Anxiety Free

As we discussed in The Oxygen Advantage and Effortless Healing, Rule #1 of good breathing: BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE.

All the time.

Unless you want to stimulate your fight-or-flight response and feel anxious. Then, definitely breathe through your mouth. :0

Quick check in: Do you breathe through your nose or your mouth?

Make the switch. Use that beautiful nose of yours the way nature intended. :)

There are two primary reasons why bringing our attention back to our breath is so powerful.

#1. We breathe properly (gently through our nose, into our diaphragm) and therefore improve the oxygenation of our brain and bodies.

#2. We tame our minds. As we discussed in Rapt, your brain can’t focus on two things at once. (Technical science-speak phrase for this fact is “the selective mechanism of biased competition.”) So, if you are focused on your breath, you are NOT able to keep looping the same thought over and over again in your mind.

That’s a winning combination. It’s why all the great teachers constantly tell us to use our breath as a pathway to calm confidence.

Next time you find yourself spinning in thoughts see if you can step back, notice your breath, optimize it and create some needed stillness.

P.S. Here’s something else to think about: “Anger, anxiety and stress originate from chaotic and fast breathing. In Japan, children are taught from a young age to diaphragmatically breathe and keep their breathing calm when they get angry. When you are under stress, immediately pay attention to your breathing. If you keep your breathing level, calm and quiet, stress will not manifest. Stress and anger require heavy and irregular breathing. To observe this, watch your breathing the next time you get stressed or angry.”

In The Oxygen Advantage, we talked about just how powerful CO2 is if we want to optimally deliver oxygen to our brain and cells.

Let’s review: “The crucial point to remember is that hemoglobin releases oxygen when in the presence of carbon dioxide. When we overbreathe, too much carbon dioxide is washed from the lungs, blood, tissues, and cells. This condition is called hypocapnia, causing the hemoglobin to hold on to oxygen, resulting in reduced oxygen release and therefore reduced oxygen delivery to tissues and organs. With less oxygen delivered to the muscles, they cannot work as effectively as we might like them to. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the urge to take bigger, deeper breaths when we hit the wall during exercise does not provide the muscles with more oxygen but effectively reduces oxygenation even further. In contrast, when breathing volume remains nearer to correct levels, the pressure of carbon dioxide in the blood is higher, loosening the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen and facilitating the delivery of oxygen to the muscles and organs.”

So, short story: It’s not about breathing more oxygen in per se, it’s about RELEASING the oxygen stored in our hemoglobin *into* our cells and tissues.

We need to get the right levels of CO2 if we want to fully oxygenate. Got it. Best ways to do that?

First, reduce your breathing volume. Remember: As odd as it sounds, OVERbreathing leads to LESS oxygenation as it dirupts the CO2 levels that would have catalyzed hemoglobin to let go of the oxygen we need.

Solution: Practice breathing slowly, quietly through your nose. (All day every day. :)

And, EXERCISE!

When we challenge ourselves through vigorous exercise, we produce more carbon dioxide which triggers the release of more oxygen from our hemoglobin which feels great.

btw: I’m having a lot of fun these days exercising while exclusively breathing through my nose. Although it was *super* weird the first few times I tried it, I’ve quickly come to love it. And, it’s amazing how, by breathing through my nose and getting more comfortable with higher/proper levels of CO2 in my body (which, again, catalyzes the release of more oxygen into my cells), I’m able to perform better and recover faster. (Try it! :)

P.S. Patrick tells us: “With practice, your breathing will become calm, quiet and still. Your other option is to continue with the heavy breathing, have all of your attention in your head and deprive your brain of oxygen, resulting in increased thought activity.”

Want to control your anxiety? Be a good gardener of your mind.

Notice when the weeds of unhelpful thoughts start popping up and yank them out (when they’re tiny little sprouts) while you cultivate the beautiful thoughts you want to see flourish.

Pema Chödrön and Robin Sharma (and many other teachers) use this metaphor.

Here’s how Pema puts it in The Places That Scare You: “This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have. Most of the time we don’t do this. Rather than appreciate where we are, we continually struggle to nurture our dissatisfaction. It’s like trying to get flowers to grow by pouring cement on the garden.”

Here’s how Robin puts it in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: “You have now learned that the mind is like a fertile garden and for it to flourish, you must nurture it daily. Never let the weeds of impure thought and action take the garden of your mind. Stand guard at the gateway of your mind. Keep it healthy and strong—it will work miracles in your life if you will only let it.”

What roots do you need to pull?

Let’s add some sunshine to your good seeds: What are you grateful for in your life? What’s awesome right now?

Here’s to optimizing your divine mental garden!

Imagine having that kind of right arm.

You can move it around with your left arm when you want to use it but… when you’re not deliberately using it for something it just moves up and down.

Up and down. Up and down.

Let’s actually do it. Move your arm up and down. Jiggle McWiggle it.

Have it flail out and bump stuff.

Oops. Sorry. I have a super weird right arm. Just keeps moving.

That super weird right arm of yours is constantly bumping into things and people and even hitting you every once in a while.

You need to spend a ton of time trying to navigate life with this wacky right arm. Pretty much everyone else has the same problem so you don’t think much about it but it’s a major hindrance to you enjoying your life.

Well, guess what?

“There is little difference between a moving right arm and the human mind. The main difference is that it is easy to identify the right arm. The arm is external, visible and can be readily noticed. The human mind is cleverly located to avoid detection. It is hidden away from view and carries on unhindered in the background.

We have lost our ability to control our minds. Our minds move incessantly in the background. Recognize your mind as a moving right arm.”

Is your mind Jiggle McWiggling all day every day?

Are you even AWARE of the fact that it’s pretty much constantly on?

As Sam Harris says in Waking Up: “The problem is not thoughts themselves but the state of thinking without knowing that we are thinking.”

He also says: “Your mind is the basis of everything that you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.”

P.S. All of this reminds me of Augustine’s famous query: “I can tell my hand what to do and it obeys. Why can’t I do the same with my mind?”

Reminds me of some more wisdom from Pema Chödrön.

She tells us: “We’d be wise to question why we hold a grudge as if it were going to make us happy and ease our pain. It’s rather like eating rat poison and thinking the rat will die. Our desire for relief and the methods we use to achieve it are definitely not in sync.”

Let’s shine a spotlight on you: Feeling a grudge toward someone?

Step back. See that: “You cannot have negative thoughts about someone else without these same thoughts having a negative effect on yourself.”

Quit nibbling on the rat poison.

Eknath Easwaran gives us a really powerful way to master this process in his *great* book The Conquest of Mind.

He tells us: “To give one small illustration, whenever somebody is unkind to me, I can immediately unroll the panorama of that person’s good qualities. Instantly the balance is set right. As with most skills, this is a matter of practice. When you are having trouble getting along with someone, a simple first step is to sit down quietly and recall how many times that person has given you support. You are using positive memories to drive out negative ones before they have a chance to crowd together and form a mob, which is all resentment really is.”

Bring to mind the individual for whom you may feel a grudge.

Rather than focus on all the little things they have done/are doing that annoy you, think of all the times that person has given you support.

Use those positive memories to drive out the negative ones before the crazy mob in your mind starts nibbling on rat poison! :)

Best time to practice this stuff?

How about pretty much all the time? :)

Eric Goodman echoes this wisdom in True to Form where he tells us: “It cannot be stressed too often or too strongly that restoring your body’s natural strength and flexibility comes not through intensity of effort but through consistency.”

Connect with your breath while you’re driving, sitting at your desk working, standing in line at the grocery store, washing the dishes, …

Get of your mind. Connect with your breath. Connect with life!