If you listen carefully to a person who is highly stressed, they frequently don’t exhale properly.
When we exhale, we have the opportunity to let go of stress and tension at a very deep level.
Failing to exhale properly is a common symptom of high blood pressure.
You can learn how to exhale completely by watching the instructions for the third breath in the pranayama sequence I call Eight Minutes To Inner Peace.
Just click on this link.
Take a deep breath while you are reading this blog post. Then let it go.
How do you feel now? A little better, I hope!
There are two sides of your nervous system:
- Sympathetic nervous system. This is the part of your nervous system that responds to stress. Every neuron in your sympathetic nervous system is connected to at least 20 other neurons.
- Parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of your nervous system that allows you to relax. Every neuron in your parasympathetic nervous system is connected to only about 5 other neurons.
What this means is that when we want to relax, we have to make a conscious effort to do so.
You are neurologically programmed to survive, not to chill out.
The first place to begin with deep relaxation is by learning to let it all go with your exhale.
Years ago – back in the day when I had a PC – I had a computer monitor from the Institute of HeartMath.
I spent many hours coaching clients who had high blood pressure.
If you look at the EKG of anyone with high blood pressure, you can easily see they don’t exhale properly.
One of my high blood pressure clients told me, “You have helped me more than 33 cardiologists and all my years in Sunday school!”
And it was all because of teaching her how to exhale – no drugs, no lectures on how to think positively, just breathing!
What is healing? Healing happens when we really learn how to breathe.