I truly believe that every person and experience we encounter in life comes to us to teach us something.
sometimes we get those lessons through painful experiences. They are the toughest lessons to learn, but profoundly valuable and utterly life changing once we can recognise the lesson or lessons. While it might be necessary to remove people, activities, habits etc from your life and energy, if you can look at the lessons you can learn, you can view the experience with gratitude rather than fear, anger and a desire to make things be different.
One of the first steps to seeing this, is to let go of the attachment – to the person, the habit, the thoughts, the expectations of how life was meant to be, the identity you have created for yourself.
Breathe deeply, and as you exhale, release the emotions, release the past, release the future and be in the now.
When you focus in on your breath, you bring your mind and body into the moment right now. We don’t exist in the past or future. Reality doesn’t exist in the fantasies we create in our minds. Reality is right here, right now. This moment. This breath.
I had this bird cage tattoo around the time I celebrated 4 sober years. At the time, I was only linking it to the idea of freeing myself from the cage of addiction.
I’ve since realised there is a lot more freeing to be done in this head of mine. I’ve noticed all the baggage I’m still carrying around with me. Easier to manage perhaps, and not so heavy and omnipresent, but still there.
My personal practice has changed with this discovery. I have been focusing a lot more on my breath.
Sitting with my breath. Allowing my breath to be what it is rather than trying to control it as I have done previously. Feeling the emotions I feel in full glorious technicolour (sometimes so dazzling in their intensity I need emotional sunglasses!) Naming my fears and looking behind them to see what is the need I have around the fear. Letting go of any idea that I can control outcomes, and taking responsibiltiy for the fact that I can control my behaviour, and my reaction to my emotions. Releasing the emotions and reminding myself that, as my George Harrison inspired tattoo reminds me, ‘All Things Must Pass’.
Highs and lows in life all pass, one way or another. All we can really do, if we want to be happy, is live in the moment, knowing that none of it, not even us, is going to last for ever, and live in gratitude for what is.
Keep learning
Keep growing
Keep breathing
See what can happen when you give yourself the gift of 5 Minutes Space to Breathe for 10 days.
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