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The Importance of BreathThe most vulnerable portion of the “Flow State” triad (breath, movement, structure) is breathing.
Proper breathing is degraded by stress before you can detect it in posture or muscle tension. This is one of the reasons breath control is addressed in most religions and spiritual disciplines, whether this is through pranayama (yoga), exercise, hymns, ritual prayers, dance, or sacred postures.
Utilize the Power of Total Concentration
A good yoga teacher, for instance, will place the student in a posture sufficiently extreme to force total concentration. When the student learns to relax and focus, that posture becomes relatively easy, and a more extreme posture is given.
The point is to teach the student to monitor their own internal process. Fine martial arts or breathing meditation teachers use similar techniques.
The student learns to recognize the early signs of strain, and to dissipate them. NOTHING in life creates more stress than lack of oxygen, and learning to remain calm in the midst of oxygen debt will teach you to remain calm when the children are screaming, when your boss is on the ra
mpage, when someone cuts you off on the freeway.
Or when you have a writing deadline, or when insecurity and fear hammers at the door of your resolve.
Create Centredness and Achieve Excellence
Deliberately practicing a physical discipline to enhance this quality of calmness and centeredness, while simultaneously working toward goals balanced in body, mind, and spirit, exposes you to the currents of life while helping you develop the skills and strategies necessary to excel.
This, over time, leads to excellence, even in a purely mental arena.
Remember: proper breathing under stress is a key to reaching your maximum potential as a mental, spiritual, and emotional being. Seek one of these techniques out and integrate it into your life. It's one of the best investments you could ever make in your future.
Love life and live it creatively and on purpose!
Leanne
PS If you’re looking to feel great about yourself and your life check out our fabulous audios at www.YourSuccessfulMind.com/FeelingGreat MindRight Programming Tools to put you back in the driver’s seat of your life!
For thousands of years, physical disciplines like yoga, Tai Chi and Akido have been said to increase mental and spiritual powers.
Have you ever wondered why this is so and even better, how can we use this fact, practically, to enhance our lives as individuals, business people, parents, and partners?
Understand the Mind Body Connection
First, we have to strip away the mysticism from the activity. These activities have an esoteric aspect, but we have to approach them on the most down-to-earth level.
The higher the tree, the deeper the roots. The taller the building, the deeper the foundations. If you want to soar, be certain that your tether is strong.
So we need to start with a simple, physiological explanation and then suggest a way that this ties in to success in each area of our lives.
Create The Flow State
Perhaps the single most important in terms of Body-Mind is what's referred to as the 'Flow State Performance Spiral' by Scott Sonnon.
1) All physical technique is composed of three aspects: breathing, movement, and structure.
2) Each of these aspects is controlled by the other two (breath is created by movement and structure, etc.)
3) Stress “dis-integrates” this structure. In other words, when you are under stress, the physiological signs will manifest in your breathing rate or shallowness, your posture, your muscle tension. This is why lie detectors work!
Use Stress
Before he died, Hans Selye, the creator of the “stress” concept, said that he had misspoken himself, that it is not stress that hurts us, it is strain. Stress is the pressure we are under. But strain is the degree to which that stress warps us out of true.
Avoid Strain and Maintain 'Flow'
Funnily enough, stress isn't the enemy. In fact, when handled healthfully, it's the primary trigger for growth.
So the key is to avoid strain. Let’s skip around a bit to a truth about artistic and intellectual pursuits: your ability to utilize your intelligence, education, skills or talents will be in direct proportion to your ability to maintain “flow” under stress.
Or to put it another way, in life, we're rewarded for how much stress we can handle without folding:-)
Writer’s block, for instance, is nothing but a poor reaction to performance stress.
Remember: mental and emotional balance under stress leads to excellence. Combine this with the fact that learning to cope with physical stress develops skills that are tremendously applicable to the mental arena.Love life and live it creatively and on purpose!Leanne
PS If you’re looking to feel great about yourself and your life check out our fabulous audios at www.YourSuccessfulMind.com/FeelingGreat MindRight Programming Tools to put you back in the driver’s seat of your life!
mpage, when someone cuts you off on the freeway. 
