(This newsletter is adapted from one that Shishir, Director of Imagine’s Instructor Development Program, sent out to his community in India via his Know Thyself Happy company.)
The topic of this newsletter is extremely simple yet full of uncanny learnings. That topic is "The Breath". As the newsletter unfolds, you might start to recognize how a deeper understanding of the breath can provide us not just temporary relief from everyday stresses but also hint at a pathway to happiness. Let's explore "The Hidden Secrets of The Breath".
Secret 1: Breath Can Help You Win Over Emotions
A friend of mine in the film industry once mentioned how they're trained to use the breath to evoke certain emotions. If you wish - try it for yourself. (Caution: people with heart or blood pressure issues, please refrain from doing this exercise.) For the next 1 minute, inhale and exhale extremely rapidly (something that happens when we're angry). Do you feel different from how you did before? Physically, you'll notice that the body heats up and heart rate goes up. The exact "symptoms" of anger. Now, shortly after this exercise, if someone around you said something provocative, your chances of being angry are higher than they were before the exercise, since the body is already in a state ready to exhibit anger. The exact same manipulation of the breath can also help you come out of any emotion. We have all heard about the benefits of deep and calm breathing. If you pay close attention to your breath, it'll give you so many solutions to what to do to win over emotions.
Secret 2: Breath Can Make You Feel Happier About Everyday Life
In a remarkable study in 2020, it was found that cancer patients post detection are happier in everyday life compared with healthier people. Why? One of the reasons pointed out by researchers is that post detection, cancer patients start to greatly pay attention to and value the simpler things in life. This is true not just with cancer patients but in general for all of us. The more we actively instill gratitude toward the smallest details, the happier we may become about every aspect of life. Many of us realized the value of healthy lungs during Covid, so simply recognizing how amazing it actually is to be able to take a breath could be quite impactful. It might be a wonderful practice to simply feel the breath and take a moment to be grateful for our aliveness each morning we wake up - we start paving the way to happiness that way.
Secret 3: Breath Can Reinstate Some "Control" Over Your Mind
For the next 2 minutes, try to bring your entire attention to simply being present to the experience of breathing. If you're a human being, it's impossible to not wander away from the breath into thoughts. This, however, is as much an exercise in revealing the fickleness of the mind as it is a practice to reinstate some control by getting to know your mind and starting to befriend it. Like any exercise at the gym, the same exercise helps us both understand the incapacity of a muscle and helps us build the muscle by repeating it. Similarly, the more you deliberately spend time acknowledging and observing the breath (and its fickleness), the more you practice recognizing that your mind is wandering off and then gently bringing it back to the focus you want to give it. This practice can feed into almost all aspects of life, enhancing our concentration and in turn our efficiency. In case you wish to benefit from this, Imagine's website has several short Awareness of Breath guided practices.
As we come close to the end of this newsletter, I hope you might have noticed how such a simple aspect of your life that has been with you for all this while has so much more to offer than you may have thought it did. For in the recognition of the immense value of the simple, perhaps lie the deepest secrets of joy eternal.
Love,
Shishir Arya
(NOTE from Summer: we generally don't promote products, but if you're interested in a way to incorporate Gratitude into your daily life, please search for "five minute journal" online.)
