Why are you holding your breath? And why it is an ineffective way to manage your emotions…
I get insights in bite size chunks… here is a new insight I just got.
Your attention, that force to reckon with, that power you wield to bring life to stuff is connected to your breath.
They say: what you pay attention to starts moving. This is why, when you are at the chiropractor, they say: breathe into your hip, or your knees…
You see, they know breathing into something brings it mobility, awareness, and life… what they didn’t know is that it is your attention that is brought to the sore or stuck part with the breath.
When you go through a guided meditation, they bring your attention to different parts of the body, and with the attention… voilà, you release the tension.
So with breath directed at something, life and mobility is brought into that area.
When you hold your breath you refuse your attention. You wall yourself away from the thing that is happening, and you get stuck, or remain stuck… so you can stew in your pain, grief more.
I heard this quote yesterday by James Baldwin: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
It immediately hit me as important: you cling to your fears, to your superiority, to your delusions, to your piousness with the same stubbornness… and I can see, that the unconscious purpose of that clinging is so you don’t have to face the tiger… the pain, the sadness, the emptiness, the void, the grief, because you are afraid that it would hurt too much.
It is all the selfish gene: protecting the sore area… too much. Mongol mothers used to pull and prod their children’s body with regularity to avoid any protective mechanism to bend their little ones into pretzels…
I haven’t heard any other culture to care that much… but none of the cultures seem to care about your inner pretzel-making mechanism, the little lies suppressed, the little fears, the little deceits… eventually becoming who you are.
Brittle, frozen, either in fear, or in hate… or maybe in haughtiness.
All because you treated your insides with less respect than you treated your body… and you are a pretzel inside.
Unless you are a small child… you won’t be able to completely counter the many years old damage you’ve done to yourself, but you can, at any age, do inner limbering exercises… directed by your breath.
And start confronting the suppressed “stuff”, the grief, the pain, the lies, the terror.
Really.
If I wanted to predict your future happiness, your future success, your level of fulfillment, your vibration, I only need to know one thing: what is the degree of determination to get to the other side of pain… by confronting it.
I am not sure what I’ve been doing differently, but in this area there has been movement.
Not surprisingly, the group that has taken off is all women.
Women are more resilient and more prepared to endure pain that has a purpose, I guess. Like giving birth… horrible pain for something that makes it worth… at least for the selfish gene…
Men are different. They all hold their breath… and are very seldom willing to face the inner tiger.
I think men have a harder time being with the fact that they are not all they can be. That they are neither smart enough nor diligent enough to be all they can be.
Big tiger.
But not facing the tiger keeps you stuck.
Another thing also happens when you hold your breath to avoid facing the tiger.
NOTHING gets your whole attention. You withhold most of it to yourself with your breath.
You are scattered, and only a little bit of aliveness and power is available.
But I saw something that I didn’t expect.
This person’s eyes were going all over the place while I was speaking. He didn’t hear a word I said. He was doing his own thinking about something else.
No surprise: there was no breath.
Holding your breath is like withholding your power, withholding your listening, withholding your love.
And your life is a perfect reflection of that.
By the way: forcing the breath is doing violence: don’t do it.
The secret is to release the breath. Releasing is a process that can take a long time. Start small, and increase the time.
Take back your conscious control over your breath. Notice that all the issues are avoidance issues.
Once you have control, it will be time to face the tiger… Contact me when you are there. I’ll see what is the perfect method for you to do this “facing the tiger” work. Some will do one-on-one with me, some will do the 67 steps… the magical tiny steps process. It is still one-on-one, but it’s in writing.
One of my energy bundles, the Big Bundle is an invaluable tool in this process. People who use it regularly start to get unstuck and get moving.
I recommend it to you if you are stuck. It’s my secret weapon.
Learn more about it… https://yourvibration.com/17880/secret-weapon/
