For my whole life I've wrestled with nervous system dis-regulation and all the things that go with that. Anxiety, overwhelm, and insomnia are three of the big ones for me.

I've used lots of tools and strategies along the way; one that I've found consistently helpful is focusing on my breath. You could call it breath awareness or intentional breathing.

It's taken me some practice to get in the habit of:

1. noticing that I'm tense, dis-regulated and scattered, and that my breathing feels restricted
2. focusing on my breath (even though its often initially uncomfortable)
3. staying focused on my breath (or bringing my attention back when it wanders) until the tightness eases and my breath can go deeper -- success!

That whole process can take as little as 3 to 5 breaths. (If I'm really tense and have been forgetting to do it, I might have to repeat the process several times before I get that sense of relief.)

It's taken me a while to get the hang of it, but as I've gotten better at it the benefits have been out of all proportion to the simplicity of the practice.

Here are three of the reasons I've become an advocate for the practice of conscious breathing, mindful breathing, or as I like to call it, "breathing myself home."

1. Focusing on your breath is restful and refreshing

Focusing on your breath can nourish and refresh you in ways that stressed out modern people don't even realize they're missing out on.

Try it. For three in breaths and three out breaths, just be with your breath. Let your breath bring you home to yourself.

Follow your breath inward. Be open, receptive, curious, about what you might find inside there where your breath goes.

Don't try to breath more deeply or slowly, just observe. Be ready to follow your breath deeper and feel the deliciousness of slowing down, when your body invites you. 

If nothing changes at first, that's ok. Repeat the process again the next time you think of it. (Consider how you could prompt yourself to remember to do it more often.)

Sooner or later, I feel confident that you'll experience a shift. For me, when the shift comes, several things happen. My breath slows down and deepens. A spaciousness opens up inside of me. Tension melts away.

Body tissues that have been tight and exhausted get to relax. Flow and ease (which could be our natural state -- just ask a cat) are restored.

2. Focusing on your breath brings you home to yourself

In my experience, awareness of your breath brings you into your body. To borrow words from Thich Nhat Hanh, it brings you "home." 

Our only true and unassailable home is "what the Buddha called the island of self, the peaceful place inside us,"¹. I say "unassailable" because it's the only home that, with practice, can literally become a safe sanctuary that's unaffected by outside events.

The severity of outside events that your safe island of Self can withstand obviously varies with practice and nervous system capacity. To me, practicing and building my capacity for this is SO worthwhile.

I'd go as far as to say its life-changing.

3. Using your breath to bring yourself into presence can give you back your time

I'm one of those people who never has enough time. There's always more to do than there is time to do it, and with this comes a sense of anxiety, hurry, and overwhelm.

I'm finding that dropping everything to focus on three to five full breaths (which doenst take long!) is giving me back my time.

Really. It makes time slow down, and the hustle recedes as the spaciousness inside me expands. What a relief!

To paraphrase some of THich Naht Hanh's wisdom on this:

Did I pay attention to my breath today?

If you keep a journal, even just a very sporadic one, try putting a prompt in there that you'll see each time you write in your journal (use a post it note for paper journals):

"Did I pay attention to my breath today?"

Related

The post "Emotional Regulation: 3 Simple Practices for Peace This Holiday Season" has more on short, simple breathing practices that can help when we get anxious, tense, or scattered. 

Nourishment is something I think and talk about a lot. Obviously there's physical nourishment, which we get from food -- but to live full and satisfying lives we need other kinds of sustenance too. 

Lately I've been snacking on the book Silence, by Buddhist teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. In the first chapter he talks about four kinds of "nutriments" (types of nourishment) that we get energy from every day.

That's what inspired this post. 

A smorgasbord of stimuli

In Silence, Thich Nhat Hanh describes a "smorgasbord of stimuli" that we're choosing from every day (knowingly or not) as we take in energy from the world around us.

The types of nourishment available on the smorgasbord are:

• physical food, 
• sense impressions (what we take in through our five senses),
• volition (what moves us to act), and 
• consciousness (individual and collective).

As I was reading, it occurred to me that all of these can vary from healthy sources of energy, to unhealthy.

Just like real, nourishing food versus junk food, any of these four kinds of nutriments can fill us with energy and vitality or they can leave us un-nourished, sluggish or jittery, and unwell.

Of the four, the one I want to talk about in this post is "volition."

Volition - "the force that moves us to act"

I would describe "volition" as being "the force that motivates or moves us to act."

In a dictionary, it means something like, "the act of exercising the will; the faculty or capability of conscious choice, decision, and intention."  

To do something "of one's own volition" is to do it by one's own choice.

Synonyms for volition (words with similar meanings) are choice and discretion.

Volition is like food in that it "feeds" your choices and actions

Of the nutriment of "volition," Thich Nhat Hanh says:

I would also add that most of the noise around us is designed to incite strong emotional reactions that keep us hooked, scrolling, clicking, gaping, and gossiping (gossiping is now called "sharing"). 

And as digital tech and AI become increasingly subtle and manipulative, all this noise is influencing us far below the level of our conscious awareness. (I asked my 14 year old son what he thought of this post; one of the things he said was, "Mum, don't list "advertising" as a source of volition. Most people believe they're not influenced by advertising.")

Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to say,

Allowing the noise outside of you to motivate you is like eating junk food

Here's what I took away: 

Volition (your decision making power or the force that motivates you to act) can come from inside you, based on your personal values and your authentic desires. This is real "nourishment" for your decisions and actions. 

Or it can come from the "noise" outside of you -- this can be more like "junk food.".  

Volition from outside sources that are not interested in your well-being fills you up with "calories" (spikes of cheap, short term energy).

But it doesn't provide the lasting "nutrients" (for example, a sense of meaning and satisfaction) that you would get from being guided by your own internal volition.

Which means that when we allow the noise around us to motivate our actions, we're starving ourselves.

What if you can't find your internal volition?

If you got in trouble a lot for following your internal volition as a child, it might now feel like you cant find it or even that don't have any. 

Here's where mindfulness comes in. According to Thich Nhat Hanh (in another of his books, Being Peace) mindfulness means simply "paying attention."

Pay attention, especially to your body.

Your body knows what's going on inside of you. 

When your whole body feels good, you can assume that you've managed to align yourself with your internal volition. 

When something in your body feels "off," or uncomfortable, you can assume you're out of alignment. 

It's a bit like food -- real, nourishing food makes your body feel good; junk food doesn't.

Even when I feel resistance to the way things are turning out, even when I'm face down on the floor kicking and screaming while things are turning out the way they are, I know I'm likely to look back later and say:

"Oh. NOW I see that the way it turned out was ok after all."

Often with the perspective of hindsight I even see that it had to be that way, and I see why.

And each time I benefit from hindsight in this way, it adds a fiber to my capacity to trust the present moment.

After so many times of seeing in the rear view mirror that the way things unfolded was for the purpose of my growth and the well-being of the Whole (as opposed to being for my own personal short-term comfort), I've come to expect that that's what I'll see when I look back. 

Which enables me to face or even embrace pain and discomfort in the present moment with a bit more faith that this doesn't mean "Life sucks and then you die."

To me, it means something more like "Life can be intensely uncomfortable (as can childbirth, for example) and then through the discomfort comes growth or treasure you couldn't have imagined or comprehended before the pain and discomfort broke you open and made you bigger."