When I wake up in the morning, I forget what is most essential for me to live.
As I get up and go to the bathroom and I know I’ve forgotten something, but I’ve gotten so used to living with the discomfort, so I check a box in my list of normality, feeling like a good girl and move on with my day.
The first time I became aware of this, that very thing I need to live, was the most painful thing to change.
The more regularly I gave myself the gift I had forgotten, the happier I got. Not due to someone’s praise, not due to someone’s gift but due to my own gift of reteaching myself how to breathe. Properly.
When I didn’t do this, I would sometimes find myself irritated and annoyed for no reason and this morning I decided I would not have it anymore. So I asked myself the question: what can I change here that I haven’t thought about before? That’s when it hit me, my breathing was on the shallow end. Like a fish, I needed to go deeper to properly breathe and nourish my body with oxygen and start my day from a point of contenment.
I wonder: can you breathe in, to the rhythm of seven counts? Can you hold your breath to the rhythm off seven counts? Can you breathe out to the count of seven counts and hold for seven counts at the end of those breaths?
Today on the Yule Evening morning, as the stress in the city of Oslo is culminating in a feast with delicious food and gifts from family and friends, I found myself giving myself the ultimate gift: the awareness that when I wake up in the morning, I need to breathe life into the new day.
Start and end your day by breathing in the rhythms of three.
In for three, hold for three, exhale for three and hold for three, and repeat this three times. It will be the greatest gift you’ll ever receive from the most important person in your life.
You.
