I hear myself saying it all the time. If a student is stressed, emotional, caught up in complex, negative thinking, I tell them to first just breathe…! Breath in, breath out.

I should listen more to the advice I’m giving.

How I Learned To Breathe

The first time I took a dive inside, into my body, I was eighteen and had been struggling with every eating disorder in the book for years. I came across “You can Heal your Life” by Louise L Hay, picked up on her Holistic thinking and her affirmations, and had a light bulb experience. I was living completely outside of my body, doing much more thinking than feeling, much more doing than being. I was surprised to discover that there was actually a voice inside that could not only guide me in different situations but also tell me whether my body needed something or not.

It was an inner paradigm shift. There was this whole body that I could fill with my spirit, breathe into every cell, every vein, every hair…instead of constantly trying to reshape, adjust and improve it. My own inner dictator, firmly backed up by the latest monthly magazines, was losing ground, and fast. It was the beginning of my journey to live from the inside out instead of the other way around.

Remember Who You Are

My path since that internal shift has been one of remembering more and more who I truly am. Forgetting, messing up, doing the ego-dance. And then remembering again.

So even today I am going to leave the long to-do lists for a second, stop running, stop thinking, stop calling parents or organizing class parties for the coming hour…and just be still…breathing. Being. Feeling.

[Photo from iandeth]