Breathing
When you meditate, you are supposed to focus on your breathing, right? Well, you need to be breathing in order to focus on it (duh) . The realization I came to, okay, my chiropractor the amazing Dr. Mark Filippi, has been telling me for years that I don't breath, is that I really, really don't breath like a normal person. I need to make a conscious effort to breath. How weird is that? I have even come up with a theory as to why I don't...you see, I'm a dentist who doesn't wear a mask, now I don't want to breathe in all the stuff that comes flying out of peoples mouths when I am drilling and I certainly don't want to smell it, so I developed the habit of not breathing when I am actually drilling. (It goes to show how little time dentists are actually drilling in your mouth, because it it was a long time, I would have been passing out regularly)
Normal people (of which I apparently am not one) experience changes in breathing patterns when they are stresses or angry. So, that is why meditation with it's focus on breathing helps calm people down and helps them focus inwards.
Since I started on my journey into mediation, I have noticed that when I don't take those 5 minutes to focus in on my breathing, my whole body tenses up and I find it difficult to do even the thing I love the most, which is dancing. Last night, I went to my weekly belly dancing class (tons of fun, I highly recommend it) and it took almost half the class to relax my shoulders! But I generally am tense through the shoulders, so why was this time so different? Because I actually noticed that my shoulders where tense, and was able to distinguish why.
That was something new.
The simple practice of daily meditation, gives me better awareness as to the why, and gives me the tools to overcome it.
And it all starts with breathing, who would have thought.
Breathing calms you down and you get to take back control over your environment.
It's not small wonder that powerful, successful people meditate.
And now I do, to.