they helped me not only with the pain, but also with my digestion, sleep and overall wellbeing. I felt balanced and in control!
My curiosity sparked – it was so simple, so efficient, something that we all do, every day, every minute. I wanted to share this with everyone, I wanted to scream from the top or my lungs:
We have a self healing tool in our hands, that we take for granted. It is so powerful, that it just needs to be awakened to help empower ourselves!
My interest led me to a Breath Coaching training at Yogabody Yoga Teachers College, where I learnt the history, the why and the how of yoga breathing and all practices. And I have been practicing yoga breathing for more than 2 years now.
You will see all the benefits it brings in my detailed posts (link), but one thing I can tell you for sure is – IT WORKS! For all that it is said to benefit in….IT WORKS! I knew it works from my own experience even before knowing it existed and this is why I’m so excited to share it with you!
If you’d like to learn more about the Breath Coaching, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me. I’m always happy to share my knowledge and help where I can!
You can book a Free Discovery session with me (link) where I can also show you some easy practices and tell you what it is all about 🙂
I look forward to hearing from you!
Breath MaDe 