Winter is fading and spring is right around the corner! This is a good time to focus on your inner work. My friend and teacher Leonard Orr used to say: “It’s ok to take a break from the self-improvement business now and then.”
And it’s also necessary to remain focused on healing and growth, personal, professional, and spiritual development. A every now and then, we need to dive into it with everything you’ve got!. This is especially true for life-long learners. And I assume that’s you!
So this month, I’d like to give you some tips and some practices that you may find very helpful. The first tip comes from my Navy Seal friend Mark Divine. It’s called the STOP Practice:
STOP is a simple yet effective mindfulness technique consisting of four steps that can be practiced anytime, anywhere, especially when feeling stressed, irritated, or overwhelmed.
S: Stop what you’re doing and thinking.
T: Take three deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly.
O: Observe your feelings and sensations, your mental state, and surroundings
P: Proceed with intention, focusing on your current task or action.
STOP cultivates self-awareness and mindfulness in your thoughts, speech, and behavior, helping you to stay connected with yourself and your present moment reality.
Here’s another thing I picked up somewhere along the way. It’s about dealing with confusion, frustration, fear, and failure. It’s about reframing those feelings–which are sure to come up in life–especially if you are on the path of healing & growth.
- Confusion: lets us know that we are about to learn something new.
- Frustration: is a sign that we are on the verge of a breakthrough.
- Fear: is an opportunity, an invitation, to grow.
- Failure: gives us the feedback we need to get better.
I want to remind you that a good practice formula for breathwork and mindfulness is 10+10+(10×2): ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes at night, and ten times during the day for two minutes.
Make sure you have a morning ritual where you run yourself thru a range of breathing patterns and rhythms, speeds, volumes, channels and intensities. You are like a musician practicing the scales.
When you go through your day, you also want to pay attention to which level or center of consciousness you are using to experience reality: Security, Sensation, Power, Love, Abundance, Conscious Awareness, or Cosmic Consciousness.
As one of my earliest teachers said: “If you’re suffering, it is a sure sign that you’re filtering your experience through one of the first 3 lower centers.” (Security, Sensation, Power).
As soon as you open your heart and awaken to your Love Center, you stop suffering. And you open the way to higher consciousness!
To express your most creative, productive, highest, and most loving self, you need to be in a beautiful state. So, make sure you are using your breath to get there, remain there, and return there at will!
Good luck in your practice, and many blessings on your path!
Dan (Guchu Ram Singh)
Breathmastery.com
March 2024
