Woah man, Take it easy. BREATHE

You wake up, turn over to your phone to shut off the alarm, blast your eyes with a bright blue light to check on what Instagram has to offer and maybe flick on over to Twitter to check out if the president has waged war on anyone or if Kanye has announced his platform for his 2024 campaign.

After what seems like 5 minutes that actually resulted in a half hour of lost attention, you frantically jump out of bed, snag your Keurig coffee, and blast off through the door with your arm in one sleeve of your shirt and your foot catching the door on the way out. The only part of you that is prepared is your work bag that you have so carefully thought out, containing a toothbrush and deodorant for times just likes this.  

Once at work, you are bombarded with stimuli and tasks to complete before the day is up. Emails to check, coworkers to chat with, the boss piling on the already mountainous workload. Thank god for Facebook one can kill some time and allow their mind to wander. That is until you cross over a video that is directed at you that peaks the social justice warrior in you, for whatever side you find yourself on.

5:00PM rolls arounds and out the door of the building you go, hoping into the car, cruising through your favorite fast food restaurant, because you deserve it champ, the day was hard at the desk, and who wants to cook after that? Hell to the no.

Seconds after entering your humble abode the giant sun is turned on to enchant the mind until inevitably the eyes scream for shelter and you reluctantly go to bed, knowing the cycle starts again tomorrow. If only the mind would shut off simultaneously when our eyes become to heavy to keep open.

We wonder why we are always so anxious, why our minds race when we go to bed, and why ADD is on the rise. From the moment one wakes up they are stimulated and the bodies natural addiction, Dopamine, the feel good hormone, releases with each new tweet, bang, or pop that comes from all the technology around us. At no point does one take a second to stop what they are doing and to take a breath, to set down the screen, close one’s eyes, and to simply BREATHE.

To sit back and let all the worries subside, allowing the mind to quiet the noise and to allow a break from the constant bombardment of Dopamine hits, the blue light blasting the retinas, and the mind thanking you for the attention you are paying it. In a matter of 6 deep breathes, drawing into the lungs with the aid of the diaphragm, the muscle that expands when you place your hand on the navel, one can lower their heart rate and begin to feel the effects. Go ahead and try.

Sit nice and tall, back straight, shoulders back, and rest one hand one your belly. Breath in, filling your belly with air first, feeling the sensation move up in your chest, and finally into your throat and mouth as you fill every bit of air into your respiratory system, where you let out the air, slowly, as it leaves your throat, lungs, and finally pushing the last bit from your belly (not all the air, but most of it. Expelling all of it will destabilize the core). Try and keep a beat of 7 seconds of inhaling and 11 seconds of exhaling. Perform this 6 times, and once you feel the change within, go ahead and feel free to keep following your breath in just that manner for as long as you can enjoy the relaxation.

This isn’t some hippie bullshit I am asking you to fall for, I am not asking that you become a monk and meditate hours on end to reach Nirvana, I simply want you to take back control of your mind and help you help yourself. When would be the best time to employ these breathing tactics? Before you do anything important, before you yell at the person who cut you off in traffic, before you tell your significant other what they have done wrong, or maybe when you feel your blood begin to boil, your heart rate rises, and you can feel your breathing increase rapidly as you heave in and out with your chest.

Sure, that is ideal, but how are you going to manage to take a step back and breath at the peak of emotion when you haven’t made the effort during the times of slaving away to a screen. If you cannot control your breath and anxiety with no stakes, then surely it is a heroic task to breath controllably next time chaos enters your life.

At any moment, all we have is our minds and the constant breath that enters in and out of our bodies. The least we could do is pay attention, with full awareness and full consciousness, for 6 breathes. I, of course, recommend more, but I am a realist. If you haven’t performed 6 breathes with focus, there is no point of asking you to perform 10 minutes of breathing, only for you to get discouraged and abandon the goal of ever having a meditation practice. Start slow, and most of all, ENJOY YOURSELF. This time is for you, and this you actually deserve.

Tell the world around you peace out and focus on you. Be selfish, be bold, and muster up the courage to treat yourself with care and love. The screen and news can wait on you.