Your breath is the most powerful healing practice and awakening tool that you have with you at all times, and you are only using it a fraction of its capacity which means you are living at only a fraction of your capacity.
I’m Christel Arcucci, you’re listening to the Soul Purpose Podcast, the lightning path of embodied spiritual awakening with shadow and light integration. Quit people pleasing, reclaim power, and create your soul purpose legacy.
So what does the breath have to do with reclaiming power and embodying soul purpose?
In order to reclaim power, first you need to move from feeling stressed out, overwhelmed and sabotaging your success into a neutral place, where you can reclaim power.
Start by taking a slower, gentle and deeper breath…without forcing.
Feel More. Become more aware, present, and connected to your experience.
Recognize your level of stress and evaluate if you are in a stress response: fight, flight, freeze or please.
De-stress your system in order to reclaim power and take action in living your purpose by actively and consciously incorporating breath practices into your daily life.
Your breath is tool that’s always available, you’re only using a fraction of its power and you can only live a few minutes without breathing.
How do you move from breathing unconsciously minimally shallow breathing which actually perpetuates keeping you in the stress cycle to more consciously breathing?
Start with a simple One Breath Meditation practice.
The beauty of this practice is, it’s only one breath, and you can do it anywhere and any time it’s a gateway that is always available to you.
A secret to creating anchor practices in your life is connecting the practice to an activity that you are already doing.
You can choose to anchor the One Breath Meditation to anytime you hear a text message arrive, anytime the phone dings with a notification, or anytime your child calls your name. Being able to do the One Breath Meditation when your child calls your name is an advanced practice but if you do it, it will change everything by supporting you to respond instead of react.
Connect the anchor practice of the one breath meditation to a mundane activity that you’re already doing like walking through a doorway, drinking water, standing up, sitting down, washing your hands, or any number of activities that you most often do mindlessly.
When you first try to integrate this practice it can be helpful to write a sticky note in that location to remind you.
“Before (blank) activity do the OBM.”
Don’t make it more complicated.
Don’t attempt to start meditating for an hour a day.
If you struggle with stress and anxiety, trying to make yourself meditate for one hour a day if you’ve never successfully done a practice of meditation consistently is a fast track to creating more stress and reinforcing the failure soundtrack.
One breath meditation is literally only one breath and don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy, you can still get off track and distracted in that short amount of time.
You need to know, this simple pause, reset and breath practice may be challenging to be fully focused in one full breath, one full inhale, one full exhale.
Don’t let this be fuel for the Inner Critic soundtrack.
Be playful and kind with yourself in this exploration.
The beauty of it is the one breath meditation practice, is if your mind wanders halfway through the inhale, you can just try again, you can laugh and say, “okay, my mind wandered let’s begin again, slow and deep inhale and focus on my breath slow and complete exhale.”
And the BOOM your mind wandered again, I didn’t even make it through one breath.
Here’s the thing this is simple and short practice prime territory for the inner critic to jump in and say mean things, don’t take the bait. If you do start saying mean things to yourself, STOP as soon as you notice.
Do not beat yourself up. If you have a habit of buying into the inner critic that you’re a failure, focus on letting this be an imperfect practice, practice, practice.
As soon as you notice the inner critic and be like, “thank you for your input and I’m going to start again… over and and over and over as long as you are breathing.
Do not let your inner critic bash your head in.
Let’s take an example… let’s say that you’re in your home and you open the door and as soon as you open the door, a stranger that you’ve never seen before starts screaming in your face, “you are such a loser! You’re always going to fail. You’re never going to be able to meditate! You’re always stressed out and you’re a terrible person because you can’t even focus for one simple breath.”
Would you invite them in for tea?
No, you would not, Not unless you have a humiliation fetish. Most likely would close the door, and you say, “wow, that person is deranged!
I want you to have the same boundary with the inner critic soundtrack in your mind…just close the door and you begin again.
Close the door on the inner critic and start again. Focus on one single breath in and one breath out.
I find further anchoring your attention with words can keep you mind more focused, it’s like giving a fussy baby colorful toy to play with… the child will be transfixed for a period of time.
This practice of using woods as an anchor for your mind’s attention during meditation is called “Japa Meditation” in the yoga tradition and the words you use are called a Mantra.
A simple sentence you can use to focus your attention, “I am focused on one relaxed breath in and one complete breath out.”
I like to say: Soul Body Breath
Repeating the phrase soul body breath supports me to integrate the soul, the body and the breath together, for me it’s feels like an activation and recode to weave together my body, mind, heart and being into the present moment.
Pick any statement or mantra that resonates with you and you could make a new one up each time to connect your intuition int your present moment experience and don’t make it complicated.
The One Breath Meditation is a Mindfulness practice as well which I find mindfulness practices are a great gateway to seated meditation especially if you struggle with anxiety.
One of my current mindfulness practices is relearning to play piano. I can see the exact moment when I am reading the notes and my mind wanders off because inevitably I make a mistake right then. My intention is to play my chosen piece through 3 times without making a mistake. And guess what, I rarely make it through when I am learning a new song. I almost always mess up when my mind wanders because the practice has not yet become automatic, and I don’t start screaming at myself about how I’m such a loser and I’m always gonna be a failure when it comes to piano I just go okay my mind wandered Let’s try again. Let’s try to stay more focus. Let’s focus on my breath. Yes? Yes!
Your focus with the one breath meditation is to anchor your attention to integrate the soul, body and the mind into your breath. The breath is most often unconscious since it’s happening needing the think about it. The practice of the soul body breath is the simplest way to bring your unconscious power into conscious awareness so you can direct your power into the purpose you desire to create in your life and business.
One breath meditation into an activity that you always do like for just one breath. Notice the saboteur sound track might kick in an attempt to keep you safe in the known space of unconscious action. Don’t take the bait.
The greatest power of this practice is to do just one breath many many many many times throughout the day.
For example before I sign into a social media platform, or check my email I breathe first.
I check in.
I STOP and ask myself, “am I logging for a distraction from feeling? or to connect or contribute: love, truth, kindness or beauty?
I often find myself unconsciously logging into to social media to procrastinate or because I feel lonely = which of course it a bad plan.
Instead I center myself and breathe and say in my mind or out loud, “soul body breath.”
I become present with myself and then I am in a more powerful place to post of connect. And if I was seeking distraction I’m less lonely and I can make a conscious choice to do something else that will bring my power back into my body mind.
Your practice for today is to weave in one breath meditation as an anchor practice to support you to transform your unconscious actions to empowered and embodied choices to create your purpose with power and pleasure.
Even if you already have a seated meditation practice I encourage you to also practice the one breath meditation, and see how deeply you can go and instantly be centered, focused and aligned.
If you’ve struggled with trying to create a consistent meditation practice or you’re feeling extremely stressed with what’s happening in the world right now…. I really encourage you to only work with one breath at a time.
Success creates more success.
And failure is often the trap door that opens into the failure spiral…and going down down down into the self sabotage, self destructive and maybe even self-loathing soundtracks. I encourage you, DO NOT TO GO THERE. Don’t do it my dear.
When you succeed one breath at a time, you will feel successful, and you will build on the feeling of success. Then you may move on to feeling accomplished and you’ll know you can build your life One Breath at a time.
It’s incredible powerful and magic and so easily over looked because it so basic.
Feeling good will happen more often when you de-stress your system and reclaim our power.
You will speak up.
You will connect.
You will share your truth.
You will create your bold vision be part of the change that needs to happen in the world right now.
Thank you for being here, it’s a pleasure to walk the soul purpose path with you.
You’re listening to the soul purpose podcast, the lightning path of embodied spiritual awakening with shadow and light integration. Quit people-pleasing reclaim power and create your soul purpose legacy.
You can access the Free Soul Success Journal & meditation and all episodes of the podcast and all the goodies mentioned in this episode at soulpurposepractice.com
I believe in you and the magic power of your soul.
For more revolutionary teachings and tools please follow on your favorite podcast app or visit soulpurposepodcast.com. I look forward to connecting with you on the next episode.
I am sending you so much love!